Page 137 of The Dangerous Dance

Conor has the room organized by the time we arrive.

Everything Nadia built — the Vore files, the methodology analysis, the three Brooklyn location descriptions from the gala night, the financing chain, the command structure. Maps. Personnel files. And a secondary file with the Rosso watermark on it that wasn't there this morning.

"Marco called before I did," Conor says. "They'd already heard."

I open the file. Three pages. Rosso intelligence on Russian operational properties in Brooklyn matching two of Nadia's location descriptions. Specific addresses. Security notes. One flagged as a known holding location from a previous operation.

I look at Conor.

"They're good," he says, with the tone of someone who finds this both useful and faintly irritating.

We work for four hours. Cross-referencing her interior intelligence against the Rosso data against our own records, and what emerges is a picture with two viable locations and one that is more viable than the other based on Viktor's methodology — which Nadia documented, which tells us he interrogates before he eliminates, which means she's alive, which means we have time.

Not infinite time. She told us Viktor gives an asset forty-eight hours.

Saturday morning to Monday morning.

It's Saturday afternoon.

"This one," I say, pointing at the second location. The Italians flagged it. "The first is too accessible. He'd know we'd map his Brooklyn properties after the gala intelligence. He wants somewhere we have to work to find."

Declan studies the map. "Single access point. He'd feel most comfortable."

"And it's most dangerous for us," I say. "Which is why we're not going in the way he expects."

Conor is already on his phone, which is his version of approval.

"The Italians want in," he says, when he hangs up. "Marco called again. Personnel, experienced. His word: we finish this together."

I look at the map.

The alliance Connolly spent six months calling an invasion. The partnership that sent intelligence and offered personnel on a Saturday afternoon before I asked.

"Tell him yes," I say.

Declan looks at the map. "Sunday night," he says. "We go Sunday night. Give us time to position. Give her time to hold."

"She'll hold," I say.

He meets my eyes. "I know," he says. "I've met her."

I drive Mackenzie home at eight.

She lets me without argument, which tells me the shoulder has started speaking more loudly than her preference for independence. She sits in the passenger seat quiet for most of it, and then: "Declan was still in the corridor when I left. Six hours, Liam."

I look at the road.

"And Conor," she says, in a different register. "He came with the first car. He sat with me the whole time they were working on the shoulder. Didn't say anything. Just—" She stops. "Sat with me."

I file this alongside Declan in the corridor and Ailish at the ceiling, and I decide that these are not files mine to open and that the correct approach is to let the things that are happening happen at the speed they happen.

"Good," I say.

She looks at me with the expression she has when she knows I've clocked something and am choosing not to pursue it.

"Sunday night," I say.

"I know," she says. "I know I'm not coming." She looks at the window. "Just bring her back."