Page 23 of Dominion's Guard
The authority in his voice, badge and man aligned into one immovable thing, presses against my skin like a palm on the back of my neck.
The silence on the other end is measured and deliberate. When Remy speaks, his voice carries the patience of a man choosing not to be angry yet. "Margot asked us to protect her. That's our contract, and I don't break contracts because NOPD decides it wants a shorter chain."
"Does your detail know where she is right now?"
The silence that follows is a different kind. Shorter. Sharper.
"She's at her apartment," Remy says. "My team confirmed her arrival after she left Dominion."
"She's sitting on my couch, Remy. She left your coverage, drove across the city, broke into my house, and waited in the dark for me to come home. Your team confirmed nothing." Iwatch Andy deliver the words without raising his voice, and the calm precision of it does more damage than shouting would. "And if she can walk out of your perimeter without tripping a single alarm, someone with worse intentions can walk in. The killer already knows she's connected to Dominion. For all we know, they already know where she lives."
The silence stretches long enough that I hear Luc's voice in the background, low and clipped.
Remy comes back on, and the earlier patience has been replaced by something colder. "What are you proposing?"
"Your security wall keeps her safe and keeps her cut off from my investigation. She's the case, Remy. I need to be able to pick up the phone and get to her without routing through your ops desk."
"You can interview her at Rapier Strategic. We've accommodated that before."
"Interviews aren't going to cut it. I need ongoing access. Real-time."
A second voice rises in the background, lower and clipped. Luc.
Remy comes back on. "Luc wants to know what protection you're offering that justifies pulling her out of a rotating tactical detail. One detective with a service weapon doesn't replace a team with surveillance infrastructure and tactical training. His words. He's being polite."
"He's right." Andy offers no flinch, no ego, and the admission shifts the temperature of the room. He could posture, could pull rank. Instead he concedes the tactical point and redirects. "Which is why I'm not replacing you. She stays with me for investigative access. Your team maintains overwatch, tech resources, and rapid response. I'm the front line. You're the backup I call before I call dispatch. The checkpoint system is what goes."
The silence stretches. The pause runs long enough for me to read the debate in it, Margot's instructions pulling one direction and the operational reality pulling another. The resistance shifts before Remy speaks again, objections giving way to terms.
"We maintain a mobile detail. Close enough to respond in minutes. You give us your address and your schedule so we can position accordingly."
"Done."
"Daily check-ins on the threat assessment. If the threat level escalates past what you can handle, she comes back behind our wall. Nonnegotiable."
"Agreed."
"Broussard. If anything happens to her because you changed this arrangement, Margot will hold you personally responsible. So will I."
"Understood."
The call ends. Andy sets the phone on the coffee table and turns to face me, and the look he gives me holds no warmth, no grudging admiration, no trace of the current that usually runs between us. He's looking at me the way he'd look at any witness who just handed him a felony confession and a complicated story. I read the assessment in his face: useful, necessary, not trusted.
I want the current back. The wanting is immediate and involuntary, because the current is dangerous and the absence is worse, and the precise temperature drop between the man who watched me pour drinks with fascination he didn't bother hiding and the detective standing in front of me with nothing in his face but cold professional assessment tells me exactly how much I've been depending on a thing I wouldn't name.
"The guest room is down the hall on the left," he says. "We start in the morning. You walk me through what you did at the Blanchard house. Entry point, timeline, what you touched,where the evidence sits. I'm writing a warrant affidavit that puts me inside that study legally, and the details you give me need to hold up when the defense asks how I knew where to look."
"You'll frame it as an anonymous tip."
"I'll handle the warrant. You handle being accurate." He closes a step, and the proximity is deliberate, calibrated to remind me that the power in this room sits squarely on his side. "No more disappearing. No more picking locks. No more solo operations." His voice drops into the register that bypasses my brain and speaks to somewhere lower. "Are we clear?"
"Crystal." The word comes out edged with defiance I can't suppress even when I know it's not buying me anything. My chin tilts up from the couch, my spine straightens, and I hold the line from below rather than rising to meet it, because standing would mean admitting the position bothers me. "Anything else, Detective? Curfew? Approved reading list? Should I raise my hand before I use the bathroom?"
For half a second, the man behind the badge registers the challenge in my voice and my posture and the deliberate provocation of my angle, and something live and dangerous crosses his expression.
Then the badge wins. The expression goes flat.
"Get some sleep. You're going to need it."
