Page 141 of The Dangerous Dance

I move through the chaos the way I move through everything.

Like I know where I'm going.

I go toward the sound of the breach.

And somewhere in the compound, getting closer, I can hear the specific quality of Liam Costello moving through a building he has decided to move through, which sounds like everything stopping in front of him.

I move faster.

One step.

Then the next.

CHAPTER 37

Liam

Sunday begins at four in the morning.

Not because I've been asleep and woken. Because I've been at the compound table since midnight with Declan and Conor and the maps and the Rosso intelligence file and the specific focused quality of men who have a timeline and are using every hour of it correctly.

Finn arrived at two.

He'd flown in that evening when I called — he and Gianna had gone back after the fight, the way they always do, and the way they always come back when it matters is the same. He came from the hotel they were staying in. Gianna insisted on coming with him, which I expected, and she is currently in the kitchen making something that will be ready when we need it, which is the specific way Gianna contributes to situations she can't directly control and which I've come to understand as its own kind of operational support.

Finn sits across from me at the compound table with the maps between us and the quality he has in these moments — unhurried, observant, the specific calm of someone who has been through enough that calm is a choice he makes rather than a state he defaults to.

"The single access point," he says.

"Yes."

"He'll expect a frontal approach."

"He'll have the frontal approach covered," I say. "Three men minimum, probably five, positioned to see anyone coming from the service road." I point at the map. "Which is why we don't come from the service road."

Declan leans in. "The adjacent building. The roof line." He traces it with his finger. "If Marco's people can come from the west while we come from the east through the roof access⁠—"

"Viktor's attention splits," I say. "He can't cover both and maintain a position on her."

"She'll be underground," Declan says. "The holding location in the Rosso file — their previous surveillance placed a subterranean room on the north side of the foundation."

"Which means the split approach draws Viktor's people upward," Finn says. "Away from her."

"Yes."

We work through it. The specific choreography of an extraction that has to happen fast because speed is the only thing that prevents Viktor from making a decision about Nadia before we reach her. The Rosso personnel — four of them, Marco's specific selection, people he described as the kind of experienced that comes from doing this for forty years — integrate with our approach on the west. Declan takes east with Conor. I go through the roof.

"Liam," Finn says.

I look at him.

"You go through the roof alone."

"Yes."

He holds my gaze with the specific expression of someone who has already decided not to argue about this and is making sure I know he's decided. "Then you come out with her," he says. "That's the only acceptable outcome."

"I know," I say.