Kathy's head dropped and her shoulders hunched up, doing an excellent impression of a turtle trying to slide into its shell. "When you told me that my job was to stay the fuck out of the way and let the grownups handle it. When you said that if I behaved myself, maybe I could be allowed to tag along. I've been doing this for two years--I'm the reason he was even here--but suddenly I was being sent to my room and banned from going into Baltimore." Her eyes were firmly on the ground, but she sounded flat. The kind of tone that had no emotion because otherwise it would hold too much. "I know that I'm not an adult. And that I don't have the training to take on a professional killer. But the way you said it--it felt like you were telling a four-year-old that playtime was over and it was time to hang up her dressup clothes and get ready for bed. That's not what you say to someone if you respect what they're doing."

She shrugged with exaggerated casualness. "I mean, hey. It's not like you're the only one who thinks I'm playing out here. Maybe it is me."