CHAPTER 6
KELLAN
Celeste examines every lock before she asks where she will sleep.
She does not touch them. She looks at the hinges, the keypad, the distance to the nearest window, and the small green light above the frame that confirms the alarm is active.
Her attention is different from mine.
I see whether the door can be forced.
She sees who controls it.
The house was built as a carriage property behind a larger residence that no longer exists. Red brick surrounds a narrow courtyard, protected from the street by a steel gate disguised as old wood. Inside, the rooms are clean, quiet, and mostly undecorated except for objects I use.
A long table in the kitchen. Shelves of books Tomas brings and never retrieves. A radio on the counter. Two framed photographs I keep in the hallway because leaving the walls empty made visitors uncomfortable.
I do not have many visitors.
Celeste stands inside the entrance wearing the ivory dress beneath her dark coat. Rain has loosened strands of auburn hair around her face. The bandage on her left palm has begun to lift near the thumb.
She holds her father’s folder against her ribs and looks at the keypad again.
“What is the exit code?”
I set her overnight bag near the stairs.
“The system recognizes your fingerprint.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Seven-four-one-nine.”
She watches me enter it into the inner panel.
“And the gate?”
“Same code.”
“Alarm?”
“Same.”
“Panic lock?”
I pause.
Her mouth presses into a thin line.
“The panic lock secures the inner rooms during an active breach,” I say.
“What is the code?”
“That code is separate.”
“I assumed the second question would not be necessary.”
I take out my phone and open the security controls. Changing permissions requires two confirmations and a physical key from the cabinet near the kitchen.
Celeste follows me.
“You were not planning to tell me.”
“I was planning to explain how the system works first.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t activate the wrong lock.”
“I operate industrial terminals.”
“This isn’t an industrial terminal.”
“No. Industrial terminals have safety regulations.”
There is no humor in the sentence.
I deserve that.
I open the cabinet and remove the key. “The panic code is two-nine-zero-six. It locks the exterior gate, closes the shutters, and secures the interior hall.”
“Can it lock me inside?”
“Yes.”
“Can you activate it remotely?”
“Yes.”
“Can I override you?”
“Not yet.”
She looks at me. I return the key to the cabinet and close the door.
“That is not acceptable,” she says.
“I know.”
The admission interrupts whatever she prepared next.
I open the permissions page and add her name. The system requests a fingerprint. She places her right thumb against the reader, then enters a six-digit passcode of her own.
“Use something you haven’t used elsewhere,” I say.
“I know how passwords work.”
“People who know still reuse them.”
“Do people find you comforting?”
“No.”
The answer comes easily.
She glances at me, and for a moment the corner of her mouth moves.
Then the system confirms her as a primary user.
I give her the physical override key.
She turns it over in her hand. Small, brass, ordinary.
“What prevents you from changing the access after I go to sleep?”
“Nothing.”
The movement in her face disappears.
I take the second override key from my ring and place it beside the first.
“If I change your access, the system sends a notice to your phone and requires a record of the reason. If I disable the notice, the company managing the alarm receives an alert.”
“You arranged that quickly.”
“I had the installation modified this afternoon.”
“Before I agreed to the marriage.”
“Yes.”
She looks toward the dark courtyard beyond the kitchen windows.
“You were certain.”
“No.”
“You prepared the house.”
“I prepare for outcomes before they become certain.”
“That must be convenient.”
“Sometimes.”
Other times it means storing medical supplies no one uses, mapping exits from rooms I never enter, and keeping the radio low enough to sleep while listening for a call that may not come.
It means having a room ready for a woman I was ordered to protect and possibly kill.
The folded execution order is inside the safe behind my office wall.
Four rooms away from her.
My body registers the distance without permission.
Celeste removes her coat. Beneath it, the ivory dress makes the kitchen look temporarily altered, as though a wedding has entered by mistake and does not know where to stand.
I take the coat without touching her.
She hesitates before releasing it.
“The guest room is upstairs,” I say. “Second door on the left. It has its own bathroom.”
“Cameras?”
“None inside bedrooms or bathrooms.”
“Elsewhere?”
“Exterior, entry hall, kitchen doors, office corridor.”
“Audio?”
“No.”
“Can I verify that?”
“Yes.”
She studies me again.
I hang her coat near the back door.
“I’ll show you the system after you eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You told June you had lunch.”
