I tailed Kaori after she breezed out of the room and into her office, leaving the rest of the staff glued to the screens. Yusuf was still gray-faced, with his lips bobbing for words that wouldn’t come. Wait, I told him, trying to shove down my panic.

Inside her office, Kaori perched on the edge of her desk, staring into her gold-threaded mug.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m leaving for a bit,” she said, not looking up. “Getting out in front of this as much as I can so the Commonwealth doesn’t take heat, after they were generous enough to host us.”

“You sure this isn’t an excuse to get out of margarita club when it’s your turn to pay?”

She looked up with distant eyes in her high cheek-boned, hornet face. “You’re welcome to stay while I’m gone.”

I swallowed. Of course I was staying. She was still on stage, then, dropping a hint for me in the audience that she could get rid of me if she really wanted.

“Where’re you going?”

“I have some meetings. I’m going on the funding pole-dance circuit. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. We need more staff, more security. More everything.” A beat, then, “I’m leaving Yusuf in charge. He’ll love that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I’m changing your security clearance. You can enter the Theater whenever you want.”

“Why?”

“Because you should keep working with the Envisioner. I know you want the truth about your connection to Figueiredo and the box, and how it got here. I trust that. Not the ambition, the career-making, the peacock dancing of some of the others.” She bobbed her head to the Theater.

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing a fresh throat-full of guilt. “I’ll see you when you’re back, I guess?”

“Mmm.”

My hand was slick on the cold knob of her office door. I was almost free when I heard an, “Oh.” Off-handed and breezy. Oh, would you mind closing the door behind you? I turned back and found her sitting at her desk like a piano player ready to hit her first chord. The sniper search beams were back on me, this time centered over my pounding heart.

“Was it you?”

“Was what me?”

She looked up from her computer screen, not buying how I was trying to stall. “The leak.” She was smiling, almost, and more bright-voiced than I’d ever seen her. “Was it you? I have to ask.”

Gunfire all in my head. Another blam-o by Killer Kaori.

I knew Kaori appreciates accuracy—so technically, it was Yusuf who hit the button to post the picture. I mean, hypothetically post it, and all of that.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I said, so cool.