“You’re not taking my phone.”
Daniel Vale kept one hand flat over the device on the table as if Julian had already reached for it. He had chosen the booth farthest from the front windows, beneath a framed photograph of the town courthouse from sometime before the elm trees died, and he had spent the first five minutes looking past my shoulder every time the diner door opened. The coffee in front of him had gone untouched. A gray skin had formed across the surface.
Julian sat beside me with Eleanor’s blue notebook closed between his hands. “Nobody has asked to take your phone, Daniel.”
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