Chapter 12

The cuffs had barely clicked around Akemi’s wrists when Tommy knew he’d made a mistake. Not in procedure—technically, the detention was valid—but somewhere deeper, in the hollow pit of his gut where justification curled up and died.

She hadn’t fought. Hadn’t even lifted her chin when he guided her into the squad car, her posture unnervingly composed. The afternoon light had caught the delicate slope of her neck, the way her hands rested in her lap like those Japanese folded paper things he’d seen- whaddid they make, paper cranes, was it? For peace? While asking the U.S. to foot the bill for their defense. He scoffed at the thought and thought, “America First.” Glad he’d taken her into custody. His compassion went only so far. And she was so damned foxy.

He’d written three incident reports since booking her, each one dissolving into half-formed sentences when her face flickered behind his eyelids—not defiant, just unbearably present.

Sophie’s sister Judy had dropped by for supper and must have noticed how out of it he was. They’d watched streaming video of an old musical—neither Sophie’s taste nor his. He’d nodded off and barely followed the conversation, Judy and her kid running around, screening it all out as distraction, instead tracing the memory of Akemi’s silence in the interrogation room, the way she’d studied him—not with anger, but something worse, dismissal of his character as beyond redemption. She’d read him and saw no prospect of help, and turned away.