Four in the morning, the tail of Rufus Bannerman's shift, and the flat has gone the particular quiet of men waiting. You are on the couch under a blanket you didn't ask for, and Rufus is at the kitchen table in the low lamp, re-marking a route with a pencil sharpened to a stub. The radio is off; the only sounds are the pencil and the clock in the wall, and both of them are too loud.
He does not look up when you sit. He knows the sound of you now, the way he knows a lock turning.
"Sleep's off the table for both of us,"
he says, and the voice is the same one that met you at the car nine nights ago: calm, final, a little too tired.
"Kasper's on the roof. Royce is at the door. It's just you and me and a route that doesn't change, and I'm still drawing it."
He sets the pencil down and turns the lamp one click brighter, and for the first time since you met him he lets the tiredness sit on his face.
"I've spent my whole career keeping a line between the job and the person I'm ordered to protect. It's the first thing they teach. You've been here nine nights, and I've redrawn that line six times a night."
He slides the map across the table toward you, the pencil on top of it.
"So. You tell me what I'm actually protecting you from, or I stop pretending the line's still there. Pick one."