The tent flap opened and Eleanora Voss stepped out into the fading light.
Five women looked up at her.
They'd been waiting in a loose semicircle around the tent entrance, close enough to hear raised voices if there had been any, far enough to maintain the pretense of compliance. Also because the guards outside would have intervened if they'd taken one more step, and they'd been reminded of that several times throughout the nearly hour-long questioning.
Their own interviews would come later, supposedly. Most of them assumed the delay was strategic, that the Association hoped leaving five agitated women together and unsupervised would produce conversation worth monitoring. Damning evidence, maybe. Contradictions. The kind of careless honesty that people offered when they thought no one important was listening.
