Page 61 of The Dangerous Dance

My phone rings.

It's Liam.

I look at it for two rings.

I answer. "Yes."

"Where are you." Not a question. The specific flat register of someone who already knows.

"I'm—" I stop.

"The Italian building on Water Street." His voice is very controlled. "There was an anomaly flagged in their dock access. Marco called Conor. Conor called me. I had your location pulled from—" He stops. "I had your location pulled."

I close my eyes briefly. He had the location pulled, which means he had something on me that I didn't know about, which means I've been less invisible than I thought.

"The device is placed," I say. "The operation is complete. I'm clear."

"Come to the safehouse," he says. "Now."

"Liam—"

"Now, Nadia."

I go.

He is at the safehouse when I arrive, which means he got there before me. The flat smells like the laundromat and cold November and his coat, which is draped over the chair, and he is standing in the middle of the kitchen with the expression I haven't seen from him before.

Not anger. Something past anger, the thing that comes after anger burns through its fuel and leaves something rawer.

"The Italian operation," he says.

"Yes."

"On Viktor's timeline."

"Yes."

"Using information from my files."

I hold his gaze. "Yes."

He looks at me. He is very still in the way he's still when he's containing something rather than when he's at rest.

"Viktor wanted Dara to do it," I say.

He doesn't move.

"He gave her a job she couldn't have executed cleanly. I took it instead." I hold his gaze. "I know that's not the explanation that makes this operationally acceptable. I know I used your files without telling you. I know I ran a cross-operation without flagging it." I pause. "I'm telling you now because you deserve the full version."

He is quiet for a long moment.

Then he moves.

He crosses the kitchen in three strides and his hand comes to the side of my face and he kisses me with the specific quality of something that has been under pressure for a long time and has just found the place it was always going to go. It is angry and it is desperate and it is the least constructed thing I've ever received from him, which means it is the most him, and I respond with the same quality — the unmanaged version, the true version, the one that has been building since a warehouse floor and a farmers market and a studio and a safehouse and a kitchen table we've been sitting at from opposite ends for weeks.

His hand is still at the side of my face and I can feel the slight tremor in his fingers. His thumb traces my cheekbone and his eyes hold mine and whatever calculation usually lives behind them is gone.

"Tell me to stop," he says. Not a command. An offering.