Page 49 of Under Her Protection

"Avery."

"Sit down."

Leo sat.

Avery pushed the near keyboard half an inch in her direction and tapped twice on the wall screen without looking. The flowchart resolved on one box. YLV ADVISORY. Underneath it, in a smaller font, DR. Lara Kossek — BOARD. A line ran down from YLV to GAUDIN, and from Gaudin along to RENAUD, and from Renaud along to an empty box marked CLAUDEL QUERY. The line at Claudel was dotted. Everything else was solid.

"Gaudin phoned Renaud three times in the forty-eight hours before the Bellini collapse," Avery said. "He phoned him once the afternoon of the June memo leak. Those are the only four calls between those two numbers in the last eighteen months. Their other communication is through a shared office account at YLV that I am not going to get into without a warrant and that Dominique is not going to let me get into with a warrant, so we are going to have to be patient."

"Dr. Lara Kossek."

"Dr. Lara Kossek."

"It is her."

"It is her enough for us to work on the assumption it is her and stop pretending, yes."

Leo put the coffee down. She did not drink it. The image she had spent the night trying not to put a word on was the image of Vivienne walking to a door, just fucked, with her hair down in the firelight, and she was not going to tell Avery that, which Avery, anyway, was not going to wait for her to tell.

"You are not listening."

"I am listening."

"Leo."

"I am listening."

"You have not looked at the screen once."

"I have looked at the screen."

"You looked at the screen for three seconds when I said Lara and then you looked at the wall by the screen."

Leo rubbed her jaw with one knuckle.

Avery rolled her chair around in a slow quarter turn and put one elbow on the desk and looked at her with the old elder-sister face, the one that had been ready since Leo was twelve.

"Tell me."

"There is nothing to tell."

"Tell me."

"Avery."

"Tell me, Leo, or I am calling Dominique."

"You are not calling Dominique."

"I am calling Dominique."

“Ok, I fucked her."

Avery did not move.

She did not breathe out, she did not raise an eyebrow, she did not say the thing Leo had been expecting, which was some version of: you have met yourself, yes? She sat with her elbow on the desk and her chin on her fist and she waited.

"Last night," Leo said. "In the living room. I pinned her. I kissed her. Then I stopped it. She did not stop it. She started it again. She asked me to fuck her. I did. Hard. She came everywhere. It was super hot. She got up, told me to clean the mess up, walked out."