Below the Surface E-Book

Patrick Hofstetter

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 230

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Truth is never what it seems. When a body is found on a train arriving in Zurich, Inspector Lea Keller is called to what should have been a routine investigation. But the autopsy reveals something no one expected a second puncture, a dose that could not have been accidental. The deeper Keller looks, the more the case pulls her toward the quiet corridors of a pharmaceutical giant, where silence is policy and compliance is weaponized. A missing researcher. A whistleblower erased. A message from a man already dead. As Keller pieces together the fragments of a buried truth, she is forced to confront not only the system that hides behind legality but her own belief in justice itself. In a world built on reports and signatures, what does it mean to tell the truth and who pays the price for it? Taut, elegant, and psychologically exact, Below the Surface is a literary thriller about the cost of integrity and the thin line between revelation and ruin.

Leseprobe

To Nikita, Kateryna, Liliane

The Discovery

The train slid into Zurich’s main station as if it had forgotten what brakes were for—so gently that the drowsy bodies in the compartments merely nodded forward. A Monday morning, the kind of hour when even the billboards seemed to yawn. The light between the tracks was milky, the platform slick with night rain; somewhere a pipe hissed, somewhere else someone tore open a coffee capsule and cursed under their breath.

In Car Three, Section B, one man remained seated.

He sat by the window, coat neatly buttoned, forehead resting against the glass as though still listening to the last whisper of wind from the journey. The reflection offered him a calm twin: closed eyelid, tranquil cheek, mouth a thin line—someone holding on to a thought before standing up. Around him, the others rose, reached for bags in the overhead racks, smoothed the sleeves of jackets, discovered on their screens red columns of numbers, calendar entries, reminders that read “in fifteen minutes.” The man did not move.

The conductor’s name was Reto Minder, a man of dependable shoes and a pen in his breast pocket that never slipped. The trip had begun on time and ended on time, which already accounted for half the story of a good day. He inspected the compartments with practiced ease—one glance, two motions: a forgotten water bottle, a child’s cap, an umbrella soaking the upholstery darker by the minute.

“Good morning. End of the line,” he said into the empty air, which did not reply. He stopped beside the man’s seat. “Sir, we’ve arrived.” No reaction. He tapped lightly on the backrest— polite, unobtrusive.

The man did not stir. Reto registered this in the patient, pragmatic tone reserved for early mornings. Perhaps headphones. Perhaps truly asleep—the kind of deep, leaden sleep found only on trains. He leaned closer. No headphones. No fog of breath on the glass.

“Excuse me?” he said, touching the shoulder— gently. The shoulder gave way, as though there were only fabric and a hollow space beneath.

Something in Reto tightened—an old, wordless instinct. It was not the stillness that told him, but the silence. The final, conclusive silence. He looked around. The carriage was empty save for paper cups, the remnants of the commuter theatre. From the next compartment came the sounds of cleaning—metal clanging softly against bucket.

Reto inhaled, counted to three in his head, pressed the emergency button on his radio, and reported, in a voice that sounded professional, what his hands already knew.

The railway police arrived first—two uniforms whose steps carried a different weight. They waited for the medics the way one waits for a sentence one knows will never be written. The emergency doctor, a woman whose sleep seemed a long-abandoned contract, placed her fingers on the man’s neck, then his wrists, then lifted the eyelids whose chill she did not comment on. She did the things one does. And then she did the things one does when it is too late: noting the time, closing the mouth, straightening the coat. Death, in that moment, received an entry—and entries make things real.

“Probably cardiac arrest,” said one of the officers, a young man whose hip had not yet learned the natural weight of his sidearm. “It happens.”

“It happens,” the doctor echoed—neither agreeing nor disputing, as if the word were an object to be held, its weight to be measured.

She recorded the man’s approximate age—mid-forties, well-groomed, wedding ring left hand.

No visible injuries. The skin of his hands a shade too grey for the hour. Reto looked down at his reliable shoes, now useless against this kind of disorder.

They found his ID in his wallet, bank cards, photographs. In one, the embrace of a girl with braids and a missing tooth. In another, a summer lake too crowded to be idyllic, and a man striving to look happy for the camera. The name neatly printed, an address in a Zurich district known for strollers on weekdays and organic markets on Saturdays.

