He put the notebook away.
He went to the kitchen.
Alistair was making coffee with the deliberate method.
"Good morning," Alistair said, without turning.
"Good morning," Tav said.
He sat on the barstool.
Alistair handed him a coffee.
"Sleep well?" Alistair said.
"Adequately," Tav said.
"Me too," Alistair said.
Neither of them had slept particularly well. Both of them knew this about the other. Neither of them said so.
• • •
CHAPTER THREE
By the end of the first week, Tav knew three things about Alistair Keaton.
The first: he slept lightly. Not the light sleep of anxiety or poor habits, but the conscious semi vigilance of someone who had learned to keep one part of themselves alert even in rest. Tav knew this because twice in the first four days he had woken before five a.m. to the quiet that meant someone nearby was already awake and choosing to be still about it. He'd lain in the dark and listened to nothing, and the nothing had been too deliberate to be accidental.
The second: he lied constantly. Not dramatically — not the lies that came with elevated pulse and averted gaze — but conversationally, habitually, with the practiced ease that had stopped distinguishing between truth and its functional equivalent so long ago that the distinction had become academic. Every time Tav asked a direct question, Alistair answered it with the architecture of truth — correct syntax, plausible content, appropriate affect — and none of the substance.
The third: he was not random.
The third had taken longer to solidify, because the evidence was quiet and distributed and individually explicable. Any single data point could have been coincidence. The accumulation was not.
Alistair never sat with his back fully exposed to the window.
He scanned rooms in the same sequence every time — left side first, mid-point, right — in the way of people who had been trained to do it and had done it long enough that it happened below the level of decision.
He never drank anything Tav handed him without a small, barely perceptible pause. Not suspicious — subtler than that. An automatic check for something he no longer consciously named.
And when his phone received messages from unknown numbers — which happened every two to three days, on no discernible schedule — something in his face went briefly and completely professional. Not worried. Not alarmed. Cold in the way of people who were used to receiving information that required action.
These things, taken individually, could be explained. A careful person. A private person.
Someone who had travelled enough to develop certain habits.
Taken together, they said something different.
Tav should have reported the inconsistency to Ablation immediately. The protocol was clear: flag anything that suggested the residential placement had been compromised. An unknown occupant with unexplained operational awareness qualified.
Instead, he found himself watching.
Waiting.
Interested, in a way that was becoming difficult to attribute purely to professional suspicion. Which was arguably its own problem.
• • •
