"You have a partner. You like him, but you don't tell him that. You've been working this case for a long time, longer than your captain knows. You keep files at home, not at the precinct, because you don't entirely trust the chain of command on this one."
I tie off a suture.
"You ordered your coffee black tonight. You don't take it that way. You ordered it that way because you were reading the room before anyone in it knew you were reading it."
Silence.
"You're very good."
"I know."
"Does it bother you? Knowing everything about a room before you walk into it. Never being surprised."
I do not answer because no one has ever asked me that. I have been asked how I know things. I have never been asked whether knowing costs me something.
I go back to my work.
"Hold still."
"Yes, ma'am."
Thema'amlands somewhere I am not prepared for.
I have been called Ms. Ferraro by men in nine countries. A counselor by men who did not respect the word. I have not been called ma'am by a man on my kitchen island with a bullet hole in him.
It is the worst possible time for any part of my body to do anything inconvenient.
My body does an inconvenient thing.
It is the particular awareness of a woman who has spent twelve years pointing her attention outward at rooms, at networks, at men who want things, turned, without warning, inward. Towarda man who asked me whether knowing everything costs me something.
Nobody asks me that.
He asked me that.
I push the needle into his skin and start the next suture.
He watches my hands without looking away.
I tell myself the watching is tactical. I tell myself he is clocking my skill level, assessing the threat.
I tell myself this all the way to the last suture.
I do not entirely believe myself.
He looks at me. Not at my hands. At my face.
"What's your name?"
I look at him, and my entire operational architecture comes up against a single fact. The financial network. The shadow companies. The surveillance hooks. All of it. Against the simple fact that this man asked me a question, and I am deciding, against every principle I have ever lived by, to answer.
"Nadia."
He nods. As if I told him something he was waiting to hear.
"What's yours?"
He does not answer.
