I looked at Dominic.
He watched the dog with a furrowed brow and a set jaw. He was too well-bred to voice any of his opinions about the situation.
Luca pressed his lips together tightly, barely containing himself.
“Dominic,” he managed.
“I have nothing to say.”
Gravy was eventually coaxed out of the café with a treat produced from the owner’s jacket pocket. A round of applause erupted.
Dominic picked up his fork. “What were we discussing about football?” he asked with full dignity.
I almost missed the most important person.
It was a woman on the sidewalk outside the window. She stopped briefly and raised her phone, but she didn’t point the camera at the dog as it left the building.
Instead, she angled the phone toward the window where we sat. I looked at her directly, but she was already leaving. Not in a hurry. Deliberate steps down the sidewalk.
She stood out by wearing a dark jacket in the August heat. I committed her profile plus the cut and color of her hair to memory. I didn’t see her face clearly enough.
“Everything okay?” Luca asked.
“Yes,” I said. “The dog’s gone.”
***
Eamon called at four. “It’s getting complicated,” he said.
“I have it contained.”
“Contained isn’t the same as managed. Those are different words for a reason. I’m coming down.”
“Understood.”
I was in the guest room, with the shutters angled against the afternoon light. Michael’s preliminary report was open on my laptop screen beside the Fontenot financials.
“Are you sleeping? Eating?” Eamon asked.
“There’s a man in this house who cooks for us.”
His pause lasted a little longer than would be natural. “I arrive at six tomorrow. Send a car.” He hung up.
The financial picture and the woman on Magazine Street. Two data points, and when I held them against each other, the shape they made was not the picture I’d been building.
I’d been studying the Orpheum: access points, balcony sightlines, credential lists, and how the mechanics of a threat there would unfold.
The woman with the camera wasn’t interested in the building. She was interested in who sat beside Dominic at lunch on an ordinary Friday.
I went back to the Fontenot file. The financial pattern was obvious. The contractor—not yet confirmed, but Michael would get there—was clear.
What wasn’t clear was the mechanism inside Dominic’s world.
I went to find Luca. He was down the hall in his room.
His door was open. I paused in the doorway. He was at his desk with his back to me, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, staring at his laptop screen. The window above the desk framed the side garden. He sensed my presence and turned.
“No more latches to check?”
