Morgan had considered buying a sensible sedan instead of the McLaren. She already owned one, a silver Lexus that took her to the grocery store and spent most weekdays in the garage. The Senna was a promise to herself that she would occasionally enjoy something without needing to justify it as useful, respectable, or modest. She had worked too many cases involving lives made smaller by other people's cruelty to believe pleasure should always require an apology.
A young valet watched from the lobby doors while she loaded her suitcase. Morgan nodded to him, checked the latch on the small luggage compartment, and lowered herself into the cockpit with a practiced movement. The engine started with a mechanical growl that bounced between the hotel's concrete walls. By the time she pulled out, the valet had already turned toward another guest, and the car was simply an automobile in traffic.
She joined Interstate 85 northbound with a full fuel tank, bottled water, and a jazz playlist she had been assembling since college. Miles Davis filled the cabin while Charlotte fell away behind her. The air-conditioning worked hard against the August sun, and miles of trees and commercial exits slid by in alternating stretches of shadow and glare. She set the cruise control a little below the posted limit and settled into a rhythm that made driving feel like a kind of temporary solitude.
At first, nothing unusual happened. Trucks passed her, an impatient SUV changed lanes twice without making progress, and a family in a minivan slowed long enough for two children to stare at the McLaren through tinted glass. Morgan ignored the attention and thought about the notes she still needed to organize before returning to the office. She had promised herself that she would not turn the drive into another workday, but promises about work were the ones she had the most trouble keeping.
She stopped at a service station for water and a sandwich, carefully parking at the end of the lot where she could see the car from the window. A man at the next table asked what kind of machine it was, and she spent five pleasant minutes discussing aerodynamics with him. He admired the car without demanding an explanation for why she owned it. She thought afterward how ordinary the encounter had felt, and how rarely she bothered to notice that kind of ordinary kindness.
Across the Virginia line, the landscape opened into broad bands of green interrupted by low commercial buildings and farm access roads. Morgan passed a sign for a rest area and checked the time. She would reach the Richmond area by afternoon, then continue north toward Arlington if she felt alert enough. Nothing about the day suggested it would become an investigation, a national argument, and the memory she would revisit whenever the sound of breaking glass startled her.