“Copy.”
“Place a discreet operative at her studio entrance on preview day,” I continue. “Tailored coat, coffee cup, looks like a neighbor. He’ll watch the hallway camera without looking like he’s watching anything. If press pushes past gallery boundaries, he starts a conversation with the curator about fire codes. If donors crowd her, he develops an urgent need to show them a door.”
“Copy.”
“Vetting on Jonah,” I say, tapping the one-pager. “Full but soft. No knocks. No talk. Social history, arrests if any, who he owes money to. If he’s clean, we do nothing. If he isn’t, we don’t fix him. We adjust the environment, so his dirt never touches her.”
“Copy.”
“Senator Hatch,” I say, tapping the memo. “Quiet. He wants a mouthful of scandal. We feed him a bland diet until he wanders off to a bigger plate. No comment lines are in the book. All staff briefed by noon. If his office calls us a Sanctuary, the Sanctuary never heard the word.”
Reid writes, tears the page at the perforation with neat fingers, hands half to Mara, and half to me. “I’ll run ops. Mara will push the words.”
Mara lifts her tablet again. “About the gala,” she says. “If you want her there, we should make it look like coincidence. The first envelope she saw came through the gallery. Good. We should reinforce that channel: a short, warm note from the events team with the RSVP link. No pressure. No chair named. The follow-up, if needed, can be my office. I do‘we’d love to have you’and‘no obligation’better than you do.”
“Do not tie it to the grant,” I say.
“Obviously,” she says. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Seat her at a table with people who won’t make a spectacle,” I say. “The education director from Mirrow. A clinician from our partner network who knows how not to put someone in a box. One donor with a mouth that stays shut.”
“Do you want to meet her there?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“You’re sure?” She doesn’t make it a challenge. She makes it a test of my ability to keep my own rules.
“Yes,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Then we’ll keep it clean,” she says. “She walks into our world and doesn’t know whose house it is.”
The language catches, not because she’s wrong, but because she’s right. I don’t need her to know whose house it is until I decide the door should open.
Reid flips his folder closed. “Anything else?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Tell your man who touched the brush he doesn’t get to be in her air again. He can monitor the building from three blocks away. If he wants a brush and room to touch, he can have mine. With a mop.”
Reid’s mouth twitches, which is his version of an apology. “Already reassigned,” he says. “And read the reprimand.”
“Good,” I say. “He should read it twice.”
He stands. “We’ll have your noon brief two hours early.”
“Give me one of the intake reports,” I say, tapping the first stack. “Which one needs rent covered this morning?”
Reid looks at Mara. She glances at the list she keeps in her head and never writes down for other people. “A seventeen-year-old from the southside. Going by M. She’s at Sanctuary Three. Housing voucher stalled because the caseworker wrote the wrong birth date on the form. We’re fronting two weeks in the interim. She needs a phone that isn’t her ex’s line.”
“Do it,” I say. “And send her a jacket from the closet. The one with the down that doesn’t look like down.”
“On it,” Mara says, thumbs already moving. She closes the tablet after the text goes and looks up. “One more ethics note for the minutes,” she says. “I’m not letting the interns anywhere near your press clippings. They make collages when they’re bored.”
“Noted,” I say.
Reid leaves first. He doesn’t like to spend longer in a room than the threats require. Mara lingers, watching the harbor with me for the first time since she sat down.
“She’s going to be a problem,” she says, and there’s no malice in it, only statement.
“She’s already a problem,” I say. “That’s why she’s worth the work.”
