The walls of the county-owned building were thick-ten, twelve inches of concrete block and stucco encasing her. She stared through the bars at a wide-open, sunny sky. It stretched outside the glass in all directions like the promise of safe flight and easy breathing. She turned her eyes to the layers of institutional gray paint and attempted an easy breath, but it came out hard. Before being sentenced to this singular hellhole, she'd never seen sky like that: flat and unnervingly blue. Everywhere. It hung over her head, never more than two stories above street level.

Like many prisoners, she marked time served against a sentence with no release date, no parole hearing. She fell into the routine easily enough, up at six, shower, work, to bed at ten. They advised her not to wait. Build a new life for yourself, they said. You may not be able to go back to your old one. But she liked the life she'd had. It was almost exactly what she wanted. Although her modest trust fund had been depleted by law school, she'd managed to buy and furnish a beautiful apartment, a safe and warm crag in the harsh rocks of the city. She held the same arrogant belief that New York was the center of civilization, the only city worth living in, that all New Yorkers shared. And it was her city. Maybe the longed-for promotion to Major Cases hadn't come when she expected, but it had certainly been on its way. She resented trading away her ambition and achievement for another breath.

Build a new life for yourself. She dismissed this idea out of hand. How could she build a new life here, the middle of a picturesque nowhere, at a steady but menial job, with people too polite to trust? No, she'd thought, I'll wait. And her resolve never wavered but once. In the local library on another sunny Saturday, she saw a lean, athletic woman with short dark hair. Alex pulled a book from a shelf, holding it mid-air. The woman met her gaze and smiled, and her resolution waffled.

Alex refused to think of her as a substitute. You substitute ingredients for a meal you intend to finish, and Alex wasn't ready to finish this. You substitute one ingredient for an ingredient you're missing, and Alex wasn't willing to admit that she missed Olivia. Alex had broken it off with her weeks before the Sandoval case. Still, Alex found doing time was easier if she were also doing a librarian.

Standing at her desk in the gray county building, Alex put the phone back to her ear. "What? Could you repeat that?"

"It's safe. You can go back to New York now. If you still want to."

XXXX

She took off Sonia's white cross-trainers and socks and tucked them under the bed. The pink t-shirt, which Alex despised almost as much as she now despised Sonia herself, and the blue jeans were removed, folded neatly and tossed in a corner. Forty-six hours elapsed from phone call to flight, and Alex felt both rushed and impatient as she began dressing herself. The checked-off bullet items of her action plan flashed efficiently across her reflection in the mirror.

Hose, slip, camisole: despite the buffet restaurants she'd been subjected to, Alex managed not to get fat. In a day and a half, she called her mother, scheduled a meeting with Donnelly, left a message for Olivia, quit her job, gave notice on the apartment, and managed to find a decent suit.

Blouse, skirt, blazer: these are the clothes she should have always worn. She had reserved a flight to New York under the name Alex Cabot. Her landlord could sell her furniture and keep her deposit. She didn't need her mail forwarded, and the librarian knew what to expect. Earrings, necklace, watch: the mirror reflected the image of a finished woman. She appraised her hair and makeup one last time and dropped the brush in the trashcan.

Alex left the unlocked apartment with Sonia's cell phone, driver's license and directions to the FBI's regional office tucked in an otherwise empty purse. Several hours later she sat in a parking lot next to a gray federal building, turning her old life over and over in her hands: driver's license, passport, and other cards. Black letters recounted her previous identity. She stared at them until meaning was absorbed and hit bone. I was not born in Pensacola. I am not thirty-three, nor do I live on Donovan Drive. My name is Alexandra Cabot. RIP, Sonia.

She was done with it. Done with the outlet malls, the chain restaurants, and the provincial mediocrity of this so-called city. She put Sonia's license in the glove box and headed for the airport. At LAX, Alex parked the car in a zone that would ensure its being towed away at Sonia's expense and grabbed her flight to freedom. Alex Cabot had been on hold long enough: a New Yorker without New York, ambition suppressed by the demands of obscurity. She would make them all-the city, the career, and even the woman-hers again.