“Yeah.” He sat up straighter. “Elevator access. There’s a service elevator on the north side, staff only. I’ll get the key count from hotel management.”
“I asked if Endicott’s wife will be at the Thornton Foundation dinner Thursday.”
Shit. He’d missed that question entirely, caught up in gray eyes. “She will. She’s on the host committee.”
Ryder held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary. Isaac could feel it—the assessment, the quiet cataloging. Ryder was too smart and too observant to miss the drift, and too smart to push.
“All right,” Ryder said, and looked back at his phone. “I’ll factor her into the advance work.”
The moment passed. They moved on. Ryder asked about the team’s rotation schedule, and Isaac walked him through it.
It was easy. Familiar. Two operators building an operation the way they’d built dozens before—piece by piece, detail by detail, the kind of work that left no room for ambiguity.
Isaac leaned into it. The Endicott detail was real. The threat was real. His team needed him focused, and he was focused. This was the work he’d chosen, the life he’d built, and it mattered.
But he’d sat across from Peter a little while ago and chosen his words like a man with something to hide. He’d built Ryder’s assignment around a gap he needed in his own schedule, and the reason for that gap had nothing to do with David Endicott.
Somewhere in this city, a woman who avoided cameras like she’d been doing it her whole life was working the same rooms he was, but for an entirely different purpose. All he could hope was that he’d see her again.
What he was going to do with her if he did, he had no idea.
