"And you tell me what you find. Everything. Not a managed version — everything."
"Everything I can verify," he said. "I won't tell you things I suspect but can't support. But nothing I can support will be held back."
She nodded. Once. "One week. Starting tomorrow."
He stood. At the door he stopped. "Ms. Malhotra. The water distribution project. The correlation you're building — the municipal corporation will push back hard when you publish it. Have you thought about who you're going to need to have read it first?"
She looked up. "Why would you care about that?"
"I don't, particularly," he said. "I'm just observant."
He left. In the stairwell, going down, he made a note in his phone: Highly intelligent. Reads people well. Will notice if she's being managed. Pride about independence is real, not performed. Will cooperate if treated honestly, not at all otherwise.
He added one more line, then looked at it, then deleted it. The line had said: Remarkable woman. Which was a professional observation. Just a professional observation. He left it deleted.
