The SUV turned onto East 73rd Street at nine forty-five and Marcus Webb had been sweating for approximately forty minutes.

He could feel it - the particular cold dampness between his shoulder blades, the way his collar had stopped sitting properly, the clammy persistence of hands that he was pressing flat against his thighs so no one would notice them. The car was climate-controlled. The problem was not the temperature.

"The venue is just ahead," he said, aiming for the easy confidence of a man who had arranged this kind of evening a hundred times. He had, in fact, arranged evenings like this many times. The problem was that none of those previous evenings had included Raymond Thorne in the passenger seat.

Raymond Thorne did not acknowledge the comment. He was looking out the window at the cross street with the focused absence of a person who was either thinking about something important or thinking about nothing at all, and Marcus Webb, who had been around enough dangerous men to develop a functional read of them, could not tell which. This had been the case for the entire forty-minute drive. It had not gotten easier.

In the back seat, Dominic Ashford had his phone out and appeared to be reading something. Sebastian Forsythe had his eyes closed, which did not mean he was sleeping - in the two years Marcus Webb had been attending these corporate socials, Sebastian Forsythe's apparent tranquility had never once meant he was not paying attention. He was, Marcus Webb had decided, the most quietly alarming person in the vehicle, which was saying something given that Raymond Thorne was also in the vehicle.

And behind Sebastian, taking up slightly more than her fair share of seat, was Sophie Blackwood.

Sophie was ten years old. She was wearing a blazer that belonged to someone significantly larger than herself, and she had arrived at the car pool with a small notebook and the prepared explanation that her father had updated the evening's itinerary. Alexander Blackwood had, in fact, not updated the evening's itinerary. His senior management team had nonetheless failed to produce effective arguments against Sophie's presence in the vehicle, which was a failure mode that occurred with a regularity that said more about Sophie than about any deficiency in their professional capabilities.

Edwin Mercer, who had been managing the Blackwood household since before Sophie was born and who had therefore developed, over a decade, a finely calibrated sense of impending disaster, sat beside Sophie with the expression of a man who had already calculated his overtime and found the math unsatisfying.

"You're not supposed to be here," Edwin said.

"I'm conducting social observation," Sophie said, without looking up from her notebook. "It's educational."

"Your father-"

"My father is in Singapore. He won't know until Tuesday."

"I will know," Edwin said.

"Edwin," Sophie said pleasantly, "you're going to tell him exactly what you decide to tell him, and we both know how that particular negotiation works, so can we skip to the resolution and enjoy the evening?"