The compound in the hours before dawn had a specific quality.
Not the resting quality of the deepest night — that had passed. Not the rising quality of morning. The in-between quality, the specific atmosphere of a compound that has received alarming information and is not sleeping and is not pretending to sleep.
Cole had the full picture within twenty minutes of returning from the tributary. He had been building toward it from fragments — the hesitation in the board's handling of Dena's cooperation agreement, the specific gaps in what she had disclosed, the two reports that had come through territorial review channels in the weeks after Rowan's birth that had contained slightly too many questions about the compound's security configuration.
He spread it on the study desk.
Darius looked
