The specific knock of someone who has been standing in the hallway deciding whether to knock for longer than is strictly comfortable, which I know because I heard him stop outside my door and then not move for almost a full minute before his knuckles hit the wood.
I opened it.
He was holding a briefing report. I looked at it, then at him.
"That's not why you're here," I said.
"No," he said. "It's not."
I stepped back. He came in.
The morning light in my room differs from the evening light — harder, more honest, the kind that makes everything look exactly like what it is. He looked like a man who had slept little, which for Victor means he'd slept his usual four hours instead of five. There were no external signs beyond the very slight shadow under his eyes, which I only noticed becau