“We’ll notify the family,” said the older officer— one who had stood in enough kitchens to know there is no right way to deliver the wrong news.

He asked Reto for a private room. Reto led them to a sterile corner of the service level that smelled of cleaning fluid. A neon light hummed overhead. The doctor wrote in silence.

The wife answered on the first ring. Her voice was composed; she said her name with the clarity of someone accustomed to systems— doctor’s appointments, parent-teacher meetings, insurance claims. When the officer identified himself, there was a pause so brief one might have missed it, had one not been listening for it. He asked her to come, spoke of a medical situation, the station, a private room. He avoided the word death as if it were burning metal.

She arrived wearing a coat too light for the rain and a hairstyle that betrayed the morning battles of a mother. Her hands gripped her handbag as if it contained something that must not fall. When she entered and saw the doctor, she understood—in that way for which there are no words. The first sound she made was not a sound at all: just air leaving a body without knowing why. Then came words, too many—No, How, But he was just, Last night, He’s so… She wept, then stopped, so abruptly it felt like a cut.

She sat, rose, walked to the wall as though to orient herself against something solid, then returned to the chair that offered her nothing but existence. When asked about pre-existing conditions, she shook her head too fast. “He’s healthy. He was healthy. Commutes, works, jogs on Sundays.” She smiled briefly—terribly misplaced—a reflex saying: I’m polite. I’m functioning.

“Had he been… under stress?” the younger officer asked—the kind of question that sounds like a bandage. She nodded. “Like everyone. A project that mattered to him. But he—” She stopped. “He’s reliable.” The word lingered like a photograph no one wants to take down.

Formalities framed the next minutes: signatures, statements, phone numbers. The doctor spoke softly about the need for an examination—a “standard procedure,” she said, and the word standard sounded like a storm being folded into a drawer. The wife nodded. Her hands still clutched the bag, knuckles white. As she left, she paused at the doorframe. “I have to get the children,” she whispered—and in that sentence lived an entire world about to lose its structure.

The body was prepared—discreetly, methodically. A grey blanket, a stretcher rolling more quietly than its wheels promised. Outside, the station breathed in its own rhythm: trains arriving and departing, announcements slicing the air into segments. From the tracks drifted a damp chill, wandering into the corridors.

At the Institute of Forensic Medicine, it did not smell as laymen imagine—not of chemicals, not of blood. It smelled of sterility and paper, of protocols sleeping in cabinets. Dr. Jan Gertsch, a man whose calm was not frozen but deliberate, received the body with the quiet respect he reserved for silent work. He listened to the report—the location, the time, the first observations.

“Cardiac arrest?” asked the officer.

“Cardiac arrest is where many things end,” Gertsch replied—not arrogant, only precise.

“We’ll see.”

The preparation was routine: documentation, photographs, closing the chain of custody. The body lay on stainless steel like a sentence waiting for its period. Gertsch moved the arms, examined hands, nails, skin. He noted the worn mark beneath the wedding band, the faint pressure trace on the bridge of the nose— perhaps from glasses not worn that day. No signs of asphyxiation, no bruises that told stories. He let the light fall frontal, then oblique.

Oblique light is merciless—it reveals what resists being seen.

“Strange,” he murmured, and the assistant looked up. Gertsch ran his fingertips along the left shoulder, just below the collarbone. There was an irregularity—barely more than the shadow of a mosquito on summer skin. A tiny dot, so inconspicuous it offended the eye that expected spectacle.

“What is it?” asked the assistant.

Gertsch took up a magnifying glass—not theatrically, but from habit. The spot showed a faint discoloration at its edge, not blue, not red—more a pale yellow, the kind that arises when skin reacts to something foreign. He pressed lightly—not enough to disturb, just enough for the surface to answer.

“An injection site,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Minuscule. Very clean.”

The assistant brought the camera closer. The shutter clicked like a verdict.

Outside, another train drew through the morning, its chain of carriages laying a ribbon of sound over the roofs. Inside, silence. Gertsch straightened, looking down at the man who seemed as though he might awaken to the sound of a loved one speaking his name. “Not a natural death,” he said softly—and his tone was that of a door closing so another might open.

Later, once the samples were sealed and labeled, the officer called back to the station.

