Page 10 of The Dangerous Dance

I don't move immediately. I'm waiting for the catch because there is always a catch, and the catch with men like this is usually the thing they say right before they decide you're useful or right before they decide you're a problem.

"The next time I find you somewhere you're not supposed to be," he says, "I won't be this patient."

"Is that a promise or a warning?"

"Both." His eyes hold mine. "Go."

I go.

I walk four blocks before I let myself acknowledge that my hands are not entirely steady, which is a response I find annoying and decide to attribute to adrenaline because the alternative explanations are less convenient. I find a doorway and stand in it and breathe for sixty seconds and think about his face in the dark, the way the tiredness in it didn't match the sharpness.

I pull out my phone and message my handler.

Contact made. Target was on site. Devices placed before contact, will proceed as planned. Was identified as Russian, not by name or affiliation. Released.

Three minutes. Then: You were seen.

Briefly. Managed.

This is not acceptable, Nadia.

I look at the screen and think about his hand around my wrist and the particular precision of the way he moved, and I think about what I told him — nothing that will hurt anyone — and how honest it came out.

I know what I'm doing, I type back. I know his history with women. He won't hold me. Trust me.

I send it before I can reconsider, put the phone away, and start walking.

He let me go.

I knew he would, I tell myself. I calculated for it.

I almost believe that.

CHAPTER 5

Liam

I stand in the warehouse for four minutes after she leaves.

This is not like me. I make decisions and then I act on them and then I deal with what they produce. Hesitation is a luxury and I gave it up young.

But I stand in the warehouse for four minutes.

The devices she placed are already neutralized — I found them both before she left, which is the reason I was standing in that particular corner of that particular darkness when she came through the south wall. The fire won't happen tonight. The smoke signal she planned to send to her superiors — proof of penetration, proof of Irish vulnerability — none of that will reach anyone, because when I called Conor two hours ago and told him I was handling the warehouse check personally, I meant it in both directions.

I handled the warehouse. And then I handled her.

Except I didn't, which is precisely what I'm standing here thinking about.

Twenty-one years old. Russian. Trained — genuinely trained, not the performance of training but the real thing, layered into muscle memory over years. Fast enough that I nearly lost her, and I'm not slow.

She knew my name. She knew enough to get into this building and find the two most useful places in it for what she was doing. She knew to go for my weak side when she ran. She knew, when I had her on the floor, to stop moving and wait rather than exhaust herself against a grip that wasn't going to break. That last one is the least intuitive and the most telling. Stopping when you're pinned by fear means you've given up. She stopped because she was thinking.

She was thinking the entire time.

She also said nothing that will hurt anyone with the intonation of someone who hadn't planned to say it.

I should have held her. Called it in. Had Conor here in eight minutes and her in a chair with proper lighting and the right kind of questions.