19. Quinn
QUINN
CANINE SOCIAL ENGINEERING
By the fourth week of the Virelli matter, I had learned that legal work was mostly the art of making other people respond to things they were professionally committed to ignoring.
There were exceptions, obviously. Sometimes legal work was research and drafting. Sometimes it was standing beside a copier at eleven-forty p.m., whispering encouragement to a machine that had decided justice would have to wait until someone cleared tray two.
But mostly, it was pursuit.
Letters. Follow-up letters. Emails referencing the letters.
Phone calls referencing the emails referencing the letters.
Calendar holds for meetings nobody had agreed to yet.
Memos explaining why a person’s silence had become legally meaningful.
Entire afternoons spent turning “they refuse to talk to us” into phrasing Helena Wallace could put in front of a judge without sounding like she wanted to bang her head gently against a conference table.
The second museum was worse than Georgiana Sorel’s.
At least Georgiana existed in public and owned working phones.
This one, the Arkley Museum of Olden Folk Decorative Arts, had responded to Payton & Wallace’s demand letters with an aggressive commitment to silence.
Their board chair was unavailable. Their owners were traveling.
Their director, Alistair Fenwick, had received the letters, according to tracking receipts, but hadn’t acknowledged them.
We had entered the grim stage of the case where everyone still used polite language, but the politeness had teeth.
Meanwhile, my life had become so busy, I felt like I was stuck in a blender someone had left running.
I was still fetching coffee. That hadn’t magically stopped because I had written one useful memo and briefly impersonated an auctioneer.
The copier still jammed. Partners still asked for lunch orders, though Rafe had set up a daily food budget for the whole team after discovering, apparently to his genuine horror, that several of us survived on coffee, office mints, and whatever crackers we could scrounge after meetings.
The budget arrived through official channels, described as “client-approved efficiency support,” which was an incredibly Rafe way of saying, Please stop letting my legal team work when they’re starving.
I nearly choked on a forkful of quinoa when Moira mentioned it.
“He discovered we had a workflow inefficiency,” I said.
“He sent grilled chicken and three kinds of dressing.”
“Protein improves productivity.”
“Quinn.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
I still took lunch orders sometimes because interns took lunch orders. I still filed exhibits, labeled binders, and found conference rooms that were mysteriously booked by people who hadn’t entered them since the previous fiscal quarter.
But now, more and more, associates stopped by the intern bullpen and asked, “Quinn, can you look at this wording?” or “Do you remember which case had the museum-access footnote?” or “Can you check whether Fenwick has any shell entities connected to the collection?”
Little things. Nothing glamorous. No one handed me a sword and asked me to slay the doctrine of laches.
But little things was how the work revealed trust. A question here.
A request there. Moira leaning over the cubicle wall to say, “Tell me if this sounds too accusatory,” and actually waiting while I read the paragraph.
It felt wonderful.
I had to keep telling myself not to look too happy about it around the other interns.
They were kind about it, mostly. Competitive, because we were interns.
Interns up for the same two positions. Nadia from Tax congratulated me in the kitchen and then asked, very casually, whether Helena had mentioned anything about full-time offers.
Evan clapped my shoulder and said, “Auction girl,” like it was a compliment, then spent the rest of the day looking as if he had swallowed a stapler.
I understood.
If one of them had suddenly been included in client meetings, I would have smiled and then gone to the bathroom to throw up and calculate my own odds of dying a slow professional death.
We were all trying to build careers in a city that kept raising the price of simply standing still.
So I accepted the small wins carefully. I did the work. I answered the questions. I fetched the coffee without complaint. And through it all, I tried not to think about Rafe.
Obviously, I failed spectacularly on that last point.
Rafe appeared everywhere he had no right to be.
In my inbox, in perfectly composed messages about exhibit language and the demand timeline.
In my apartment, where his coat still hung over my blue chair because I hadn’t figured out the emotionally safe way to return it.
In my memory, above Manhattan, his black-scaled body moved through the sky with impossible grace, and after his hands moved over my arms with heat held carefully back from fire.
He was hot.
Literally.
Figuratively.
In every way possible.
