Valkor
The penthouse was dark when I got in.
I did not turn on the lights. I dropped my jacket over the back of the closest chair and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city. It was fully dark outside. Below, the streets moved with the slow, steady pulse of the night. Up here, nothing moved at all.
I stood at the window for a long time.
I was thinking about her hands. The way she had worked through those logistics columns with a focus that most trained analysts did not manage in their first week. The way her pen moved when she tracked a data pattern, quick and certain once she understood what she was looking at. The way she had looked up at me and said I am not afraid of incompetence. I am afraid of you.
She had not said it to hurt me. She had said it beca
