The First Move

"She was writing," Val tells herself afterward-not what she was writing, just that the woman near the fire door had a notebook and wouldn't explain it, and that Val had walked back into the room and hadn't looked back once. She'd done it on purpose. She was already thinking about the first move.

Valentina Cruz has built her life on precision. At thirty-four, she is a razor-sharp civic attorney in Chicago-brilliant in depositions, effortless at fundraisers, master of the calculated gesture th...