Renata Cho's estate at night looked different than it had during their first visit, softer somehow, the exterior lighting warm against the dark, the kind of house that was easier to believe held genuine human life in it after dark than in the clinical daylight hours. Noa noticed this from the back seat of the car, pressed between Dmitri's careful stillness on one side and the city's receding glow through the rear window on the other, and thought about how often the things that seemed most dangerous revealed unexpected softness when you approached them at the right angle, at the right time, which was either a reassuring observation or a dangerously naive one, and she hadn't fully decided which.
Kieran had called ahead, which surprised her slightly, some part of her expecting him to arrive
