"He's been looking at the room like he's memorizing it."
"He's thorough. It's charming."
Pell made a sound that reserved all judgment for a later date. "The Chancellor story. What do you have?"
"Not enough yet. Give me a week."
"You have three days before I assign it to someone else."
"You won't. You know I'm the only one who can run this."
He drank from his glass and looked at her in the way he sometimes looked at her — weighing, calculating, arriving at conclusions he didn't share. "Three days," he said, and moved away into the crowd.
Edi-Veen appeared at her shoulder. "Your superior."
"My editor."
"He noticed me."
"Everyone notices you. I told you." She picked up her drink. "What he said was that you look like you're memorizing the room."
"I was."
"I know. That's the problem."
"Is it a problem if I see something worth noting?"
She looked at him sharply. "What did you see?"
"The man near the upper terrace," he said, without moving his gaze from the middle distance, casual as a comment about the weather. "He has been watching you since we arrived. Not the way your colleague watched you, or your editor. A different kind of watching."
She didn't look. She'd learned that from three years of dock stakeouts — never look directly at a thing until you know you're ready to act on it. "What does he look like?"
"Average height. Standard implants, nothing distinctive. Dark clothing. He has not spoken to anyone in the room and he has not stopped looking at you."
She took a slow sip of her drink and used it to turn slightly, casually, the way anyone turned when the music changed and the crowd shifted. She found the upper terrace.
She found the man.
He was looking at her. When their eyes met he didn't look away — he held it, just a half-second longer than a stranger would, just long enough to make certain she knew it was intentional.
Then he turned and moved through the crowd toward the exit, unhurried, and was gone.
"Do you know him?" Edi-Veen asked.
"No."
"But he knows you."
"Apparently." She set her drink down on the nearest surface. Her hand was steady. She was proud of that. "How long has he been here?"
"He was here when we arrived. I noticed him in the first minute."
"You noticed him in the first minute and you're telling me now?"
"I was establishing whether he was a threat or merely curious. The eye contact was the confirmation."
She turned to look at Edi-Veen fully. He looked back at her with that steady blue-green gaze and did not appear to find anything unreasonable about the sequence of events he had just described.
