Page 36 of Fastest Kill

She slid a separate sheet across the table. "Two guards during the event. One stationed at the gallery stairwell, one doing a circuit of the service corridor. The circuit is twelve minutes. I can work within twelve minutes if the corridor guard is pulled off rotation."

"What pulls him off rotation?"

"Ideally, something on the other end of the building that requires his attention." She looked at Dario with the direct, assessing gaze she used when she was calculating variables. "Something loud enough to notice and investigate, minor enough not to escalate."

"Like a drunk collector having a crisis and getting defensive over some imagined slight?"

"That can work." She picked up her coffee again. "Tore also noted that the reliquary is in a climate-controlled cabinet with a mechanical lock. Older style. I can open it."

"How long will it take you?"

Frederica frowned in thought. "Probably ninety seconds if the intel is still correct."

"So we need at least three minutes clear in the corridor for you to get in, open it, and get out."

"With a thirty-second buffer."

Dario pulled the floor plan back toward him. Twelve-minute circuit. A drunk scene on the far side of the building. He ran the timing in his head, checking for gaps, stress points, and the places where the plan would bend under pressure.

There. He tapped the paper. "The catering station. It's positioned between the service corridor entrance and the main gallery. If the corridor guard does a partial circuit and doubles back early, your exit line is blocked."

Frederica leaned forward to see where he was pointing. "He won't double back early unless there is reason to."

"In case there is, I'm going to make sure Iz or Leo can get a check on it before we risk it." He looked up and found she had leaned across the table, and they were perhaps thirty centimeters apart, both looking at the same floor plan. He ignored the way his pulse skipped a beat. "We need a second exit option. A window, a service door, something."

"There's a window in the document storage room two doors down from the archive. Ground level. It opens onto a utility alley."

"Passable?"

"I've fit through smaller."

"Then that's the secondary exit. Worst case, you go out the window, I pick you up at the alley entrance on foot." He straightened. "Which means I need to know the building's external layout well enough to get there in under four minutes."

"I'm sure Iz can get you the exterior plans by this afternoon."

"Good."

She was still watching him with that evaluating look. He waited for some smart-ass comment that didn't come.

"You ask good questions," she said finally.

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised." She picked up the floor plan again. "Now, we should go over the guest list. If you're running the social scene, you need to know who you're going to be dealing with."

They worked through the morning at the kitchen table. Despina appeared at one point, assessed the spread of papers across the kitchen table, and proceeded to make poached eggs without being asked.

Tore sat with them for forty minutes, answered questions about the museum's layout because he had cased it at some point in the past, and then drifted off to his study without trying to push his own ideas onto them.

By midmorning, they had a plan. It was good. It had contingencies, a secondary exit, and a clear division of tasks that played to both their strengths.

Dario knew his role, and Frederica had her timing down to the minute.

Unfortunately, Dario also knew that if she had come to his bedroom last night instead of going upstairs, he would have given her anything she asked for.

He said kissing her wouldn't happen again because that was what she needed to hear to keep from freaking out on him. He hadn't said anything about not wanting her.

Dario gathered the papers into order and tapped them against the table to straighten the stack. Frederica was making notes in the margin of the guest list, short lines next to each name: useful, irrelevant, avoid.