I did not watch the launch approach.

I watched their faces, because their faces were the part I would want to remember — the exact moment each of them understood that the sound they were hearing was not an interruption to their afternoon but the end of it.

Winston heard it first and understood it last; he had spent forty years teaching himself not to hear sirens, financial or literal, and the habit held right up until it couldn’t.

Theodora understood it fastest, because Theodora’s whole life was a performance and a performer always knows, before anyone, when she has lost the room.

And Callum understood it not at all, standing there with foam spreading under his chair, still trying to fit a police boat into a version of the afternoon in which everything was fine and his girlfriend just needed to calm down.

Three people, three speeds of comprehension, all of them arriving, in the end, at the same place.

Chapter 10 — Madam President

It was Kira Marquez — Vantage’s Chief Legal Officer, asset-recovery division — in a navy suit with her hair whipped sideways by the wind, a waterproof case under one arm and a slim folder in her hand.