Page 51 of Under Her Protection

“You already kind of did tell me not to.”

“True. But you did it anyway. So I am saying if you are going to do it, I am telling you to go in with your eyes open. She is using you.”

"Copy."

Avery watched her a beat longer and then turned back to the screen.

"Right," she said. "Lara Kossek.”

They worked. Leo made the muscle at her jaw lie still by the sheer application of paying attention to a flowchart, and by nine-thirty they had moved Claudel from dotted to solid and Blanchet off the board, and by ten they had put a request in with Dominique for a meeting with the police liaison on Thursday, and by ten-twenty Leo stood up and said she was going back to the residence.

"Get her to move on the names," Avery said, without turning. "Gaudin. Renaud. Claudel. She is going to want her legal-process speech."

"I know."

"Make her shorten it."

"Copy."

"And Leo."

"Yes."

"Do not sleep with her again today."

"Avery."

"I am saying it."

"Noted."

---

The residence at eleven in the morning looked the way it looked on every other morning, which was pale limestone and courtyard gravel and a service entrance on the north wall and a camera on the north rooftop that had gone live on Friday. Guérin let her in without a word. Fournier had already been and gone. Beaumont was in the lodge. Vivienne, Guérin said, was in her study.

The study was the room Leo had walked once in the first week and had not walked since. Grandfather's desk, antique, a brass paperweight on the mantel that had belonged to someone named Strauss who had been dead for sixty years. French windows onto a small private garden. One chair for Vivienne, one chair, narrow and upright, for whoever was on the other side of the desk.

Leo knocked once on the doorframe.

"Come in."

She came in. She closed the door behind her.

Vivienne was at the desk in a grey dress, knee-length, hair up, the low knot back in place, signet ring catching on the edge of the ledger she had been writing in. A mark on the left side of her throat, above the collar of the dress, which she had not covered.

Mmmm.

She did not look up.

"Mademoiselle Cole."

"Madame."

"I am told you were at Blackthorn until ten-twenty."

"You are told correctly."

"Work."