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His phone buzzes in his pocket. He doesn't look at it. It buzzes again.

"That's Merek," he says.

"How do you know?"

"Lenart only calls once."

The security office is on the second floor, a narrow room full of monitors. Merek is pacing it when we walk in. The ember lines are blazing all the way up his arms and his throat, nearly white, and the room is about ten degrees too hot.

He takes one look at me and crosses the room in two strides and puts his hands on my shoulders. They're hot enough to feel through my sweater.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Two times," he says. "Two times now, somebody's locked you in a room in this building." His voice is rough. "That's it. You don't go back there alone. You don't go anywhere without one of us. Not until we know who's doing this."

"No," I say.

"Trouble..."

"No." I take his wrists, gently, and take his hands off my shoulders. "I'm an owner. I'm the Oathkeeper, provisionally. Half of what I'm supposed to learn is down there. The ward stone is back there, Merek. I'm supposed to put my hand on it every night at midnight. Are you going to walk me to it?"

"Yes."

"Every night?"

"Yes."

"And when I need to look at the egress records, and the oath ledgers, and the inspection files? When I need to learn the building? You're going to follow me around for five weeks?"

He doesn't answer. The lines on his arms flicker.

"I've been locked in twice," I say. "I'm not letting anybody lock me in a third time. Not even you. Not even to keep me safe."

He looks at me for a long time. Then he lets out a breath, and some of the white goes out of his skin.

"I'm not trying to lock you in," he says quietly.

"I know." I squeeze his wrists. "That's why I'm not yelling."

"She's right," William says from the door.

Merek turns.

"Taking away her access doesn't make her safer," William says. "Somebody's using the building against us. So we fix the building." He holds up a hand and counts. "Radios in the back corridor and every room downstairs, on their own channel, that don't need cell signal. Every emergency box in this building opened and checked by me, tonight. Every keypad door gets an independent manual release on the inside, one nobody can reach from out here. And the air handlers and lights in the back corridor go on a separate monitored circuit, so I know when they're off."

Lenart has been standing at the bank of monitors the whole time, with his hands behind his back, listening. He turns around.

"Why wasn't the vault checked?" he asks William. "After last night."

"I ordered inspections on every load-bearing piece of equipment downstairs. Every frame, every ring, every bolt. We finished at four this morning." William's jaw is tight. "The back corridor wasn't on the list. It's restricted. Keycards only. I decided that was enough." He doesn't look away from Lenart. "That was my call, and it was wrong. Pell's pulling every keycard that's opened a back-corridor door since Wednesday night. Whoever did this had a way in."

"I agreed with the call," Lenart says. He looks at the monitors, at the black square where the corridor camera should be. "We were both wrong."

He turns to William and Merek.

"The whole building," he says. "Tonight. Every room, every door, every release, every emergency box. Every system. Not only downstairs. We assume all of it's been touched until we know it hasn't." His eyes come to me. "And Tara gets every finding, in writing, as soon as we have it."