Ava's POV
Vasquez's call lasted eleven minutes.
They sat in the safe room and didn't talk and Ava listened to the muffled shape of Vasquez's voice through the door not words, just tone, and the tone was the back-and-forth of someone negotiating rather than reporting. She filed that away.
Leo sat with his bandaged arm on the table and his eyes on the middle distance and his face doing the quiet internal thing that meant he was planning several moves ahead.
She watched him do it.
She had spent two years learning to read one man's silences and discovering they all meant the same thing that she had done something wrong and was about to find out how wrong. She had spent ten days learning to read a different man's silences and discovering they were a language with actual variety. This silence meant planning. The one in the hotel kitchen had meant exhaustion. The one on the pier, when he'd said twelve years, had meant grief.
