He stayed where he was.
"You do that," Alistair said quietly. "You stay."
"When?"
"When you should leave." His fingers were still near Tav's jaw, not quite touching. "You don't leave."
"No," Tav agreed.
Alistair breathed out.
"This is going to be complicated," he said. Not with worry — with a kind of wondering resignation, the tone of someone acknowledging something they had known was coming and not found a way to prevent.
"It's already complicated," Tav said.
"More complicated, then."
Tav stood up.
He gathered the medical supplies in the order he'd used them, returned them to the kit, replaced the kit under the sink. He dried his hands. He turned off the clinical overhead light, and in the dim secondary light from the hallway Alistair remained sitting on the toilet lid with his shirt on his knee and his stitched side and the expression of a man who had just said several honest things and was waiting to see what happened next.
"You should sleep," Tav said.
"Yes," Alistair agreed. He stood with the careful economy of someone managing injury, picked up his shirt, and did not put it on immediately. He looked at Tav.
"Thank you," he said.
Tav said nothing.
But he waited until Alistair had made it to his bedroom door before going to his own.
• • •
• • •
The university library at four in the afternoon had the density of a term-time Tuesday: occupied at most of its reading stations, the ambient sound of controlled activity, the old smell of books and warm electronics and the coffee that people were technically not supposed to bring in.
Tav was at a terminal in the east reading room, conducting a search that would appear entirely consistent with the finance postgraduate cover identity and was additionally providing him with useful information about the financial architecture connecting the university foundation to the Amsterdam entity. At 4:07 p.m., Alistair sat down next to him.
"You're here for Voss," Alistair said.
"Technically I'm here for the archive access that provides foundational data for my doctoral thesis on institutional investment patterns," Tav said.
"And you're also here for Voss."
"Yes."
Alistair set his bag on the floor and opened his own laptop with the ease of someone settling in for an extended session. "What did you find?"
"The subsidiary is thinner than it looks. The foundation's investment documentation shows three layers of holding structure but the beneficial ownership chain terminates at an entity registered in 2019, which is exactly when Cain took his current position." He turned the laptop screen slightly toward Alistair. "The Amsterdam account has been the terminus for recurring transfers from the foundation's operational fund. Below threshold. Regular."
Alistair studied the screen. "You pulled the beneficial ownership records?"
"I found the filing jurisdiction and the registration date. The ownership structure itself is sealed." "We need a different access pathway."
"I know someone," Alistair said. "A financial investigator in the city who's worked with some of my contacts before. He has access to company registry data that isn't publicly available."
"Can he be trusted?"
