Then the small muscle in his cheek started jumping, the way it always did when someone did not shrink fast enough.
“A secure line?” he said. “So now you’re a spy, too?”
The voice in my earpiece came again, sharper now.
“General Mitchell, is there a problem?”
Michael heard the title.
So did my mother.
So did Tyler.
The kitchen seemed to pause around it.
Then Michael laughed.
It was dry and ugly, the kind of laugh a man uses when he cannot afford to look uncertain.
“General? You? Don’t make me laugh.”
I lowered the phone a few inches but kept the line live.
“Chief Harris, do not touch this device.”
His face changed at the title.
Not because he respected it.
Because I had used it back at him.
“You don’t give orders in my house,” he said.
“It isn’t your house. It’s my mother’s.”
