At 6:13 in the morning, my best friend stood barefoot in my kitchen wearing

"Carter," Lily barked into the receiver, her voice snapping back into its crisp, professional cadence with an efficiency that would have been impressive if her cheeks hadn't still been flushed with the heat of my kitchen.

I walked into the living room, leaning against the doorframe, watching her.

She was pacing the small strip of hardwood between my bookshelf and the television, her phone pressed hard against her ear, one hand tucked into the pocket of my oversized gray sweatpants.

"Slow down, Marcus," she said, her eyebrows knitting together. "What do you mean, the records were sealed? The probate court was supposed to release the parcel filings at eight o'clock."

A pause. The tinny, frantic voice of Marcus Vance—her investigative reporting partner at the Dispatch—buzzed through the earpiece.

"No," Lily said, her voice dropping into that cold, predatory tone she used when an alderman tried to dodge a subpoena. "The zoning board can't execute an emergency land transfer without a public forty-eight-hour notice. The statutory deadline was midnight."

She stopped pacing. She looked across the room at me.

Her hazel eyes narrowed, the journalist completely overtaking the woman who had had her legs wrapped around my waist five minutes ago.

"Who signed the waiver?" she asked.

Another pause.

Lily’s jaw tightened until the tendons in her neck looked like bowstrings.

"Thomas Sterling," she said flatly. "Of course he did. Where is the press conference? ... Ten o'clock? Tell the photo desk to meet me at the statehouse in forty-five minutes. I'm on my way."

She hung up without saying goodbye.

She tossed the phone onto the sofa cushion, ran both hands through her tangled chestnut hair, and let out an explosive exhalation that blew her bangs upward.

"Thomas Sterling just filed an emergency redevelopment petition for the Franklinton historic district," she said, looking at me.

The name hit my ears like a cold draft through a broken window.

"The school?" I asked, stepping away from the doorframe.

"The elementary school, the community garden, and the three square blocks of 1880s brick row houses along Broad Street," Lily said, her fingers curling into tight balls. "Sterling’s development group bought the mezzanine debt on the properties three months ago through an offshore shell company in Delaware. They're declaring the structures blighted under an expedited eminent domain statute, tearing them down, and breaking ground on a four-hundred-unit luxury condominium complex by spring."

I walked over to the coffee table, picked up her empty water glass, and set it on the coaster.

"The Westland district board approved the zoning change?"

"Sterling has four members of the city council on his private charity board, Mark," she said, her voice sharp with unvarnished rage. "They held an executive session at six this morning while the city was asleep. They didn't even notify the school board."

She looked down at herself—at my faded sweatpants, my baggy navy hoodie, and her bare, unpainted toes.

"I have forty minutes to get to my apartment, change into a suit, grab my recorder, and get to the statehouse steps before Sterling reads his prepared statement to the press pool."

"Your keys are inside your locked apartment, Lily," I reminded her gently.

She froze.

Her eyes widened, the practical catastrophe of her morning finally catching up to the municipal scandal.

"My keys," she whispered, her hands flying to her temples. "Mia is in Cincinnati until tomorrow night. The super doesn't open the basement office until nine. My laptop is on my kitchen table. My recorder is on my desk. My press pass is on the hall table."

"Breathe," I said.

I took her wrists, pulling her hands away from her head, holding them securely in mine.

"Your press pass is on the hall table. Your spare key is on my keychain by the front door because I’ve carried it for three years. You’re going to take a five-minute shower in my bathroom. You’re going to borrow a clean white dress shirt from my closet, my charcoal wool blazer—which fits you like an oversized boyfriend cut anyway—and your dark trousers from the laundry basket in the hall closet from the weekend you stayed over to work on the tax series."

She stared at me, her chest hitching.

"And your laptop?" she asked.

"I have my school-issued MacBook on my desk," I said, my voice steady as an iron girder. "It has the complete municipal property GIS database bookmarked from my eighth-grade local government curriculum. I have the historical plat maps for Franklinton saved on a hard drive in the study. And I have forty-five minutes before my first period planning bell."

Lily looked down at our joined hands, then up into my eyes.

The anger in her face softened, replaced by a sudden, breathtaking vulnerability that made my pulse jump.

"You're coming with me?" she whispered.

"Lily," I said softly, lifting her hands to my mouth, pressing a firm, deliberate kiss against her cold knuckles.

"I've been with you for four years. Did you really think I was going to let you go to war with Thomas Sterling alone?"

A slow, brilliant, dangerous smile broke across her face—the smile of a woman who had just realized that her partner wasn't just a harbor; he was an army.

"Shower's mine," she said, pulling her hands free, turning on her heel toward the bathroom.

She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder, her hazel eyes dancing with an electric, unyielding fire.

"And Mark?"