Frederick straightened slightly. “There is nay configuration that pleases everyone.”
“There rarely is.”
The fire popped behind them. Neither man moved.
Lennox tapped the map once more, nearer the eastern line. “If we visit, we need more first. Nae proof, perhaps, but enough that a denial sounds thin.”
Frederick gave a short nod. “Aye.”
“And if another woman vanishes before we get it?”
Frederick’s gaze hardened. “Then I stop asking what keeps peace and begin asking what prevents the next burial.”
Lennox said nothing to that. He did not need to.
The room tightened around the thought.
There was a line in these matters, always. A point beyond which patience ceased to be prudence and became failure by another name. Frederick had no intention of crossing it too late.
He reached for the charcoal beside the map and marked Cairn with a darkened circle, then another near the village where the first woman had gone missing. A third mark followed at the eastern boundary where the earlier trail had died.
The pattern looked worse now that it had shape.
“What if they are testing response?” Lennox said quietly.
Frederick’s hand stilled above the table.
The thought had already occurred to him, though he disliked hearing it spoken aloud. “Then they have learned enough.”
Lennox looked up.
“So we make the visit,” he said.
Frederick did not answer immediately.
His eyes stayed on the map, on the inked lines that meant less than men liked to think when danger chose its own path. He was still weighing approach, numbers, timing, insult, necessity, andwhat he would need from the next set of reports when the study door flew open hard enough to strike the wall with a crack.
Both men turned at once.
Iona stood in the doorway, breath fast, eyes blazing, and all the contained force of her fury arrived in the room before a single word left her mouth.
Lennox did not delay.
The door had barely settled against the stone when his man’s absence made itself known.
Frederick remained where he stood for a moment, his attention fixed entirely on Iona as the echo of her entrance faded into the quiet. The room seemed smaller now, the air sharpened by the force she had carried in with her.
He had seen her angry before.
This was different.
There was no deflection in it. Whatever had driven her here stood close to the surface, raw and unguarded.
“Iona,” he said, his voice steady, though his gaze searched her face with more intent than he usually allowed. “What is wrong?”
She did not answer at once.
Her breath came faster than it should have after so short a walk. Her hands, at her sides, curled slightly as though she were holding herself in place by will alone. For a brief moment, he thought she might turn and leave again, that whatever had driven her here might falter at the threshold of being spoken.