"Whatever Phase Two is," he said, "we deal with it the same way we dealt with Phase One."
"Together," Tav said.
"Together." He held Tav's gaze steadily. "And not for them. Whatever they want from us, whatever this Phase Two isdesigned to produce — we don't do it because someone decided we should. We decide."
Tav looked at him.
At the person who had walked through a door months ago and made everything more difficult and more possible simultaneously.
"Yes," he said.
Alistair reached out and found his hand.
The morning continued arriving. Somewhere down the coast, a bird was making the singing coastal sounds of a bird that had decided the day had started regardless of weather. The sea worked at the rocks. The light moved.
"Do you want coffee?" Alistair said.
"Yes," Tav said.
He got up and made it — the deliberate method, the temperature, the way he'd made it since the first morning in the apartment that neither of them belonged to, the way that had apparently been observable enough for Alistair to sketch it without knowing he was being sketched.
He brought two cups to the bed.
Alistair sat up against the headboard and took his and drank and fixed on the window.
"Phase Two," he said again.
"Yes," Tav said.
"Sounds like a book title."
"It does."
Alistair found his face with the expression that had become as familiar as the morning.
"Ready?" he said.
Tav held his coffee. Looked at the window. At the coast outside and the morning and the sea.
"Yes," he said.
• • •
• • •
Tav walked on the coast.
He had been doing this most mornings — the cliff path that ran north from the safe house for four kilometers before turning inland, the cool winter coastal light and the sound of the sea working below.
The path was empty at this hour. He walked it alone on the mornings when he woke early and Alistair needed the deeper sleep that recovering ribs required, and he walked it with company on the mornings when Alistair was awake at six and had wanted movement.
Today: alone.
The inquiry's first session was in eleven days.
He had been preparing with Naomi, who had arrived at the safe house four days ago with her notebooks and her precision and the energy that filed eight articles in three weeks and was now channeling the same focus into inquiry preparation. She prepared witnesses the way she prepared stories: systematically, from the facts outward, building the shape of the account until it was solid enough to withstand hostile questioning.
She and Tav had spent three sessions establishing the sequence of events. She had asked him to tell it twice without prompting, noted where his account emphasized different things on the second pass, and used the discrepancy to identify what he considered most significant.
