Page 105 of The Dangerous Dance

He comes through the door looking like a man who has been in four meetings and two phone calls and one conversation with Marco that I know from Ailish went forty-five minutes over the projected time and covered ground that Marco had apparently been saving for a long time. His jacket is off, his sleeves are rolled, and he has the specific quality of accumulated tiredness that is not the exhaustion of having done nothing but the exhaustion of having done too many things at too many registers simultaneously.

He looks at me.

I look at him.

"There are four men in and around this house," I say.

"Yes," he says. He goes to the coffee and finds there is some and pours it.

"Four men who rotate in patterns I've already mapped and who report to Ciarán, who knocks on my kitchen door in the morning to ask if I need anything from outside because outside is not currently an available option."

He drinks the coffee. "They're there for your safety."

"I know why they're there."

"Then—"

"I know why they're there," I say again, with the specific emphasis of someone making a distinction. "Knowing why doesn't change what it is. What it is, is a perimeter. What it is, is me inside it. What it is, is someone knocking on my door in the morning to tell me the outside is something that happens to other people." I hold his gaze. "I've been in this kitchen for four days, Liam."

"I know," he says. "The situation⁠—"

"The situation is that Viktor has made a move and we're responding to it defensively, which is the correct operational response, and which means I am in your very nice house with your fig tree that doesn't produce figs watching Ciarán patrol the perimeter." I stop. Take a breath. "I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying I need you to hear that I'm in a box."

He sets down the coffee cup. He looks at me with the specific look of a man receiving a legitimate complaint that he already knew was legitimate before it was voiced. "I know," he says. "And I⁠—"

"Do not tell me it's temporary," I say.

"It is temporary."

"Liam."

"It is temporary," he says again, with the specific firmness of someone who has decided that being accurate is more useful than being comfortable. "Viktor is recalibrating after the interception. The move he made was a feeler — he sent one man to assess the situation, not to act, and the fact that I intercepted it means he now knows that the situation is different than he thought." He holds my gaze. "He's going to be careful for a while. Which means his next move is going to take time to plan, which means you have time that you didn't have four days ago."

"And in the meantime, Ciarán."

"And in the meantime, Ciarán." He looks at me steadily. "I know it's difficult. I know you're—" He stops. "You're not built for staying still. I know that. But the alternative is⁠—"

"Is what?" I say. "What is the alternative, Liam? Because I've been sitting in this kitchen constructing the alternative in my head for four days and what I've come up with is that the alternative is me going back out there on my own terms rather than waiting for Viktor to decide he's had enough patience."

"That's not⁠—"

"It's an option," I say. "It's the option of someone who is not going to spend the rest of whatever this is in a house with four men outside it because one man decided she was expendable."

"You are not going to run a solo operation against Viktor," he says. The flatness in his voice is not anger — it's the specific flatness of absolute conviction. "That is not a conversation we're having. That is not happening."

"Then we're going to have the other conversation," I say. "About what this looks like when it's not temporary. About what I do when the situation has resolved and I'm still in this house with a security detail because the situation has resolved into something that requires a security detail indefinitely." I hold his eyes. "Because I'm not going to be something you keep safe in a box. I told you that from the beginning."

He looks at me.

I look at him.

The kitchen is quiet.

"No," he says. "You're not."

"Then—"

"Then we're going to work out what the alternative looks like," he says, with the specific quality of someone shifting from defensive to forward-looking, which is the thing I've noticed about him when the argument reaches its actual point — he doesn't dig in, he adapts. "Not today, because today I've been in four meetings and had a forty-five minute conversation with Marco that went to places I need to brief you on, and I am—" He stops.