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She had done so. She intended to continue doing so.

She went back out.

And then, because thinking of Lara by name, even once, even in a private room at the back of her own office, had cost her something, she closed the thought, and rang for another coffee, and went back to work.

4

The Strauss residence was a hôtel particulier in the sixteenth, four stories of cream limestone behind a gate that looked like it had been there since Napoleon III and probably had. Leo stood on the pavement at thirteen-fifty-eight and read the street.

A café on the corner. Two cars parked opposite, one Mercedes, one Volkswagen, neither in her preferred configuration for a counter-surveillance position. A cyclist on the far side leaning too long against a lamppost, probably nothing. A camera on the building opposite angled in a way that did not quite cover the pedestrian approach to the gate. She noted all of it and crossed the street.

She was in jeans, boots, a dark Henley under a black field jacket. Her hair was back. She had her credential wallet in her inside pocket and a compact SIG at the small of her back under the jacket, which Blackthorn's Paris license covered and which she preferred to have whether the license covered it or not. She had Avery on her earpiece, low, but Avery would be quiet unless asked. Avery was at HQ, already three hours deep into the executive committee.

The gate camera tracked Leo for six feet before she reached the buzzer. She pressed it once.

"Identification," a man's voice said, in French.

"Cole. Blackthorn."

"Face the camera."

She faced the camera.

A pause.

The gate clicked and swung.

The courtyard beyond was gravel, neat, gleaming. A single black car at the far side. Two men in dark suits flanking the main door, and a third at the lodge to her right, and she clocked all three of them by weight distribution and eye-line in the time it took to take four steps. The two at the door were fit. Not military. Hotel-trained. The one at the lodge had an old injury in the left hip; he was compensating and trying not to. She made a note.

The man on the left of the door stepped forward half a pace. He was the taller of the two, maybe one-ninety, close-cropped hair, forty years old.

"Mademoiselle Cole."

"Yes."

"I am Beaumont. Head of residence security."

"Beaumont."

"You understand the protocol."

"I understand the protocol."

He was looking at her the way men who had been the senior in a room for a decade looked at a woman they had decided they were not going to enjoy. Leo had been on the receiving end of that look often enough to have stopped noticing it in any way that affected her work.

"Your firearm," Beaumont said.

"Will stay on me."

"Madame Strauss's residence has a no-weapons policy for non-internal staff."

"Madame Strauss's residence is as of today under Blackthorn protection. My protocols, not yours. Your principal signed them this morning."

Beaumont's jaw moved. "I would like to confirm that with Madame."

"Confirm it."

He did not move, which was the first small test. Leo, not unkindly, waited him out. Two of his men were watching her. He gave one of them a small nod and the man slipped inside. Leo, whose hands had not moved, said nothing. She was going to be in this house for however long this engagement lasted, and the terms between her and Beaumont were going to be set inside the next ten minutes, and she did not intend to set them generously.