Chapter 30

The closing argument was twelve days away.

Freen knew this the way she knew everything useful – automatically, without having to think about it. Twelve days. Surat moving. Jeff without his leak now but adapting, the way trained people adapted. The two unidentified men from Jeff’s network still unconfirmed. The picture getting cleaner and more urgent at the same time.

She had been staying closer all week.

Not dramatically closer. Just – present in a way that had a different quality to it. She took the same routes Becky took. She was at her desk before Becky arrived and still there when Becky left. When they went to the courthouse she stayed within a range that looked like a junior associate keeping up and was actually something else entirely.

Becky had noticed.

She hadn’t said anything. But she noticed things – Freen had known this since week one – and the noticing had a different quality this week. Less suspicious. More something else that Freen was not examining.

—

On Friday evening the office emptied out faster than usual.

End of the week. People had places to be. By six thirty it was just the two of them, the way it often was, except that tonight it happened differently. Freen had been at the conference table reviewing witness notes and Becky had come out of her office with the closing argument and her coffee and had sat down at the same table without apparently deciding to.

She just sat down.

Spread her documents out on the left side. Left the right side for Freen’s files.

Freen looked at this arrangement for a moment. Then she looked at her witness notes and kept reading.

They worked.

The lamp in the corner was on. The overhead lights were off – Becky had turned them off an hour ago because she always turned the overheads off when she was working late and just kept the lamp. The office had that quality it got after hours – smaller, warmer, the city outside doing its evening thing and the building quiet around them.

Freen turned a page.

Becky made a note in the margin of something and turned a page of her own.

Neither of them spoke.

This was not the professional silence from week one. That silence had been deliberate – a maintained distance, two people being careful. This was different. This was the silence of two people who had been in the same space enough times that the silence had become comfortable without either of them choosing to make it that way.

—

At some point the documents spread.

It happened gradually – Becky reaching for a reference file, Freen moving her notes to make room, both of them adjusting without discussing it until the careful boundary between their sides of the table had quietly dissolved and the documents were just – spread. Both of theirs, overlapping at the edges, the way work spread when you stopped managing the space and just worked.

Freen noticed this. She did not correct it.

She turned a page.

Becky leaned forward to look at something more closely. Her shoulder came within an inch of Freen’s. Close enough that Freen could feel the warmth of it without them touching.

She kept reading.

The city went about its Friday evening outside. Below the window Bangkok was loud and lit – the restaurants filling, the traffic moving, the ordinary noise of a city that never really wound down. Up here it was just the lamp and the documents and the particular quiet of two people working close enough that they could hear each other breathe.

Freen became aware of Becky’s shoulder.

She had been aware of it for a while, in the way she was aware of most things – continuously, as background information. But at some point it moved from background to foreground without her deciding to move it. Becky’s shoulder was almost against hers. If she turned her head three inches she would be looking directly at her.

She did not turn her head.

She read the same line of her witness notes twice. It was a good line. She read it a third time. It continued to be the same good line.

She turned the page.

—

Becky was aware of it too.

She had been aware of the closeness for at least an hour – had noticed when the documents spread, had noticed when the distance between them went from professional to something else, had noticed and had not corrected it because correcting it would require acknowledging it and she was not acknowledging it.

She was working on the closing argument.

The last section. She had been working on it all week and it was almost right and tonight it was closer than it had been yesterday. She could feel it – the way you could feel an argument coming together, the pieces settling into the right order.

She wrote a sentence.

Freen turned a page beside her.

Becky read the sentence back. It was good. She wrote the next one.

Freen’s arm was on the table beside hers. Not touching. Almost. The way almost worked when you had decided not to examine it – present and not-present at the same time, just at the edge of what you could pretend you hadn’t noticed.

She wrote a third sentence.

Read all three back.

They were the best three sentences she had written all week.

She didn’t examine that either.

—

They worked for another hour like this.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved to create distance or collapse it. The lamp made its small warm world and the documents spread between them and outside the city did what it always did and none of it required any comment.

Freen had stopped reading her witness notes at some point and had started reviewing the authentication argument instead because the witness notes required more concentration than she currently had available and the authentication argument she basically knew by now.

She turned a page.

Becky’s shoulder was right there.

She did not turn her head.

—

At nine forty Becky’s phone rang.

The sound hit the quiet of the office like a stone hitting water. Both of them moved at the same moment – Becky reaching for the phone, Freen sitting back slightly, the documents between them somehow finding their separate sides again without anyone arranging them.

Becky looked at the screen. “Charlotte.” She answered it. “Yes. I’m still at the office.” A pause. “I know what time it is.” Another pause, longer. “Charlotte, I’m fine. I’m almost done.” She listened. “Yes. I’ll call you when I leave.”

She hung up.

She looked at the documents in front of her. Then at the closing argument. She read the last three sentences she had written.

“Good,” she said quietly. To herself or to the room or to no one in particular.

She started gathering her papers.

Freen gathered her own. The table went back to being just a table – documents in folders, pens capped, the professional tidiness of two people closing up for the evening.

“The last section,” Becky said, not looking up from her stacking. “It’s closer.”

“I know,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her then. Briefly. The expression that didn’t have a name yet.

“Goodnight,” she said.

“Goodnight,” Freen said.

Becky picked up her things and went to get her jacket from her office. Freen put her own files in order and picked up her bag and waited by the glass partition the way she always waited – until Becky was ready, until they went down together, until the building was behind them and the street was clear.

—

She drove home.

The city moved past the windows in its Friday evening way – louder than the weekdays, more people out, the particular looseness of a city releasing the week. Freen drove and said nothing in the empty car and thought about the witness notes she had reviewed and the authentication argument and the twelve days and Surat and Jeff adapting to the missing leak.

She pulled into her building’s car park.

She turned the engine off.

She sat.

The car park was quiet. Fluorescent light overhead, the smell of concrete, a motorbike parked across from her that had been there all week. Completely ordinary. She sat in it and looked at the wall in front of her and did not move for a while.

She picked up the small notebook from the passenger seat.

She opened it.

She had been carrying it for three weeks. It had things in it – operational notes, mostly, the kind she kept separate from the official threat assessment. A few other things. Things she had written late at night when she wasn’t sleeping and needed somewhere to put them.

She held the pen.

She looked at the blank page.

She sat like that for twenty minutes.

The car park was quiet. The fluorescent light buzzed faintly. Somewhere outside the city was still going.

Then she wrote one line.

She looked at it for a moment.

She closed the notebook.

She got out of the car and went inside.