Epigraph
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth,
Act V, Scene V, lines 18-25.Chapter 1
Monday
Sasha saw the punch coming. The fist was headed straight for her right cheekbone. She bent her knees to duck, weave to the side, and then bob back up. Clean and easy. At least it should have been. But she misjudged her timing, and the blow caught her on the side of her head between her pterion and her ear. Pain radiated along her skull as her head snapped back.
Sloppy. Sloppy and slow, she berated herself. Then she shoved the self-criticism aside. There’d be a time to critique her performance. The middle of a fight was not that time.
She wiped the sweat from her eyes and pummeled her attacker’s solar plexus. Left, right, left. The flurry of gut punches was met with a deep, low grunt from her adversary. She bounced lightly on her feet, anticipating his next move. Then, just as he was feinting to the left—a clear indication he was going to come at her from the right—the alarm on his mobile phone sounded.
Daniel stopped mid-swing and silenced the alarm. Then he held out his fist; she bumped it lightly with her own.
“That was a good session,” he panted, bracing his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.
“Mmm. That’s not true, and you know it.”
He gave her a look then jerked his head toward his office. “Water?”
“Sure.”
He loped across the room and retrieved two ice-cold stainless steel bottles from the mini-fridge shoved beneath his desk. He tossed one over the half-wall that separated his small workspace from the Krav Maga studio, and she snagged it with her left hand.
She twisted off the cap and took a long drink.
“You might be a little off your usual speed,” he allowed. “Something going on?”
“My reflexes are crap.”
“You can’t run on empty forever, Sasha. Eventually fatigue will catch up with you.”
She gave her hand-to-hand combat instructor a long, level look. “I think it finally has.”
He frowned but said nothing. He didn’t need to. She already knew she was violating one of her personal rules: Eat when you have the opportunity; sleep when you can. A nourished, rested brain and body were weapons. But despite her best efforts, she couldn’t seem to get adequate rest. Her metaphorical plate was so full it was piled higher than a towering Thanksgiving dinner platter.
* * *
Across town, Leo Connelly rubbed the dried rheum from his eyes and reread the text that had torn him from his sleep:
Check your email. We have a mtg at FISC tmrw.
Finally. After months of agitating for a meeting to get clarity about their role, it appeared he and Hank had broken through the bureaucratic wall of inaction that had been blocking them from doing the job they’d been hired to do.
He thumbed out an upbeat response to Hank and caught himself whistling as he rolled out of bed and padded barefoot into the bathroom to start his day. Leo drew energy from his work, and the long months of being chained to a desk had begun to wear on him.
But no more, he told himself, as he brushed his teeth. The calculated risk he and Hank had taken had paid off. He cupped his hands under the faucet, rinsed his mouth with cold water, and smiled at his reflection.Chapter 2
Sasha took her last greedy swallow of cold water and handed the metal bottle back across the half-wall to her instructor.
“Thanks for the water. I have to run so I can have breakfast with Leo and the kids before I head into the office.”
Daniel held up a hand. “Hey, before you leave, could you take a quick look at something for me?”
She resisted the urge to check the time. “Sure.”
He handed her a folder before vaulting over the waist-high wall and landing next to her with the grace of a cat.
She flipped the folder open and scanned the document inside. It was a legal pleading. “You’ve been named in a federal complaint?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I mean, yes. But my dad said it’s a BS complaint.”
Daniel’s dad, Larry Steinfeld, had been a lion of the criminal defense bar for decades. When he finally quit practicing, the district attorney’s office had been so relieved they’d thrown a huge party for him at the Grant Street Tavern. The place had been packed wall to wall with prosecutors toasting to his retirement.
“If your dad says it’s BS, it’s BS.” She flipped the folder closed and extended it toward him.
He shook his head and didn’t take the file.
“I believe him, but I need somebody to represent me. I tried to talk him into coming out of retirement and handling it. He laughed me out of the room.” He gave her a hopeful smile and waited.
She suppressed a groan. She absolutely did not have time to take this on. But Daniel wasn’t just her Krav Maga instructor. He was a friend—a close one.
“Sure, of course.”
“I’ll pay your usual rate.”
“Why don’t you pay me with extra private lessons instead? I clearly need them.”
“You’ve got a deal,” he said.
“I’ll look at this later today. Can you give me the short version?”
“Over the summer, I got a call from a guy named John Boone. He wanted me to run a weekend-long Krav Maga boot camp for him and some of his buddies.”
“Is that something you do?”
Daniel shook his head vigorously. “No. I declined at first, but Boone was persistent. He said to name my price—money wasn’t an object. It was clear he’d find somebody else if I turned him down. So, I figured, why not? I could make a nice chunk of change, and he wouldn’t end up with some clown who would teach him and his friends poor form and get them all hurt.”
He paused and eyed her.
She nodded her understanding. “Makes sense.”
She knew as well as he did that most people holding themselves out as experts weren’t actually trained in the self-defense system. Daniel, like his father before him, had trained directly with the Israeli Army. He was one of the best of the best.
“I sent over a basic contract. I charged him five grand for the weekend. That seemed fair for twenty to thirty people, all day for two full days.”
She had no frame of reference, so she shrugged. “Sure.”
“He said that was fine, signed the contract, and we moved forward. I showed up and did my thing. They seemed engaged, happy to be there.”