I had a plan for my life. It involved working my ass off, paying down debt, earning my place without anyone deciding I had been carried there by a dragon with excellent shoulders, and providing Max with the kind of retirement package usually reserved for senators and minor European royals.
It didn’t involve getting attached to a man who thought love was something you built your life around.
Two weeks into the Arkley Museum stall-out, Helena called the team into conference room four. Rafe attended by video from his office, appearing on the wall screen in a dark suit and an expression that made everyone sit straighter.
Moira sat beside me with her laptop open. Cressler paced near the window, tie loosened. Helena Wallace stood at the head of the table with the latest non-response packet in front of her.
“We have given Arkley every reasonable opportunity to engage,” Helena said. “They have declined.”
“Declined is generous,” Cressler muttered. “They’ve turned avoidance into an art form.”
Helena looked at him gravely.
He sat down.
“They continue to hold the reliquary comb,” she said. “Our provenance materials are strong. We have evidence of improper acquisition, failure to investigate restitution claims, and refusal to respond to formal demand. At this stage, I recommend filing.”
Rafe’s image on the screen didn’t change, but his attention sharpened. “Litigation?”
“To force contact,” Helena said. “Ideally, the complaint brings them to the table before we spend the next year in discovery. We file, serve, and give them an opportunity to resolve before this becomes more expensive for everyone.”
“That assumes they can be served,” Moira said.
Helena’s mouth tightened.
Ah.
There it was. The problem beneath the problem.
Over the next ten minutes, the team laid it out.
The owners of the museum, a married pair of reclusive Olden Folk collectors with more money than community goodwill, were currently on a long expedition cruise somewhere near Antarctica.
Their registered address led to a management company that insisted it had no authority to accept service.
The museum itself had no clean registered office for service in the jurisdiction we needed.
And the director was always conveniently missing whenever we tried to speak with him.
“He’s a wolf shifter,” Moira said, pulling up his profile. “Hobbyist endurance racer. Road and trail races, obstacle events. If he knows someone is coming, he moves.”
“He can’t outrun the court indefinitely,” Rafe said.
“No,” Helena said. “But he can delay us long enough to significantly delay our timeline.”
Cressler rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s ignored three formal letters, two meeting requests, and every call routed through the museum office. His assistant has started saying he’s ‘between obligations,’ which appears to mean running away from anything with letterhead.”
I looked up from my notes. “Running away metaphorically?”
Moira turned her laptop slightly. “Possibly literally, once he knows we’ve filed. He’s registered for a charity 10K this weekend, a trail race next month, and something called the Hudson Valley Charity Mud Gauntlet, which sounds like a cry for help.”
A few people smiled weakly.
Rafe didn’t.
Helena tapped one finger against the complaint draft. “We need him served.”
Silence settled over the room, and suddenly I heard myself say, “I’ll do it.”
Moira turned to me. “Quinn.”
Helena’s gaze landed on me. “You’re not a process server.”
“No,” I said. “But I know where he’ll be this weekend. Moira just told us.”
I looked down at the race page Moira had pulled up. “It’s public, right?”
Moira glanced at me. “The charity 10K? Yes.”
“Big parking lot?”
“According to the course map, yes.”
“And he’ll be tired afterward.”
Cressler peered at me. “Where are you going with this?”
I turned the idea over once, checking the pieces before I said it out loud. Public event with lots of witnesses. Fenwick exhausted enough to be slower but still alert enough to notice a dog where a dog shouldn’t be.
“What if we don’t approach him like process servers?” I said. “What if he approaches us?”
Moira pressed her lips together.
On the screen, Rafe’s gaze became serious.
Helena didn’t smile. “Serving him in a public parking lot still requires approaching him before he recognizes the attempt.”
“I have an idea.”
“No,” Rafe said.
Every head in the room turned toward the screen.
I lifted my chin. “You haven’t heard it.”
“I have heard enough plans from you to recognize the tone.”
“Just let me finish.”
“Quinn.”
The way he said my name made my skin heat, which was deeply unhelpful in my current setting.
Helena looked between us. I could feel the whole team pretending not to notice the temperature shift.
“What’s the idea?” Helena asked.
I took a breath. “Max.”
Rafe’s face went still.
Moira’s brows rose.