Ten Years to Win Her, Two Weeks to Leave Her novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Author, Nolan Ridley

By eleven that night every one of the Branch's forty staff was in the dome.

They stood along the curved wall in their coats, holding paper cups, and nobody talked.

Joan had let one reporter stay, the young woman with the phone, and had told her to sit on the floor and keep her mouth shut.

The big dish tracked slowly across the roof with a low hum.

Nolan sat at the main console with two screens in front of him and a mug going cold at his elbow.

Lydia sat beside him on a stool, in the gray coat, with her knees touching his.

Russell stood at the back, by the door, with his hands in his jacket pockets.

He had been told he could stay if he stayed out of the way.

He had stayed in a corner, and nobody had said a word to him, and nobody had asked him to leave.

"It's the same coordinates?" Joan said.

"Same patch of sky," Nolan said. "Same band. The array flagged the rise yesterday afternoon, and it has been climbing since."

"And Tucson?"

Joan glanced at the phone in her hand.

"Tucson's dome is running Dr. Crewe's build of the filter," she said. "They've been trying since nine. I've got a friend on the night desk. They keep dropping the lock."

Someone near the wall let out a short laugh and stifled it.

Nolan did not smile.

He watched the left-hand screen, where a gray ribbon of noise scrolled up from the bottom.

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