Page 77 of Under Her Protection

"Ah."

"Full file access to Avery's desk as of nine-ten this morning."

"Vivienne Strauss has not in the history of this firm granted full file access to anyone."

"I am aware."

"How did you get it?”

"I did not."

"Mm."

"She offered it."

A pause. Did Dominique suspect Leo had been fucking her?

"Copy, Leo."

The call ended.

Leo sat on the edge of the antique chair in the library, at the narrow writing desk, and looked at the Vigée Le Brun on the entry hall wall, and let her teeth set once at the back of her mouth, and did not think about what Dominique had or had not heard under the words she offered it.

By twelve she had the south wall dead zone camera reinstalled with a second camera on the inside angle. By twelve-thirty she had a secondary evacuation route mapped from Vivienne's bedroom to the south-lane wall with a rope ladder coiled in a linen cupboard. By one Avery had three confirmations back — the Gaudin phone had pinged a tower in the ninth yesterday, the YLV Advisory server had been accessed from a private DNS in Geneva at eleven fifteen last night, and a consultant named Petit, previously unnoticed, had booked a seat on a train from Zurich to Paris on Friday at eleven a.m. The network had reach. The network had reach in Paris, Geneva, and Zurich, and Petit was the fourth person in this ring Leo had a name for, and the fact that there was a fourth name meant there was probably a fifth, and a sixth, and Leo was not going to find them all this afternoon.

She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand.

At one forty-three Vivienne came into the library.

She came in without announcement. She put a plate down on the narrow writing desk at Leo's elbow, which had on it a piece of cheese, a slice of bread, three small slices of pear, and two almonds. She did not speak. She sat down in the chair opposite Leo, the oxblood leather one Leo had been imagining her in for five weeks, and she took a pear slice off the plate and ate it, and she looked at Leo across the desk.

"Eat."

"I am not hungry."

"Eat."

Leo ate the bread.

Vivienne watched her eat the bread, and when Leo put the last of it down Vivienne took the plate, and set it on the floor.

"Leo."

"Yes."

"It is one forty-seven."

"Yes."

"You have been up since six."

"Yes."

"You have locked every door in this house, you have fired three of my people, you have put a contractor on a neighbour's roof, you have installed one camera, one rope ladder, and a secondary evacuation route, and you have been on the telephone to your principal for fifteen minutes about a full-file-access decision that I made this morning without consulting you."

"Yes."

"You are going to take thirty minutes break.”