Keller navigated around the employees shuffling to the conference room, and made her way to the elevator. On the ride down, she thought about the interview, how the temperature in the room had changed when she’d switched the topic from Evan Pine to the cartel.

Her instincts told her two things: First, the Chicago office of Marconi LLP would be shuttered within the year. Second, the firm had nothing to do with the death of the Pines.

CHAPTER 31

OLIVIA PINE

BEFORE

Liv drove home from Lincoln feeling excited, giddy almost. Her father would be allowed to stay in the nursing home. She’d come to Adair to solve a problem and she did it. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. She felt a sense of accomplishment. She called Cindy to give her the news and check in on Tommy, and even her morose sister sounded impressed.

Liv’s thoughts meandered as she cruised the interstate. She opened both front windows, and flashed to an image of herself as a teenager, driving too fast in her father’s station wagon, the wind blasting through the cabin, her hair dancing in the tornado. She didn’t crank up the music—that was Evan and Danny’s thing. Instead she listened to the howl of the wind.

She thought about Noah. As a boy, his master plan had been to move up the ranks in local politics, become governor, then make a run for the big leagues—the Senate, or even president of the United States. He looked the part. More handsome now than when he was younger, with the perfectly symmetrical face and Clark Kent curl in his hair. The slow movements and gait of confidence. As if he’d grown into the part. He’d become mayor of Adair in his early thirties, and everyone thought he’d be on the national political scene by now. But life got in the way. Having a child, his wife’s cancer. But he’d scrapped his way through farm-belt politics to become the number two man in the state. And now he’d be governor.

The elevation had personal significance for Liv—not the nostalgia of seeing her old boyfriend achieving his dreams, but the fact that Noah would lead the pardon board. In Nebraska, the governor didn’t have the unilateral power to pardon. There was a pardon board made up of the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state. Governor Turner had shut down any prospect of a pardon, but Noah could make it happen. He just needed the courage to do so. Would he have it? Liv felt a pang of doubt. Noah was a born politician. He’d test the winds, see what the polling said about it. Would voters expect him to use his newfound power to correct the injustice he’d rallied against on-screen? One would hope. All she could do was try.