Chapter 4

The formation did not dismiss at noon. The instructor held them on the pad, the heat of the late-morning sun building on the concrete, while the flag snapped and the coffee truck came back around the corner and idled at the curb. No one was told why. The front rank stood sweat-dark under the collars, and Travis Dell stood at the front, arms crossed, chest out, still looking pleased with himself.

Camille Ruiz stood in the second rank, two places left of where Dell had stepped out of line. She had tracked the paper trail, one page of the scatter landing against his boot. She had watched a woman her own mother's age pick up each page without hurry and without help. She had bent — one motion, a lean — and a hand had snapped her back into place, and she had stepped back, because the cost of stepping forward was already visible: Dell's arm raised, the woman in the gray coat, the red mark.

The instructor's radio crackled. A voice said something she could not make out. The instructor looked at the formation, then at Travis Dell.

"Dell," the instructor said. "Command center. Now."

Delight crossed Dell's face. He tugged his field jacket straight, squared his shoulders, and walked the length of the pad toward the gate. He did not look back. He did not look at the command-center windows, where a figure had been standing at the third window the whole time, watching.

Camille watched him walk. She kept her face blank. In front of her, a trainee named Torres — compact, quiet, a man who had also not laughed — shifted his weight and looked at her, and she looked at him, and neither of them said a word.

Travis Dell walked through the gate and into the command center. The corridor was cool. He found the office with the brass nameplate and knocked, and when the voice said "Come in," he opened the door with the confidence of a man who believes he has been summoned for a promotion.

He stopped in the doorway.