She took the elevator to the top floor at ten minutes after ten o’clock. She was panicked about being late, but she relaxed when the receptionist told her that Peter was tied up in another meeting and was running at least twenty minutes behind schedule. She took a seat on the sofa, then got up again and paced restlessly in the waiting area.

The lobby furniture was antique and expensive. Black-and-white photographs adorned the wall, showing Peter’s father and the postwar buildings, ships, and train cars of Stanhope Industries. Serena saw more modern memorabilia, too, including framed newspaper headlines of the major litigation victories of Peter’s law firm. They had won forty million dollars in punitive damages from a Twin Cities manufacturer over a defective heart stent. Almost twenty million dollars following a school bus accident that left one child dead. And so on. Peter and his team of associates were personal injury lawyers with a vengeance.

Serena wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing here. She was a homicide detective. A private investigator. She had a hard time imagining herself working for a law firm, even though the work would not be all that different from what she did now. She would still interview victims and witnesses. She would try to find sources inside corporations to uncover things that their executives wanted to keep hidden. It was still investigative work. She worried that the job wouldn’t be as exhilarating as her time on the street, but her experiences over the winter had worn down her physical and mental willingness to put herself in constant danger. For at least a year or two, she wanted to take a step back and rethink her life.

The opportunity had come out of the blue. Two months earlier, Peter Stanhope had read an article in the Duluth newspaper about Serena’s background as a detective in Las Vegas. He called her with a freelance assignment to uncover evidence of fraudulent billing practices at a Twin Cities hospital. Over the course of the next six weeks, Serena built relationships with two nurses and an accountant, who turned over papers that allowed Peter’s lawyers to pinpoint their discovery request and fast-track settlement negotiations. Peter was so impressed that he called Serena the following week to ask her to join the firm as a permanent employee.

She had been confused by Stride’s reluctance when she told him about the job offer, because she knew he wanted her to find a less risky line of work. Now that she knew his background with Peter, she understood. Her own excitement had soured, too.

A paralegal escorted Serena to Peter’s office at 10:45. The corner suite was at the rear of the building, with a sweeping view toward the lake. Like the rest of the firm, Peter’s office was decorated as if the year were 1950. On some level, Serena thought, Peter was trying to live up to his father’s legacy. It couldn’t be easy living in the shadow of an industrial giant. Serena thought it was interesting that after Randall Stanhope died, the first thing Peter had done was sell the family business.