She was in the corridor.
Not hiding — Dena Marsh did not hide, she was not built for hiding, everything about her was the specific architecture of someone who had decided long ago that visible certainty was more useful than concealment. She was standing at the corridor window looking at the Cascades territory in the late afternoon with the contained quality of someone processing what had happened in the session room.
I came to stand near her.
Not beside her. Near.
She registered me without turning.
"The Read," she said. "How precise is it?"
"Precise enough," I said.
"You found the crack," she said.
"Yes," I said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"I've been building toward this moment for a very long time," she said. "The recording. The coalition. The legal framework." She held the win