Reto was standing at a vending machine, holding a Styrofoam cup that tasted faintly of burnt caramel. The phone buzzed in his pocket. “Yes?” he said.

“We need everything,” the voice said. “Every detail. He’d been dead for hours.”

And in the forensic lab, beneath a light that knew no mercy, a camera recorded the smallest story a piece of skin can tell: the tiniest puncture on a shoulder.

The First Autopsy

The Institute of Forensic Medicine stood apart from the city center—a utilitarian structure of concrete and glass whose façade was so austere it seemed to suppress emotion itself. No prominent sign, only a number by the door, a discreet bell, and beyond it sterile corridors.

Nothing here was meant for public view—here, things were dissected, catalogued, and recorded.

Truth, reduced to tables and tissue samples.

Dr. Jan Gertsch entered the autopsy room as one might enter a church. He spoke rarely during his work. He needed no music, no unnecessary words. His assistant, Marlen, knew his gestures so well by now that she handed him instruments before he even lifted a hand. The sounds of the room formed a kind of heartbeat: the steady hum of the fluorescent lights, the quiet clicking of tools on stainless steel, the scratch of a pen against paper.

The dead man lay on the table, covered by a sheet stretched across his chest and shoulders.

Nothing about him seemed unusual. A man like so many others: well-kept face, hands that spoke of office work, no rough scars, no visible wounds. Someone who, but for this morning, would have ridden the commuter train home as always.

“We begin at 09:47,” said Gertsch, and Marlen noted it down with the practiced coolness of documentation.

The sheet was drawn back. The man’s skin was pale but unblemished. No drama, no marks of struggle. To a layman it might have looked the picture of a peaceful death. But Gertsch knew: silence deceives.

He began systematically—eyes, mouth, throat, chest—each region a chapter to be read. He opened, measured, weighed, described.

Heart: smooth, healthy, no enlargement, no degeneration.

Lungs: free of water, free of foreign matter.

Blood vessels: remarkably clear.

For a moment, the suspicion flickered that the death might after all be “natural”—a sudden failure, without warning. But then he remembered the puncture.

“Back to the shoulder,” he murmured, lifting the skin gently with a pair of tweezers. A tiny mark, nearly invisible, like a mosquito bite. But Gertsch was not a man who trusted mosquitoes.

“What do you think?” asked Marlen, her brow creased.

“A puncture,” he said quietly. “Very clean.

Almost professional.”

He took tissue samples, sealed them, and sent them to the lab. Minutes stretched into hours as the machines went about their work—humming, flashing, analyzing. Gertsch waited, hands clasped, as if in prayer.

Then came the first readings: unusual traces, barely measurable, yet there. Not morphine. Not insulin. Not any of the classic poisons every pathologist knows. Something complex.

Something that did not belong to any medical textbook.

“Damn elegant,” he murmured, almost grudging in his admiration. “This isn’t some street drug.

This is high-tech.”

Marlen blinked. “High-tech?”

“A substance you can’t buy,” he said.

“Something born only in laboratories closed to the rest of the world.” He looked up, his voice sharpening. “This was murder. And it was planned.”

The door opened with a soft sound that struck the room like thunder. A woman entered, her coat still damp from the rain, her movements deliberate. She did not introduce herself with a handshake—only a curt nod.

“Inspector Keller,” she said crisply. “I’ll be taking over.”

Gertsch knew her reputation—relentless, precise, feared for the patience with which she dismantled contradictions. She stepped closer, taking in the body, the puncture, the instruments. No trace of disgust—only that concentrated gaze that seemed to see everything through a magnifying lens.

“Your findings?”

“No cardiac arrest. No accident. He was poisoned—with a substance that only someone from advanced research could acquire.”

A brief silence. Then Keller nodded.

“So, not chance. Not robbery. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”

Her eyes travelled over the body, over the orderliness that surrounded him. She did not see a corpse; she saw a riddle.

“Then,” she said softly, “we have a murder. And not just any murder.”

And in that moment, the death of an unremarkable commuter father acquired a new weight—not a stroke of fate, but a calculated act in a game far larger than anyone in that room.

Old Shadows

The archives of the police headquarters lay in the basement, a place that smelled more of forgetting than of preservation. Keller moved through the narrow aisles, the walls lined with metal shelves filled with file folders. The fluorescent lights above flickered, as though reluctant to cast light once more on the stories imprisoned here in yellowed paper.

