Ellie emerged from the kitchen again, but she didn't sit in a chair. Instead, she perched on the arm of the sofa directly across from Mike, her body humming with a restless, kinetic energy.
It was her tell, the way she sat when the evening's logistics were still swirling in her mind, too energized to actually settle into the stillness of a seat.
"How was your week?" she asked, her eyes bright, searching his.
"Full," Mike replied, the word heavy with the unspoken weight of the secrets he was still carrying. "Yours?"
"Incredible," she said, her voice lifting with the particular, sharp brightness of someone reporting a major breakthrough. "I found a section of the depot's subfloor that nobody had documented."
"It was tucked away behind a structural pillar, completely overlooked in the last survey."
"There's evidence of an earlier structure underneath the main building pre-industrial."
