Vivienne's POV
I didn't sleep.
Not the restless half-sleep of someone whose body was tired but whose mind had declined to cooperate. Full wakefulness. The specific alert quality of a mind that had received information it considered unfinished and had no intention of standing down until the unfinished parts had been addressed.
I lay in the dark until two in the morning and then stopped pretending that lying in the dark was a productive use of the available hours and went to my desk.
Richard Cole's profile was still on my screen.
I read it again with the careful attention of someone who had already read it twice and was now reading it the way she read contracts, looking not for what was there but for what the presence of what was there implied about what wasn't.
Chief Operations Office
