Chapter 17: The Shape of Carol's Secret

The folded paper was still in my inside pocket. I had not read it in front of her — Reyes, the S.W.O.R.D. liaison with the careful voice and the careful eyes — and I did not read it now. I knew the name on it. I had known the name on it since the afternoon of Chapter Eight, when I asked her to write it down and put it away without looking. There is a particular discipline in not confirming things before you are ready for them to be confirmed.

I found Reyes in the administrative hub on the forty-first floor, a room that exists in the architectural gap between the tower's public face and its operational interior, furnished in the deliberately temporary style of people who believe they will be reassigned within the year. Folding tables. Government-issue chairs with adjustable armrests. A wall display running threat assessments nobody appeared to be watching. She was at the second table from the left, and she looked up when I came in the way people do when they have been expecting someone and are not certain whether to be relieved.

"Mr. Marsh," she said.