Page 127 of The Dangerous Dance

"I'm going back to Viktor," I say.

He sets down his coffee.

"Not defecting," I say, before he can form the response I can see forming. "Going back in. Pretending the last two months didn't happen — or rather, pretending they happened the way I told him they happened. That I was detained, that I managed the compliance, that I'm still running his operation from the inside of yours." I hold his gaze. "Which means going back in with a story he'll believe and staying there long enough to get us the interior intelligence we need to understand the Vore."

He is very still.

"I've thought through the story," I say. "The gap — the time since I've been here — I'll tell him the situation required careful management. That I've been maintaining the appearance of cooperation with you while feeding limited intelligence to keep the access viable. That the simultaneous attacks were a complication that required me to adjust my position with you carefully." I pause. "He'll believe it because he wants to believe it. I'm his best asset in this city and losing me would mean starting over, and Viktor doesn't like starting over."

"No," Liam says.

"Liam—"

"No," he says again. The flatness that means absolute conviction. "You are not going back inside Viktor's operation. You are not placing yourself in a position where⁠—"

"Where what?" I say. "Where I might get caught? Where Viktor might decide the story doesn't hold?" I hold his gaze. "Those are real risks. I'm not pretending they're not. I'm telling you that the alternative — waiting for Viktor to execute the next phase of the Vore while we respond to it from the outside — has its own risk, and that risk is measured in people." I pause. "Like Donnelly and Gallagher and Pearse."

His jaw tightens.

"I'm not using them as a weapon against you," I say. "I'm telling you the calculation."

"I know you are. I know exactly what you're doing and why and I know the logic of it is sound." He looks at the table. "That doesn't mean I'm going to sit across from you and tell you it's fine."

"I'm not asking you to tell me it's fine. I'm asking you to tell me I can do it."

He looks up. "Those are different things."

"Yes," I say. "They are."

We look at each other across the breakfast table with the morning between us and the coffee going cold and the city starting outside and I think about how many times we've been at this specific point — the point where the thing I need to do and the thing he wants to prevent are the same thing.

"The tracker," I say. "I'll carry one. Not the one you put in my hem — one we agree on, one I know about, one that tells you exactly where I am at all times." I hold his gaze. "And the burner. A channel between us that I initiate at scheduled intervals. If I miss an interval without flagging it first, you know something's wrong." I pause. "And Liam. I'll go in with everything I know about his operation's current state. I know his methodology, I know his assets, I know the specific quality of his patience and when it runs out. I'm not going in blind."

"You're going in alone," he says.

"Yes. Because that's the only way it works."

He is quiet for a long moment.

"How long," he says.

"As long as it takes to get the Vore's organizational structure. Names, positions, the financing chain, the command hierarchy. Enough for us to take it apart from multiple directions simultaneously rather than responding to it piecemeal." I pause. "A week. Maybe two."

"And if Viktor decides to test the story."

"He'll test it. He always tests. I know what the tests look like and I know how to pass them."

"And if he decides the story doesn't hold."

I hold his gaze. "Then you'll know because I missed an interval."

The silence has the weight of a room that has received something that changes the shape of everything in it.

"I hate this," he says.

"I know."

"I'm going to say no again and then I'm going to say yes," he says. "Because the logic is sound and because stopping you from doing something you've decided to do hasn't worked since a warehouse two months ago, and because—" He stops. "Because you're right that we need what's inside and you're the only one who can get it."