Chapter 32 · The Hold That Won't Open

"You're not on it anymore, Mrs. Black." Marsh said it like he was reading a score off a board, flat, bored, already moving past me toward the tunnel gate. "Overtime addendum. Signed twenty minutes ago."

I grabbed the page out of his hand before he cleared the glass.

"Careful," he said. "That's an original."

My eyes went straight to the paragraph I'd read forty times in Doyle's draft last night, the one where some clerk's typo had put my name in the wife appendix, tangled me into the pension trust language so tight that nobody could touch the barn without touching me first. That paragraph was gone. In its place, three clean lines. Non-interested party. Struck from Schedule C. Effective upon the start of any overtime period.

"You can't rewrite a filed instrument mid-game," I said.

"We can rewrite anything before the horn." Marsh finally looked at me, and it wasn't unkind, which was worse. "That's the whole point of doing it now. Two minutes left in regulation. You've got a window, June. Then you don't.