“Who were they—the students?”
“I thought they were just his buddies. Typical middle-aged guys, mostly mildly out of shape. Weekend warriors. No women.”
She pulled a face at that. Then she wrinkled her brow as his words sunk in fully. “You thought they were. Does that mean they weren’t?”
“Turns out that’s exactly what it means. But I didn’t know it at the time. We’ll get there.”
If nothing else, he’d piqued her curiosity. “Okay, so what happened?”
“What happened was he didn’t pay me. When I was getting ready to leave, he asked me to come into his home office so we could settle up. I told him there was no need, that I’d send him an invoice. He could just send me a check or call and give me a credit card number over the phone. He insisted he wanted to pay me right then. That was fine by me if that’s what he really wanted to do. I said sure, I’ll take your money now. Except it wasn’t money.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t money?”
“He tried to give me some kind of fake check. He called it a negotiable redemption note.”
“A negotiable redemption note?”
“Yeah. Ever hear of one?”
She laughed softly. “No. It sounds like U.C.C. word salad.”
“Funny you should say that. When I said I only take U.S. currency, he told me this thing was a valid instrument under the U.C.C. What even is that?”
“The U.C.C. is the Universal Commercial Code. And, while it’s been a long time since I studied it in law school, I assure you there’s no such thing as a negotiable redemption note.”
“Right. And then it got weird. He started spouting how U.S. currency wasn’t even real because it’s not backed by the gold standard and—”
She groaned. “You’re dealing with a sovereign citizen.”
“The newest iteration,” he told her with a heavy sigh. “They call themselves Citizens to End Oppression. They have this whole thing about maritime law somehow meaning they don’t need driver’s licenses. I looked it up later. But at the time, I didn’t know any of this. I threw his monopoly money back on his desk and left.”
“You just left?”
He gave her a steady look. “What does my dad always say?”
“The surest way to win a fight is to walk away from it,” she parroted dutifully.
“There were thirty of them and one of me. It didn’t make sense to escalate. A few weeks later, when I was doing my bills for the month, I sent him an invoice. He sent me back the pretend note. I mailed it back to him, then called to offer him a discount. You know, some money’s better than no money. He wouldn’t take my calls or return my calls. I sent him two past due invoices thirty days apart. By then he was ninety days overdue, and it started to piss me off. I worked hard that weekend. I sent him a certified letter notifying him that if I didn’t get paid by the end of the month, I’d file in small claims court.”
“Let me guess, he sent you the negotiable redemption note and then used that as his defense to your filing?”
“You’re partially right. He sent me back the note but didn’t bother to answer the complaint. So I got a default judgment. I don’t know how I’m supposed to collect on it, but I have it. Then I got served with this federal complaint last week. I can’t even make heads or tails of it. Neither could my dad, not really.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sasha said. “Most people who represent themselves will likely make a mess of it. But these sovereign citizen arguments are next-level tortured logic.”
“Oh, he has an attorney, but the complaint is definitely gibberish.”
“He does?”
She’d assumed Boone would have filed pro se. Who would represent someone who didn’t deal in U.S. currency? She flipped to the end of the document and scanned the signature block. Gray Simmons.
“Never heard of him,” she said.
“Neither has my dad. He looked him up and said he practices out of a firm in Peters Township, in McMurray. Boone’s compound is near there.”
“Compound?” She didn’t like the sound of that.
“He has a big rural property. It’s not really a farm, it’s more of a compound than anything.”
“Okay, I really do have to run. But I’ll call you tomorrow with a plan. I’ll get this complaint dismissed, Daniel. Don’t worry about it.”
“I appreciate it. I should’ve just written off the money. I knew I’d never collect, but it was the principle of the thing.”
“You did the right thing. You provided him a service and your expertise, and he’s going to pay you for it—with real money.”
“I owe you one.”
“And I’ll collect in the form of private sessions.”
“Great. That’s a win-win. Why don’t we also get together with our better halves for dinner one night soon?”
“Definitely,” she said.
“We’ll host. You can even bring the rug rats. Chris will make them his famous homemade flatbread pizza.”
She almost said yes. Then, the image of Daniel and Chris’s immaculate all-white and glass apartment popped into her head. Instantly, the image dissolved, replaced by one where the couch was sticky, the carpet was stained, and every glass surface was smudged with small, greasy fingerprints.
“How about we do it at our place?” she said.
“Okay, I’ll talk to Chris and get some dates. We’ll still bring the flatbread.”
“Perfect.” Chris’s creation was somehow both airy and light and chewy and satisfying at the same time. She assumed magic was involved.
“Will I see you tomorrow morning? We could spar before my six o’clock class.”
She slung her bag across her chest and hesitated at the door. The correct answer was yes, of course. Instead, she said, “I don’t know. I might sleep in.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “Prioritize rest. Just don’t make it a habit to skip your workout. You have to stay sharp. You should know that better than anyone.”
She gave him a look over her shoulder. “I’m out of that business, Daniel. I haven’t gotten into trouble in almost a year.
She pulled her softest warm fleece—the light blue one that made her feel like she was wearing a cloud—over her head, opened the door, and left.
“Now you’ve jinxed it,” he shouted after her, his laughter following her down the stairs.
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