Page 133 of The Dangerous Dance

"Dmitri Volkov," he says. "The third arm. I was in the room and I saw the way he came to you and the way Viktor watched it and I needed to know⁠—"

"What did you need to know."

He looks at me with the expression of a man who is going to say something he knows will make him sound like something other than the controlled, operational person he prefers to be. "Whether you were all right," he says.

"I was operational."

"I know you were operational. I needed to know whether you were all right."

I look at him.

He looks back with the specific unflinching quality of someone who has decided to own a decision rather than justify it, which is the thing about him that I find most difficult and most — the word I've been avoiding — the word I told Dara I'd say when I got back and have been practicing since the gala started.

"I got what we needed," I say. "Dmitri. The third arm. I have the structure."

Something in his face releases — the specific release of tension that's been held since Wednesday when I said I'm going back in. "All of it."

"Enough," I say. "The financing chain, the command structure under him, three locations, the contingency leadership." I hold his gaze. "It's in my head. I need to get it out before I lose granularity."

"The car is two blocks⁠—"

"Viktor will notice if I leave before eleven," I say. "I need twenty more minutes."

He looks at me. "Dmitri was touching your arm," he says. The flatness of the observation does not entirely conceal the thing underneath the observation.

I look at him.

"He was operational," I say. "Viktor introduced me specifically so he would. He wanted Dmitri to assess me directly and the direct assessment required⁠—"

"I know what it required," he says. "I've run these operations. I know exactly what the direct assessment required." He holds my gaze. "I didn't like it."

"I know you didn't."

"That's all," he says. "I'm not — I know what the operation was and I know you handled it correctly and I know my being here was not part of the plan." He looks at the service corridor wall. "I didn't like it and I came anyway and now I'm in a service corridor telling you I didn't like it, which is⁠—"

"Honest," I say.

He looks at me. "Yes."

I cross the corridor in three steps and I take his face in my hands, which is the thing he usually does and which I do now because the reversal of it feels right, and I look at him in the functional lighting of the service corridor with the string quartet muffled from two floors above and the gala continuing on the other side of the wall and I say: "Fifteen minutes. Then we're both leaving."

"Separately," he says.

"Separately," I agree.

"And then⁠—"

"And then I'm going to tell you everything I have and we're going to get it documented and sent to Conor by midnight." I hold his gaze. "And then I'm done. I'm out."

"You're out," he says.

"I'm out," I say.

He covers my hands with his. Still. Looking at me in the specific way that I have a name for now, in the unlabeled section that isn't unlabeled anymore.

"Fifteen minutes," he says.

"Fifteen minutes," I confirm.