Page 64 of Under Her Protection

"Copy."

"Street clean for the last forty-two minutes. Police unit at the Maison Noire end. Eight men on the Sévigné block, one in the building opposite. Dominique has a call with the Circle at nine tomorrow. Beaumont stays till four. I am pulling to the lodge after that."

"Copy. Avery."

"Mm."

"I am going up."

A pause.

"To her."

"Yes."

"Copy."

"Avery."

"Yes."

"Do not."

"I was not going to say it."

"You were going to say it."

"Not tonight. Not after a bullet. I am allowed one piece of grace a month."

"Copy."

She went up.

Vivienne's bedroom was at the end of the corridor on the first floor, two doors down from the main living room, third door, grey linen bed, grey linen curtains, the small balcony with the French door that Leo had inspected on her second day and had put a motion sensor on the railing of on her third. The door was ajar.

She pushed it open with her knuckle, not her palm, because that was training.

Vivienne was not under the linen.

Vivienne was on top of it, on her back, naked, one knee up, the other leg long, her hair out of its pin and spread on the pillow, the silver-framed photo of her grandmother on the bureau behind her catching the small reading-lamp light at the edge of the glass. Her hand was on her own sternum. Her eyes were on Leo.

She looked beautiful.

Leo's whole body did a thing.

She closed the door behind her.

She turned the lock, because the lock was a thing that existed and the training had uses for it, and she stood with her back against the wood of it and looked at the woman on the bed.

"Madame."

Vivienne raised an eyebrow.

"Vivienne."

"Come here."

She came.