Page 96 of The Dangerous Dance

He nods. He goes.

Ailish calls at half past twelve.

"She's all right," she says, before I can ask. "She knows. I showed her when I got here because she deserved to know before she heard it from someone else." A pause. "She didn't react the way I expected."

"How did she react."

"She asked how many photos and from what distance and whether the distribution was targeted or broad." A pause. "And then she asked if you'd seen the sixth one."

I close my eyes briefly. "Yes."

"She said—" Ailish stops. "She said to tell you it wasn't your fault. The window."

"It was my window."

"She said that too. And she said it wasn't your fault." A pause. "She's already running a counter-analysis on the distribution pattern. Trying to identify the source."

"Of course she is."

"Liam." Ailish's voice changes register. "She's scared. Not the way she performs scared — the real kind. The kind she's trying to work through by doing something useful with her hands." A pause. "You should know that."

"I know," I say. "Keep her there. I'll be there in an hour."

"There's something else," Ailish says.

The quality of her voice when she says it is the quality that means the something else is the actual reason for the call. "Tell me."

"One of Viktor's men was in the neighborhood this morning. Not the Astoria apartment — here. Near the compound." She pauses. "Conor's man flagged it as routine surveillance until he compared it to the photo distribution timeline. The timing doesn't read as surveillance, Liam. It reads as⁠—"

"Reconnaissance," I say.

"Yes."

I'm already standing. Already reaching for my coat. "The man. Is he still in the area."

"As of twenty minutes ago, yes."

"Keep Nadia inside. Don't tell her about the man yet." I'm already moving. "I'm coming now."

"Liam—"

"Now, Ailish."

The man is on the corner of the block when I arrive.

Not at the compound. Near it. The specific near of someone who is calculating angles and timing and access rather than watching. He's in a coat that's correct for the neighborhood and he's carrying something — a coffee cup, both hands, which is the cover and also means his hands aren't immediately free, which is information.

I come up behind him.

He hears me a half-second too late, which is the correct amount of too late — late enough to be caught, early enough to tell me he's trained. He turns. He's younger than I expected, thirty maybe, with the specific quality of someone who is not the decision-maker but is very good at executing decisions.

"The photograph," I say. "Who took it."

He looks at me with the expression of someone deciding whether to run the cover or save the energy. He decides on the latter, which tells me he's been told not to bother with cover if he's caught. Which tells me being caught is something Viktor planned for.

This is an interceptable operation. Viktor sent this man expecting he might be stopped.

"You're not here to watch," I say. "You have a timeline."