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"Madame." Leo was handsome in the dim light. Respectful. Vivienne couldn’t help but remember how the proximity to Leo in the bathroom at Maison Noire had made her feel.

"Good night."

"Good night, Madame."

She walked in alone.

---

In her bedroom, with the lights low, she sat on the edge of the bed and took the phone out and read the six words again, and then a second time, and then she put the phone screen-down on the nightstand and lay back on the linen and watched the ceiling.

Twenty-five years.

She had spent twenty-five years building a life in which there was no room in her calendar or her skin for the woman who had sent those six words. She had done it so thoroughly that she had almost been able, most days, to persuade herself the thoroughness was the life, rather than an expression of the wound. She had not thought of Lara in public for a decade. She had not said her name aloud in twenty-five years. And yet, tonight, six words in a cadence she had slept beside for four years, and she had sat at a table and not moved her hand. That, at least, was a victory. It was a very small one.

She did not sleep until well after two in the morning.

In the hallway outside her door, near the stairs, she heard, once, the small quiet tread of boots passing. Leo, doing her rounds.

She lay in her bed and watched the ceiling and thought about Leo's pupils in the mirror, blown with desire, and about Lara's six words, and about which of those two things she was afraid of more, and she did not answer the question, because she was not yet willing to admit that the honest answer was the answer she would not like.

8

Aweek. A week since Maison Noire, and Vivienne had not, in a week, told her anything.

Leo had kept her distance. She had been available. She had been in the lodge at six each morning and in the residence by seven-thirty, and she had run the security rotation with Avery's help from HQ, and she had watched Vivienne eat two meals in a week and not meet her eye across a table. She had waited.

Avery had called her on Sunday afternoon. "You are pacing."

"I am not."

"I am watching you on camera pace."

"Stop watching me on camera."

"Stop pacing, then."

"I am going to put it to her tonight. Monday at the latest."

"Copy."

"She will tell me."

"I know she will."

"Leo."

"Yes."

"Do not sleep with her."

"Avery."

“You are distracted. You fancy her. I can see it. I’m calling it out.”

"Noted."

Leo was very aware now of the chemistry between herself and Vivienne. When they were near each other the chemistry between them was a living breathing thing pulsing with need.