The personnel file of Markus Meier was thicker than expected. Keller sat at one of the bare tables, its surface scarred with the grooves of decades, and opened the grey binder. Among the usual documents—résumé, evaluations, medical records—she found reports older than anything she had previously known about the man.

Nearly ten years earlier there had been an incident: a laboratory accident, noted dryly as an “unresolved irregularity during a testing phase.”

A patient had disappeared; officially, it was called a “contract termination.” But the phrasing was off, as though written by a hand too eager to sound harmless. And there it was—Meier’s signature beneath the safety protocols. With his name he had certified that there had been no irregularities.

Keller leaned closer, her brow furrowing. A handwritten note was scrawled in the margin: “Suspicion of cover-up. Further investigation not possible.” The handwriting was rushed, barely legible, as if someone had forced a last thought onto paper before the file vanished into oblivion.

She turned the next page—and felt her heart skip. On the back of a form, a Post-it clung.

Unlike the yellowed sheets, this paper was new, glaringly bright, the writing black and unmistakable:

“Don’t ask further.”

Keller tore her gaze away from the note and looked around. The room was empty—only the hum of the lamps above her. Yet the thought refused to leave her: someone had opened this file recently. Someone who knew she would come here.

She closed the binder slowly, almost reverently, as if holding evidence that outweighed every other clue so far. The dead man who had seemed so peaceful on the train was no blank slate. Old shadows trailed him, and perhaps his final morning in Zurich was merely the end of a story that had begun long ago.

The Perfect Facade

The house stood in a quiet suburb—rows of identical homes bordered by neat hedges, children’s bicycles on the driveways, the scent of freshly cut grass lingering though autumn had already arrived. Inspector Keller parked a little way down the street, as if giving the building time to prepare for her visit.

She sat for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, head bowed slightly. In the windows the pale morning reflected—a hesitant sun, unsure whether to offer warmth or merely decorative light. When she stepped out, a dog barked somewhere, then fell silent. Gravel crunched beneath her shoes. She rang the bell and heard hurried movements inside, the frantic attempt to assemble order.

The wife opened. Julia. Her face was drawn, but her lips still carried traces of lipstick—a gesture not meant for visitors but for her own reflection.

She gripped the doorframe, as if to steady herself.

“Mrs. Meier?” Keller asked quietly.

Julia nodded, and a moment later they stood in the living room. It was the kind of room seen in catalogues: light curtains, a white sofa, framed photographs on a shelf. Everywhere, pictures— family holidays, children with ice cream, a man in a suit lifting his daughter into the air. Scenes so perfect they almost looked staged.

“Please, sit down,” said Julia. Her voice was brittle but controlled. She brought coffee, set down two cups—no sugar, no milk—as if she had preserved the ritual though the meaning behind it had long dissolved.

Keller let her eyes wander. On a side table lay a stack of magazines: Parenting, Architecture, a business journal. Nothing that hinted at crisis.

The children’s drawings on the fridge showed sun, house, family.

“Your children?” Keller asked, to fill the silence.

“At school,” said Julia. “I wanted their day to be as normal as possible.” Her hands clutched the cup without drinking.

“Your husband—how would you describe him?”

Julia lifted her head, and for a moment pride flickered in her eyes. “Reliable. Loving. Always there for the children. He did everything for us.”

Then her expression crumbled, and she looked away. “He was…” She searched for a word, found none, sipped her coffee as if buying time.

“Any tension lately?” Keller’s tone was neutral, almost gentle.

Julia shook her head. “Like any marriage. But nothing… nothing serious.”

A pause. Keller noted the faint twitch in Julia’s face—the telltale sign that the words had come a fraction too quickly.

Then the neighbor appeared uninvited. A woman in her fifties, who had been working in the front garden and noticed the police visit, leaned over the fence, voice lowered in conspiratorial confidence.

“They were a lovely couple, truly. But… you could often hear them arguing. In the evenings.

When the windows were open.”

Julia froze, hearing every word. “Those were… trivial things,” she said sharply—too sharply.

“That’s normal.”

Keller didn’t write anything down, but she stored it. Her eyes stayed on Julia, whose hands now gripped the cup tighter, as if she might shatter it.

