A woman stood just off the packed sand near the edge of the access road, hands tucked into the pockets of a plain navy windbreaker. She looked like she was in her fifties, maybe a little older, with dark hair threaded heavily with silver and pulled back low at the nape of her neck. She wore running shoes, black PT pants, and no visible insignia. No escort. No clipboard. No nervous energy. Just a stillness that somehow made her more noticeable than everyone else.
She wasn’t pretty in the polished, magazine sense. She was the kind of woman people probably forgot to describe and somehow never forgot seeing.
Dean spotted her too.
“Oh, good,” he muttered, “reinforcements. Maybe she’s here to knit us a blanket.”
A couple of the other candidates snorted.
