Isabella takes a glass of champagne from a passing tray, lifts it, doesn't drink. She's moving her attention through the room in the natural social patterns we'd gone over in New Orleans, not sweeping, not obvious, just interest that is actually inventory.
"Three o'clock," she says, voice low under the quartet. "Grey suit. That posture. Prague."
I count three beats before looking. He's past fifty, compact build, grey suit, the stillness of someone shaped by Soviet-era military structure. Not a buyer. Security for a buyer.
"Good eyes," I say.
The quartet shifts into something slower, and the floor between the salon and the main room fills with a handful of couples moving with the practiced ease of people for whom dancing at events like this is simply a social language. Luc catches my eye from across the room, tips his head slightly toward Lorelai, red dress, blonde hair, working the far end of the room with a glass of champagne and the kind of laugh that's designed to be overheard.
Not yet. I let her orbit.
"Dance with me," I say to Isabella.
She turns from the room's inventory. Something moves in her expression: quick, warm, controlled almost immediately. "Is that tactical?"
"It keeps us visible without being stationary. Harder to surveil a moving target." I offer my hand. "And it gives us a reason to be close enough to talk."
She takes my hand. Her fingers are cool from the champagne glass, steady, and she walks onto the floor with me as though we've done this a hundred times. I draw her in, right hand at her spine, the particular pressure that says something without saying it, and she comes without hesitation, settles against me at exactly the right distance.
We're close enough that I can feel the warmth of her.
We move. She follows my lead with the fluid attentiveness she brings to everything, adapting in real time, anticipating my direction before I've completed it. Her hand rests on my shoulder, fingers light, and she keeps her chin level, eyes moving through the room over my shoulder with the discipline of someone who's learned to work while appearing entirely relaxed.
The silk of her dress shifts under my hand as we turn, warm fabric over warmer skin, and the scent of her, something clean and faintly floral, not perfume but her, cuts through thehothouse roses and expensive cologne that saturate the room. Her spine is straight under my palm. She trusts my lead completely. A woman who trusts you like that, you start wanting to deserve it for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission.
Every man we pass looks at her. I file each one, not jealousy, I tell myself, tactical awareness, but the distinction is getting harder to maintain.
"Lorelai's shifting position," she says.
"I know. Not yet."
I tighten my hand fractionally at her spine and steer us through a slow turn, bringing her closer in the process. She doesn't resist. Her body adjusts against mine with the naturalness of something rehearsed, though we've never done this before, and through the thin layer of emerald silk I can feel the warmth of her hip, her ribs, the measured rise and fall of her breathing.
Steady. She's steadier than I am right now, which is not a thing I'd admit to anyone.
Then, just beside my ear: "You clean up well, Remy Pascal."
"Don't get attached to the tux."
She laughs, low and genuine, and it moves through her body into mine. Under my jacket the Glock sits exactly where it belongs. The entire room is a threat map I've been building since we walked in. And I'm thinking about the sound of her laughing and the way her breath was warm against my jaw when she said my name.
That's a problem I'll deal with later.
Lorelai approaches on the edge of the next song. She slides past us with the easy navigation of a woman who learned early how to work a room, and the pass is clean, a folded card against Isabella's arm, gone before the measure ends.
I steer us off the floor, toward the windows at the far end.
"Read it," I say.
Isabella opens her evening bag, unfolds the card with the movements of a woman refreshing her lipstick. Her eyes drop once. "Four buyer names. Two I don't recognize. One is a defense procurement company out of Ankara. One is a private foundation based in the Caymans that Sophie can trace." She pauses. "Delivery timeline is three weeks."
I take the card, pocket it.
That's when Isabella goes still.
It's the stillness of a scientist who has just identified a specimen she wasn't expecting to find.
"He's here," she says. Her voice is entirely neutral. "Fireplace. Dark jacket. Speaking with the woman in blue."
