Victor Mares walked into Treeline during the afternoon lull and ordered a cortado like a man who'd practiced the word.
Not drip. Not black. A cortado. The drink Cole ordered. The drink I'd made without deciding to, the drink that had become the vocabulary of whatever Cole and I were building across eighteen inches of beetle-kill pine. Mares had done his homework. Mares had done his homework so thoroughly that the drink he ordered was a message and the message was: I know your language.
He was shorter than I'd expected. Mid-fifties. A sport coat that cost more than it needed to — the quiet expense of a man who dressed for courtrooms and wanted you to know it without being told. His hair was gray at the temples. His hands were clean. The hands of a man who used paper instead of fists and understood that paper cuts deeper because paper has a filing date and fists don't.
