Chapter 7 #3
The corner of his mouth moved in a slight smile. “Good. Come on.”
Still holding her hand, he continued the tour. The common area had a couch, a television mounted above a cold fireplace, and a stack of board games on the shelf. There was a gaming system and an assortment of comfy-looking chairs and beanbags. “Do you play?” she asked, gesturing to it.
“When one of the others goads me into a game. Do you?”
“Just board games with my nieces. Candyland and Mermaid Island are favorites. But I’m a mean ping-pong player.” Memories of her and Emma playing for hours as young girls flashed through her head. “It’s been a while, though.”
“Ping-pong?”
“Yeah, you know, table tennis?”
“I know what it is. I happen to have been quite the champ when I was seven.”
She grinned. “Is that so? Too bad you don’t have a table here or I’d challenge you to a match.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” He winked. “I might have to requisition one from Vivi.”
“She would purchase a table just because you want to play me?”
He shrugged. “If I tell her it’s for my mental health, she’ll have one delivered before sundown tomorrow.”
They walked on. The residential wing stretched ahead, doors closed, the corridor dim. The wire in her chest was loosening. “I know about your mom and your dad,” she said. “But I don’t know how you got from Washington State to here.”
He walked a few steps before answering. “I went into the Navy at eighteen. I had my eye on submarine school. There’s something about that environment that always appealed to me. The quiet, the contained world, the precision of slicing through the water.”
“I sense a but coming.”
He was quiet long enough that she thought he might not answer. “My best friend, Deacon, and I were going to go to subs together after high school. We’d been planning it for years. We had a pact.”
She heard the past tense and braced herself. “It didn’t work out?”
His face went tight. He released he hand. “No. Complicated story.”
She didn’t reach for him. She’d learned that lesson. “What did you do instead?”
“I still joined the Navy, and eventually, I ended up going through BUD/S and becoming a SEAL.”
She blinked. “You were a SEAL?”
“Gave it six years.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Vivi offered me a tech room and a quiet life. I thought it was the closest thing to a submarine I was going to find on dry land.”
They’d reached the far end of the residential corridor. She could see the turn that led back toward her room.
Jasper slowed as if stretching out their arrival.
“I keep the compound secure. I run comms for the others when they’re on protective details.
I’m their eyes on the camera feeds. I research targets, and I have, on occasion, gone with one of them on a detail when they needed an extra body, but I’m not the one going first through doors anymore. I did enough of that in the teams.”
“You went through mine tonight.”
He glanced at her. “That was different.”
She didn’t ask why. She wanted to, but they arrived outside her door.
“My room is three doors down,” he said. “If you need anything, knock. I’m a light sleeper.”
She wanted to hug him. The impulse was strong enough that she shifted forward an inch before she caught herself. She just wanted to be close to him again. Heat climbed into her cheeks. “Goodnight, Jasper.”
“Goodnight, Katherine.”
She stepped inside and shut the door, then heard his footsteps move down the corridor. A pause. A door opening and closing softly.
She turned the lock, more out of habit than fear.
Priss was still asleep in the center of the bed, occupying roughly sixty percent of the mattress by virtue of physics Katherine had never been able to understand.
She eased the cat to one side, pulled back the covers, and climbed in, still in her sweats.
Changing required more effort than she could give it.
She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. She was in a strange bed in a strange building. Someone was trying to kill her.
Underneath all of that, tangled in ways she couldn’t separate, she had feelings about the man three doors down that weren’t professional. He’d saved her life, carried her boxes as if they mattered, and given her his office without a second’s hesitation.
Even her cat liked him.
She was losing control of everything. The investigation into Cinder, certainly. The break-in had proved that the work was no longer within her management.
But also the part of her that had spent most of her life deciding who to let in and who to keep at a distance.
She’d been making that calculation on autopilot since she was eleven and packing for the fourth move.
The math had always come out the same way—don’t invest in people.
Don’t get attached. Life is always changing.
Less than two days with Jasper Perault and the math wasn’t working anymore.
Priss shifted and pressed her warm body against Katherine’s hip. Katherine reached down and scratched behind her ears, and the cat purred. I’m still alive.
And here with Jasper, she knew she was going to stay that way.