Chapter 4: Flour

At three in the morning, Averett was scoring a loaf of dough with a razor when the kitchen door opened behind him.

He knew who it was without turning.

Nobody else walked that quietly on a marble floor.

"Don't shoot," he said. "It's sourdough."

Jarek stood in the doorway in a rumpled black T-shirt, one hand on his hip where a holster would have been.

Quarles did not allow guns in the residence at night, and Averett had a feeling Jarek did not like the rule.

"It's three a.m.," Jarek said.

"It proofs best at three a.m.," Averett said.

"Is that a thing?"

"It is now."

The kitchen was forty feet of steel and marble, and the only light on was the one over the oven.

Two finished loaves sat cooling on a rack, and the room smelled of warm bread and butter.

Averett was in a gray T-shirt with flour to his elbows, and he had never felt less like a prince.

"Quarles didn't tell me you cooked," Jarek said.

"Quarles doesn't know. Ardith knows, and the oven knows."

"And now I know," Jarek said.

"Rule two," Averett said, and slid the tray in. "Plans change, I tell you. This is a plan changing."

Jarek's eyes had gone to his face and stayed there.

Averett wiped a hand across his cheekbone and found flour.

Jarek's own hand moved at his side, a small jerk that began to rise and stopped.

He put it in his pocket.

Averett pretended he had not seen, and his pulse went hard in his throat.