Pepper was extremely tired of polish. Polish could mask a multitude of sins when after the polish was rubbed entirely away, the rock at the base was nothing but something plainly ordinary and without its own luster to merit it. There was no polish that she could see to the heroes in the tower: they were men and men who dealt with emergencies the way most people did, but with the added benefit of being able to deal with them on a scale most men could not.
Every day sort of threats did not sound like much. The particular threat did. The cadence of his smile had cooled, the veneer cracked. Pepper knew their identities had been lost in the bottom of glasses when the hotel had forced a meeting but she wondered now if the conversations had trickled like water because someone had turned the tap on deliberately.
"For one specific threat, or all of it?" Her fingers curled into her palm, Pepper did not appear disturbed by the suggestion. There had been many approaches, in many places like this one. Corporate espionage was taken as seriously as the real thing. "You're asking for me to rely on you. Your judgment, of what is necessary. You're asking me to place faith in that above all else. For what purpose? A veiled threat about destruction? Yes. I've seen those. They deal with them."