And I gave her the true answer, because I had promised Kessler in the car that I was going to stop giving the defensible one.

“Because I’d just been told I was a useless paper-pushing nobody by a man who assumed I couldn’t hurt him,” I said. “And it turned out I could. Completely.

In one morning, in my Class-As, with the doors open. And after that I stopped being able to imagine handing a thing to somebody else.”

Nandakumar wrote something down.

“You understand that you cannot be within a mile of this investigation.”

“I do.”