Later, as Keller entered the study—a narrow room, orderly, with bookshelves and a desk laid out in perfect precision—her gaze caught a small gap beneath a drawer. She knelt, felt along the edge. With a soft click, a panel came loose.

Behind it: several USB drives, carefully sealed in an envelope.

She held them up to the light, turning them between her fingers. No names. No markings.

Only the sense that these small devices carried more weight than any family photograph on the wall.

Julia stood in the doorway, paling as she saw the discovery.

“What… what is that?” she whispered.

Keller looked at her for a long moment, then slipped the drives into a plastic evidence bag and sealed it.

“Something,” she said finally, “that may tell us why your husband is dead.”

The words hung in the air like smoke that refused to clear.

And in that moment, the picture of the perfect family man began to crack—cracks that could lead straight into the abyss.

The Children’s Whisper

It was late afternoon when Keller returned to the row house. Julia was not at home; a neighbor had watched the children for a few hours while their mother ran errands. Keller took the opportunity to speak with the children—alone, without the controlling presence of adults.

Toys lay scattered across the living room: Lego bricks, an open children’s Bible, a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece. Two small figures sat on the carpet—the daughter with braids and a gap-toothed smile, the son a year younger, shy but alert. They looked at Keller with wide eyes that seemed to ask: What do you want from us that we haven’t already lost?

“I know this is hard,” Keller began softly, almost like a teacher trying to earn trust. “But I need your help—so we can understand what happened to your dad.”

The girl nodded solemnly, as if determined to be grown-up. The boy edged closer to his sister and took her hand.

“Tell me about the evening before he left,” Keller said.

“We had dinner,” the girl began. “Spaghetti. Dad laughed, but only for a moment. After that… Mom and Dad argued.”

“About what?” Keller asked gently.

The girl shrugged. “About… something important. We weren’t allowed to listen. But they were loud.”

The boy suddenly looked up. “Dad was sad,” he said. His voice was fragile, yet sure. “He tucked us in. He kissed us.”

“And what did he say?”

The child thought, furrowing his brow as if remembering a secret. “He said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

A chill crept along Keller’s neck. Don’t be afraid—a sentence that sounded like a farewell, a last attempt to bestow safety while he himself already knew he was in danger.

“Was he afraid?” Keller asked carefully.

The daughter nodded slowly. “Yes. But not of Mom.”

The words hung in the air like an invisible weight.

Keller held her breath. She couldn’t read too much into it, couldn’t steer the children. And yet that simple, childlike sentence was stronger than any piece of evidence.

“Afraid of what, then?” she asked quietly.

The girl stared at the Lego bricks turning nervously in her hands. Then she whispered, hardly audible: “Of his work.”

The boy nodded gravely, as if confirming something they had both known for a long time.

Keller sat in silence for a moment. She heard only the ticking clock and the rustle of small hands among the toys. In that quiet living room, with its bright pictures and harmless puzzles, she had heard a truth heavier than any file in police headquarters.

When Julia returned later, Keller said nothing about what the children had told her. But as she walked to her car, she knew: the web was widening—and it led not only into the marriage, but deep into the company’s shadows.

Double Game The USB sticks lay on the desk of the forensic tech lab like small, unassuming witnesses. Black plastic, scuffed, anonymous. But Keller knew: sometimes a few grams of plastic outweigh any weapon.

The specialist—a young IT forensic analyst with crooked glasses and a coffee stain on his shirt— plugged in the first stick. The screen woke, and rows of folders appeared, soberly labeled yet coldly suspicious: Project AURORA, Clinical Data, Protocol—Confidential.

“He didn’t just happen to bring this home,” Keller murmured.

The analyst clicked through spreadsheets, PDFs, encrypted files. “These are research records… highly sensitive. Medications still officially in the trial phase. Cancer studies, as far as I can tell.

Whoever copied this had their hands deep in the company’s servers.”

Graphs flickered on the screen, bar charts, notes. Alongside the numbers stood comments—marginalia, doubts about the official results. “Data incomplete.” — “Side effects downplayed.” — “Patient logs falsified?”

“He collected evidence,” Keller said, leaning forward. “Against his own company.”

“Or for a competitor,” the analyst countered.

“Depends how you read it.”

