The Phantom Alpha
In Charles's careful accounting of trustworthy people — a list far shorter than most successful men his age could claim, populated almost exclusively by Margaret, Chris, and Evelyn — Sandra occupied a place he had never seriously questioned.
It was, in the end, exactly the blind spot Holt had identified and exploited with patient, surgical precision — not Charles's caution, which remained as sharp as ever toward outsiders like Kane, but his deep, hard-earned loyalty toward the few people who'd already proven themselves inside his carefully guarded walls.