Page 74 of The Dangerous Dance

"I know," I say.

She looks back at the ceiling. We are quiet for a while.

"I need to go," she says. Not moving yet. Saying it to the ceiling.

"I know."

"Viktor will expect contact."

"I know."

"Liam." She turns her head again. "Whatever happens Friday — with Declan, with the Italians, with all of it — you come back from it."

I look at her. "That's usually my line."

"I'm borrowing it."

"All right." I hold her gaze. "I'll come back from it."

She nods once. Then she sits up and begins the practical business of reassembling herself.

I sit up too. We don't speak while we're dressing.

When she's at the door she stops. The familiar pause.

"Roise will be here tomorrow morning," she says.

"Yes."

"I won't." She meets my eyes. "Not tomorrow. I need to give Viktor enough to keep him patient for the next week. Which means being available and visible and not here."

"I understand."

"I'm not—" She stops. Starts again. "I'm telling you so you know it's not⁠—"

"Nadia." I hold her gaze. "I know."

She looks at me for a moment longer. Then she nods. And goes.

I sit in the study with the evening around me and the file on the desk and the drawer with the case in it and I think about Friday with the specific clarity of someone who has been thinking about Friday for two weeks and has finally arrived close enough to it that thinking has to become something else.

Action, probably.

That's always been the part I'm better at.

Ailish comes to the compound at half past eight the following morning, which is the time I asked her to come, and she sits across the desk where Nadia sat last night and looks at me with the expression that means she already knows most of it and is waiting for the version I'm going to say out loud.

I don't make her wait. "I need you to take over Nadia's management for the next forty-eight hours."

She is quiet for a moment. "Management."

"Her cover with Viktor requires her to be away from here. But I don't want her moving without someone she can reach." I meet Ailish's eyes. "Not surveillance. Just — available. If she needs to move quickly or needs a contact who isn't me."

"And why can't she reach you."

"Because I'm going to be dealing with Declan, and then I'm going to be dealing with everything that comes after Declan, and I need to know she has someone while I'm doing that."

Ailish looks at me with the expression she's had since I was twenty-two and she was twenty and she first understood that the decisions I make have a specific quality of consequence. It's not judgment. It's the particular attention of someone who loves you and is clear-eyed about what that means in this specific life.