“I did.”
“She asked what.”
Embarrassment flickers across Celeste’s face.
“You heard that?”
“You were six feet away.”
“Kellan.”
“Your answer was ‘something with bread.’”
“There was bread.”
“One triangle of a sandwich at the funeral.”
“That is disturbingly specific.”
“I notice food when someone is going to become light-headed.”
“I am not going to become light-headed.”
She sways almost imperceptibly when she reaches for the back of a chair.
Neither of us comments.
I open the refrigerator.
There is soup Tomas’s sister left yesterday, eggs, vegetables, cheese, and enough prepared meals to feed more people than live here. Tomas believes an empty refrigerator is evidence of moral failure.
“What do you eat?” I ask.
“Food.”
“Useful.”
“I’m capable of feeding myself.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You are standing in front of a refrigerator as though preparing dinner is part of a security protocol.”
“It is now.”
She looks down at the folder beneath her arm.
The anger leaves her face too quickly, replaced by something flatter.
“I should be working.”
“You can work after food.”
“I need to trace Victor’s office access, review the route changes, and find out why my father’s credentials remained active.”
“All of that will still exist in twenty minutes.”
“My father won’t.”
The words stop the room.
Celeste looks toward the counter, not at me. Her fingers tighten around the folder until the paper bends inside it.
I have several responses available.
I could tell her grief impairs judgment. True and useless.
I could say I am sorry. Also true. Too small for the space her father’s death occupies.
I remove the soup from the refrigerator and set it on the counter.
“You don’t have to finish it,” I say.
Her eyes close briefly.
When she opens them, she pulls out a chair and sits.
It is not agreement. It is exhaustion winning one argument.
I heat the soup and cut bread. The radio remains low on the counter, tuned to a station that mostly reports weather and traffic after midnight.
Celeste looks toward it.
“Do you leave that on all the time?”
“At night.”
“Why?”
The pan makes a faint sound as the soup warms. I turn the burner down.
“I hear sudden noise badly through my left ear.”
She glances at that side of my face. “Injury?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“An explosion.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“That is a very efficient story.”
“It’s the available part.”
She could push.
She does not.
Instead, she looks around the kitchen. Her attention settles on the mugs hanging beneath the shelf, the clean counter, and the dish towel folded beside the sink.
“I expected something colder.”
“The soup?”
“The house.”
I place a bowl in front of her.
“It has heat.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
She studies the soup as if it might contain terms omitted from the marriage agreement.
I sit across from her with a second bowl.
“You live here alone?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“No staff?”
“A cleaner comes twice a week.”
“No cook.”
“No.”
“No silent line of armed men in the basement.”
“Not tonight.”
She looks up. I let her decide whether I am joking.
The first spoonful seems to surprise her. “This is good.”
“Tomas’s sister made it.”
“I was about to revise my opinion of you.”
“You can delay.”
She eats again.
The tension in her shoulders lowers by less than an inch. It is enough to tell me how long she has been holding them there.
I break the bread rather than cut it further. My mother used to say knives at the table made people eat like the meal was another task. She also said many things she did not follow herself.
Celeste’s ring catches the kitchen light when she reaches for the glass of water.
The sight is wrong.
The ring looks wrong because I placed it there while carrying an order that could require me to remove everything else from her.
“Why did you agree?” I ask.
She chews, takes a drink, and considers whether the question deserves an answer.
“Because Victor wants my authority,” she says. “The people behind the garage attack want my signature. The Accord wants access. Refusing all three offers leaves me alone while everyone else already seems to know the rules.”
“So you chose the rule that gives you access to me.”
“I chose the danger that speaks in complete sentences.”
“I don’t always.”
“I noticed.”
She tears off a piece of bread.
“And you?” she asks. “Why agree?”
“Someone else would have taken the assignment.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s part of one.”
She waits. The radio reports an accident near the bridge. Rain strikes the courtyard stones. A vehicle passes on the street beyond the outer wall, tires moving through water.
“If I refused,” I say, “the Accord would assign another protector.”
“Would he also become my husband?”
“Possibly.”
“And would he be worse?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
Her fingers stop moving.
“How?”
“He would not give you the exit codes.”
The words appear to confirm something she already feared.
She looks at the brass key beside her bowl.
“You believe that makes you the good option.”
“No.”
“What do you believe?”