She woke at four-fifty.
Not from a nightmare. Not from a sound. She woke the way she always woke when something needed processing: cleanly, completely, the mind already running before the body had finished deciding to be awake.
She lay still for a moment and ran the previous night the way she ran after-action reports. Factual. Sequential. The lamp. The file. His jacket over the arm of the chair. The way the visit had left its weight on him and he had carried it quietly into the room without asking her to manage it. The Nakamura file, set on the desk without opening. Tomorrow, he had said, and she had said it back, and then the silence had settled and she had reached across and put her hand over his.
She had not been asked.
