S.A.S.
The alarms stayed quiet.
The night held its breath a few seconds more and became morning.
12:00 A.M. — EARLIER THAT NIGHT
The penthouse sat in the sky like a lacquered box. Music swam through it—Smokey Robinson’s voice smoothing the edges off midnight: Let me be the clock, tick-tock… The bathroom was a small cathedral of marble, candlelight peeling itself along the walls, lavender oil steeping in the steam.
Josephine Martin reclined, towel tented over her eyes, not asleep but near it—Deputy Foreign Affairs on a night with no briefings. The city glimmered floor-to-ceiling beyond the glass, a quilt of white squares with little plans inside them.
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