They fell silent. Only the low hum of the drives filled the room. On one stick they found emails—internal correspondence between the victim and his superior. No explicit threats, but an undertone of mistrust. Phrases like: “Please adhere to the agreed boundaries.” Or: “We must remain loyal, otherwise everything is at risk.”

Keller felt the puzzle shift. Until now, the man had been a tragic victim; now much suggested that he himself had been playing a game—and a dangerous one.

Later, back at the office, she reviewed the files again. She opened Project AURORA: a paper on a novel cancer drug. Initial results promising— almost too good to be true. But between the lines: manipulation. Trials terminated with no reasons given. Numbers that looked a shade too neat.

And then a handwritten note, scanned: “If this gets out, everything collapses.”

Keller stared at the words as if listening to a voice from the grave.

That night she couldn’t sleep. Images from the autopsy room—the tiny puncture, the cold skin—mixed with the new findings. Was the man a whistleblower set on bringing the truth to light? Or a traitor throwing himself into the arms of a rival?

She thought of Julia, the wife, and her controlled facade. Did she know about the sticks? Was she part of it? Or merely another person in a game larger than her marriage?

The next morning the analyst called. His voice was electric. “I’ve got more. Internal emails. The victim’s superior—there was more than a difference of opinion. Hints of threats. Subtle but unmistakable: ‘If you keep pursuing this, you’ll have a problem.’” Keller closed her eyes. Each new lead made the case bigger, not smaller.

She hung up, stood at the office window, and looked out at the city. People went about their lives, unaware, while a truth simmered in the background—one that could destroy careers, companies, perhaps lives.

Then she picked up the phone and dialed the company where the victim had worked. She requested a meeting—with the superior.

She did not yet know that the man she was about to speak to had calculated this murder like a chess move.

The Mole

That morning, the corporation’s corridors looked like tidied-up alibis. Glass walls behind which bodies moved without leaving traces; carpets that swallowed every footfall; murmured conversations disciplined by rules. Keller checked in at reception and received a visitor’s badge that gleamed so sterilely it felt less like plastic than like a permit to enter reality. A young assistant guided her through gates and turnstiles, his smile so correct it made one forget how insincere it was.

The room where she waited for Mr. Schneider was a “project office”: a table too large for confidentiality, a wall crowded with whiteboard scrawls in colors that performed enthusiasm.

Three chairs, a carafe of water, two glasses. The window looked onto a courtyard where trees were planted in perfect symmetry—even nature seemed synthetic here.

Schneider arrived on time. Slim, early thirties, skin unacquainted with daylight. The tie looked like something he had carefully practiced. He shook her hand, sat down, and placed the company laptop at a precise right angle to the table edge. His eyes kept seeking a fixed point— the table’s edge, a marker pen, the clock— anything but Keller’s gaze.

“Thank you for making time,” she said.

“Of course.” He smiled briefly. “I’ll help however I can.”

“You knew Mr. Meier well?”

“We… worked in adjacent teams.” He cleared his throat. “Security and preclinical analysis overlap often.”

Keller nodded. “I’m told he asked a lot of questions.”

“He was conscientious.” The word fell too quickly. “Very exact.”

“Exact enough to be unpopular?”

A barely noticeable twitch around his mouth.

“Unpopular is a strong word.”

“What word would you choose?”

Schneider looked at his hands. “He was… demanding. In a company like ours, comments mean delays. And delays are… expensive.” The pause that followed was calculated, though not rehearsed. “That doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

“Was he wrong?”

Another pause, longer this time. “Sometimes being right isn’t helpful.”

Keller let it stand. Condensation formed at the edges of his words—something unsaid that refused to evaporate. She asked about procedures, access, keycard logs. Schneider answered with precision, as if reading an instruction manual from the inside. He knew numbers, time windows, room names. He knew them too well.

“You’re very well informed,” Keller observed.

“It’s my job to know things.” Again that smile, too smooth for his skin.

“Then you surely know who, outside the core team, had access to the prototype compound.”

“Access is segmented.” He lowered his voice as if reciting a prayer. “Four in the core team, two in quality assurance, one in security.”

“And who in security?” Keller asked.

The tiniest delay—half a second at most, but obvious to someone trained to hear pauses. “Mr.

Meier.”

“Only Mr. Meier?”

“Officially.”

Keller leaned back. Officially.