He was turned toward the windows, facing the Eiffel Tower visible in the middle distance. But she had the immediate impression - the kind that came from years of reading rooms and reading people - that he had been watching the door in his peripheral vision from the moment she turned the key. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, dressed in a dark suit that fit with the particular precision that meant it had been made for him specifically: the jacket falling across his back without a ripple, the sleeve length exact. His left hand was in his trouser pocket. In his right he held a wine bottle by the neck, carrying it with the casual ease of a man who had every right to be here.

Ivy set the baguettes on the kitchen counter.

She did this slowly, with concentration, because she needed the two seconds that the action provided.

"How did you get in," she said.

Adrian Carmichael turned from the window. In the fading light she couldn't read his expression in detail, but she knew what it would be - she had catalogued it over the course of two years and numerous encounters across three countries and she knew what was in it even when she couldn't see it clearly: that composed, unhurried, almost-fond quality that she had never quite decided whether she found maddening or devastating. She suspected the honest answer was both, in more or less equal proportion.

"Picked the lock," he said. His voice was as calm as his face. "Nine seconds. You should upgrade."

"I'll consider it."

"I brought wine." He held the bottle up fractionally, presenting it.

She looked at the bottle. She looked at it for exactly as long as it took her to confirm what the shape of the label and the color of the capsule had already suggested, and then she stopped looking at it because she understood she was going to have a problem that had nothing to do with the fact that he had broken into her apartment.

"Château d'Yquem," she said, carefully.

"Yes."

"What year."

"1990."

Ivy was quiet for a moment. A 1990 Château d'Yquem Sauternes appeared at auction perhaps once every three or four years, and when it did, it disappeared within hours. It was the wine equivalent of a controlled substance. She had been trying to find a bottle of that vintage for four years, ever since she'd tasted a half-glass of it at a private dinner in Bordeaux and understood what all the fuss was about. She had mentioned this once - once, in passing, in a conversation she would have said she barely remembered the context of.

He had apparently retained it with perfect fidelity.

She hated him for this.

She also hated herself for the specific warmth that was happening in the vicinity of her sternum.

"You found two crystal glasses," she said.

"Cabinet above the refrigerator." He was already moving toward the kitchen - not quickly, with that unhurried confidence of a person who had decided this room was perfectly comfortable and there was no reason for haste - and he set the glasses on the counter and opened the bottle with the corkscrew from the second drawer, which he found without asking or searching, which was also infuriating. The wine poured in a rich amber stream, thick with its own density, and the smell of it reached her immediately: honeysuckle and ripe stone fruit and something deeper underneath, something that tasted, before she'd even touched the glass, like late summer trying its hardest to last.