Chapter 3: Sunday Takeout

The knock came at six-fourteen, which was early, which meant she had found parking on the first pass and hadn't bothered to sit in the car composing herself the way she sometimes did when she thought he didn't notice.

Marcus set down the papers he wasn't reading and went to the door.

Nadia stood on the step with a paper bag in each arm and her hair pulled back in the particular unfinished way that meant she had come directly from the office, or somewhere she was treating like an office. She was wearing the blue jacket with the frayed left cuff that she refused to replace because it still functioned as a jacket, which was an argument Marcus found structurally valid and tactically exhausting.