Chapter 24

Engfa texted at two.

Coming in at five. Security update. Won’t take long.

Charlotte read it at her desk between a client call and a partners’ meeting and typed back: Fine. Come to my office directly. She put her phone down and went back to the partners’ meeting agenda and did not think about it again for the rest of the afternoon.

She was very good at not thinking about things.

—

At four fifty-five she closed the contract she had been reviewing and straightened her desk and poured two glasses of water from the jug on the side table. She sat down. She looked at her screen for a moment. Then she looked at the glass partition.

Outside, the firm was doing its five o’clock wind-down. The associates were packing up. Noey was on the phone. Heng was finishing something at his desk with the focused speed of someone trying to get it done before the day ended.

Freen was at her desk.

She had been at her desk since seven thirty that morning, which Charlotte knew because she had arrived at seven forty and Freen was already there. She was there now, reading something, the same focused stillness she always had. The jacket that had been on Becky’s chair all week was not on the chair today — Becky was in court until late and hadn’t been in since this morning.

Charlotte looked at Freen for a moment.

She looked at her screen.

At five o’clock Engfa walked through the glass partition door.

—

“Colonel Surat,” Engfa said.

She had been in the office for four minutes. The pleasantries had been brief — barely pleasantries at all, which was how both of them preferred it when there was something real to discuss. She had her folder open on the desk between them and she had covered the preliminary updates quickly and now she was at the part Charlotte had been waiting for since the text at two.

“Tell me,” Charlotte said.

“Confirmed coordinating officer for the faction’s moves against the Armstrong case. Three months of coordination, possibly longer.” Engfa turned a page. “He signed four of the transfer authorisations that Becky has on the court record. Which means he isn’t just protecting the network.”

“He’s protecting himself.”

“Yes.”

Charlotte looked at the page. The name in print. She had heard it before — it had come up in the background research she had done when Becky first took the case, a name in the upper levels of the military supply chain. She had noted it then as a variable. It was not a variable anymore.

“Timeline,” she said.

“Moving faster than we’d like.” Engfa’s voice was even. “The direct surveillance on Becky has increased. They’re confirming her schedule in person now, not just through the leak. Which means—”

“They know the leak is gone.”

“Or they’re being cautious. Either way they’re moving to direct observation and that’s the step before action.” She paused. “Freen intercepted a tail three days ago. Did she tell you.”

“No.”

“She handled it. Becky didn’t know.” Engfa looked at her. “She’s good, Charlotte. She’s watching everything.”

Charlotte looked through the glass at Freen’s desk. “I know she is.”

She said it quietly. Not about the mission.

Engfa didn’t respond to that.

—

They finished the update.

Engfa went through the remaining points — the camera installation status, the access protocol changes, the two unidentified men from Jeff’s network that Nam was still running. Charlotte asked the right questions and received the right answers and wrote two notes she would action tomorrow morning.

By five forty it was done.

Engfa closed her folder. Charlotte closed her notepad. The meeting was over.

Engfa didn’t stand up.

Charlotte didn’t either.

Outside through the glass the office had thinned considerably — most of the associates gone, Noey’s desk empty, Heng putting his jacket on. The light outside the windows had shifted into the particular gold of early evening, the city starting its transition from day to night.

“How is she,” Engfa said.

Charlotte looked at her. “Becky?”

“Yes.”

“Exhausted. Focused.” A pause. “She doesn’t know how close it is.”

“That’s intentional.”

“I know.” Charlotte looked at her hands on the desk. “She called me last night. About the closing argument. The last section.” She paused. “She sounded — good. Better than she has in weeks.”

Engfa said nothing.

“She didn’t mention Freen,” Charlotte said. “She also didn’t not mention her, if that makes sense. She mentioned her three times without appearing to notice she was mentioning her.”

Something moved in Engfa’s expression. Brief. “Is that so.”

“You know it is.” Charlotte looked at her. “You’ve seen the surveillance logs.”

“I’ve seen the surveillance logs.”

“Then you know.”

Engfa looked at the window. The city going gold outside. “Freen hasn’t said anything to me directly.”

“Of course she hasn’t.” Charlotte almost smiled. “She wouldn’t.”

“No.” A pause. “She mentioned it mattered to her. The cover. Keeping it.” Engfa looked at Charlotte. “She didn’t mean the cover.”

“I know.”

The office was quiet. Heng had gone. Through the glass the only light on in the outer office was the one at Freen’s desk — she was still there, head down, writing something. Not a legal document, from the look of it. A notebook, the small one she carried. Charlotte had noticed her writing in it before and had not asked about it.

She watched her for a moment.

“Are you going to tell me it’s a problem,” Charlotte said. “Freen and Becky.”

Engfa was quiet for a long moment. “No,” she said finally. “I’m not.”

“Good,” Charlotte said. “Because I don’t think it is.”

—

At six Engfa stood.

She picked up her folder. Charlotte stood too and they moved toward the door the way they always did at the end of meetings — the natural conclusion, professional and correct.

At the door Engfa stopped to put her folder under her arm.

Charlotte said: “Engfa.”

Just her name. Nothing else.

Engfa stopped.

She turned slightly. Not fully — she was still half toward the door. Charlotte was behind her, three feet of office between them, the evening light coming through the windows at the angle it came at this hour and making the whole room look warmer than it was.

Charlotte didn’t say anything else.

She didn’t have anything else to say. Just the name. Just the stopping.

Engfa stood there for a moment.

Three feet of professional distance. Charlotte on one side of it, Engfa on the other. The city going about its evening outside the windows. The office quiet around them. Three years of careful maintenance sitting between them like furniture neither of them had moved.

Nothing happened.

But something in the three feet changed.

It was difficult to say what exactly. Nothing moved. Neither of them spoke. The distance was the same distance it had been a second ago. And yet.

Engfa turned back toward the door.

“I’ll send the updated threat report tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was completely normal.

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. Hers was too.

Engfa left.

Charlotte stood in the middle of her office and listened to the sound of the lift arriving and the doors opening and closing.

—

She went to the window.

Outside the city was doing what it always did at six on a Friday — the commute traffic, the restaurants filling up, the particular loosening of a city releasing the week. Below the window people moved along the pavement in the ordinary way of people going somewhere. None of them had any idea what was happening on the fourteenth floor.

Behind her through the glass Freen was still at her desk.

Still writing in the small notebook. She hadn’t looked at Charlotte’s office once during the whole meeting — which was its own kind of looking, Charlotte understood that. She wrote something and stopped and looked at it and wrote something else.

Charlotte watched her for a moment.

She thought about three feet of distance and what it contained. She thought about Becky mentioning Freen three times without noticing. She thought about Engfa saying she didn’t mean the cover.

She thought about the lift doors closing.

She turned from the window.

She picked up her bag and her coat and walked through her office door and out through the glass partition.

Freen looked up as she passed.

“Still here?” Charlotte said.

“Finishing something,” Freen said.

Charlotte looked at the small notebook on her desk. Freen’s hand was resting over it in the way people rested their hands over things they weren’t quite ready to close.

“Go home, Freen,” Charlotte said. Not unkindly.

Freen looked at her for a moment. Something in the look that Charlotte recognised — the same thing she had seen in Engfa’s expression when she talked about the cover. The same thing she heard in Becky’s voice when she mentioned Freen without appearing to.

“Yes,” Freen said. “I will.”

Charlotte nodded and kept walking.

In the lift she pressed the button for the ground floor and stood and looked at the closing doors and thought — not for the first time and not for the last — that the things people didn’t say were almost always louder than the things they did.

The doors closed.