I shove the door open.
It swings inward with a soft, expensive hush.
I step inside.
The lights are bright. And there she is, sitting in the velvet armchair, rigid. She’s still wearing the clothes from the museum—black leggings and a thick charcoal cashmere sweater. Her hair is a mess of damp waves, drying into wild tangles around a face drawn and terrified.
Her blue eyes lock on mine. They’re wide with fear, but sharp with defiance.
The amber bottle of Aesop hand soap rests in her lap.
She tenses as I enter, lifting the bottle like a club.
I close the distance before she can blink.
She flinches, scrambling back into the chair. “Stay back!”
“Put it down.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You... you have to let me go.”
I reach out, my movement a blur, and wrap my hand around the bottle.
She tries to hold on. She actually tries to fight me for it. Her fingers claw at my wrist, her nails scraping against my skin. I ripit from her grip with a sharp jerk and toss it over my shoulder. It hits the carpet with a dull thud and rolls under the bed.
“Your weapon is gone,” I say. “Now sit.”
She slumps back, realizing the physical gap between us is insurmountable. I toss the file folder onto the low coffee table between us.
“Explain.”
She looks from the papers to my face, confused. “What?”
“The timing,” I say, circling the chair. “I executed a target moments before you appeared. You walked right in through the service bay without tripping the alarm.”
I stop behind the chair. I can see the tension in her neck.
“How do you have access?”
She shudders. “I... I told you. I’m a florist. I work for the venue.”
“Florists don’t work this late.”
“I made a mistake!” She spins in the chair to face me. “The lilies! I put lilies in the VIP room, and the Senator is allergic to them. I had to change them before the morning shift. If I didn’t, he would die.”
It’s a good story—detailed and verifiable.
I move around to the front of the chair again. “You walked into a kill box. You saw a body on the floor. You saw a man with a gun. And you didn’t scream.”
“I was in shock.”
“Shock makes people noisy. Training makes them quiet.”
I crouch down, eye-level with her now. “Who is your handler?”
“I don’t have a handler!”
“Are you with Volkov?”
