Page 95 of Under Her Protection

Avery tilted the laptop screen.

Vivienne read.

It was polite. It was ruinous. It was written in Lara Kossek's own hand, scanned, four paragraphs and a signature, and it was addressed to Stefan Hartmann, who had been the Strauss board chair for fourteen years. It was written as the letter of a former intimate with a reluctant duty of disclosure. The words were careful. The footnotes, at the foot of the second page, were footnotes to letters. Vivienne's letters. It was, if the board chair read it, the end of Vivienne's chairmanship.

Vivienne did not cry.

She did not move her hand off the arm of the oxblood chair. She looked at the scan on the screen for the length of two breaths, and she nodded, once, at Avery, and Avery closed the laptop.

"Mm," Vivienne said.

"She was going to send this on the thirteenth."

"Yes."

"That is Tuesday."

"Yes."

"We have four days."

"Yes."

"She will not send it now."

"No."

"She will know."

"She will know by seven tomorrow morning at the latest that we have it. Petit's bag has photographs in it that she put together, and Petit has been in a police interview room, and he is going to talk at one of the shifts tomorrow."

"She will disappear."

"She will try."

Vivienne closed her eyes, briefly.

She opened them.

"Find her before she does."

"We are trying."

---

Suddenly Avery took a phone call.

She was serious on the phone before feeding back to the others.

“The apartment she was in. It is empty. She is gone.”

Avery looked up at Vivienne across the low table.

"I am sorry," she said. "I should have moved earlier."

"Avery."

"Madame."