Chapter 9 #2
She paced, her mind moving now despite the fear sitting cold beneath her breastbone.
“If Upton is involved in the Cinder cover-up, or whatever it is, calling me directly was a risk. If he isn’t involved, he still wants the papers moved before I’m finished reviewing them. Either way, the papers matter.”
“And it all started with the Cinder flag,” Jasper added. “Odds are it’s a cover-up of some importance.”
Garrett entered, a phone in one hand and a fresh cup of coffee in the other. He took in the room’s silence, and everyone’s expressions. “I missed something.”
“The CIA wants Katherine back at Langley with the Vance papers in forty-eight hours,” Jasper told him.
Garrett’s eyes sharpened. “On whose orders?”
“My boss’s boss, ADD Richard Upton,” Katherine said.
Garrett glanced at Jasper. “Because of the shooter?”
Jasper shook his head. “He never mentioned anything about last night.”
Katherine pressed her fingertips lightly to the edge of her notebook. “I need to write the notification memo.”
Jasper’s brows drew together. “Now?”
“Yes. If I don’t document the attack in some form before Upton’s recall order hits whatever internal routing he uses, I lose control of the sequence. I don’t want the first official record of today to be his request for me to return. I want my report in the system first, narrow and clean.”
Garrett looked approving. “She’s right.”
“I know she is,” Jasper said. “I’m deciding how much I hate it.”
“You can hate it while I write,” Katherine said.
“That seems to be our system.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Sit down before you take on any more bureaucratic knife fights. You’re still pale.”
“I’m always pale.” Katherine sat because her legs had begun to feel less reliable than her voice. The moment she did, Priss jumped into her lap, then onto the table, where the cat sat directly in front of the Agency phone as if prepared to challenge the next caller.
CB pointed at her. “That’s the energy we need.”
Katherine looked at Priss, the phone, then at Jasper. The absurdity of the tableau should have amused her. Instead, it steadied her.
Jasper powered down the phone, removed the SIM, and slid both into a small metal box at his workstation. “This goes dark until I can isolate it properly. If that device is managed the way I think it is, the SIM is only one problem.”
Katherine winced. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She took out her laptop. “This too? If I log in, they may see where I am.”
He tapped several keys on his keyboard. “I’ll route it through a shielded connection.”
“Do I want to know what that means?”
“No,” CB, Mack, and Garrett all responded.
“It’s always good to be paranoid,” Reid said. “The Agency has ways of tracking all of us.”
“Write the narrow version,” Jasper told her, gesturing at the laptop to log in. “No Cinder. No speculation. No names except the police contact and the existence of the attack.”
She nodded, entering her password. “Right.”
Lines of code displayed on his monitor. “Don’t mention SPS by name unless protocol requires it.”
“It does, but I won’t put it in for now.”
Garrett took the seat across from her. “While you do that, we’ll keep working the sedan.”
Jasper turned back to the monitor. “Partial plate is still cleaning up. I’ve got the two letters, maybe the number three.”
Mack lifted his phone. “I’ll call Alyssa about the sketch.”
CB looked at Priss. “And I’ll keep watch on the cat.”
Priss blinked at him.
“She’s judging you,” Katherine said.
“That’s cute. She’ll have to get in line.”
The room moved around her again, voices low, focused, competent. Even at his workstation, Jasper was close enough that she could sense his presence without looking at him. That helped more than she wanted to admit.
She began drafting the memo in her notebook first, because handwriting gave her time to choose every word before committing it to the Agency system.
Each phrase felt like stepping onto thin ice.
Too much truth and she might alert the wrong person.
Too little, and she might leave herself exposed.
She wrote quickly, worried about Upton possibly tracing her to this location through the laptop, regardless of Jasper’s shield.
The wording was sterile. It made no mention of the black mask, the man, or his gun. It made no mention of Jasper saying he’d stop the predator or the way her body had believed him, even while her mind continued to catalog risk.
When she finished the draft, she looked up and found Jasper watching her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You look like you’re about to tell me not to send it.”
“I’m not.”
“But?”
“But I want to know where it routes before you do.”
“I can check the reporting protocol and distribution list before sending.”
“Can you do that without triggering attention?”
“Yes.” Then she thought about it. “Probably.”
“Probably is not my favorite word.”
“Mine either.”
Before she could finish her careful search, Sebastian’s voice cut through the room. “Jasper.”
The tone was enough to pull every eye to the big screen where the former agent and Reid stood. The enhanced image of the sedan’s rear plate filled it. The mud still obscured part of it, but the cleaned frame had sharpened around two letters and a number.
Reid whistled under his breath. “The plate is government issue.”
Katherine dropped her pen.
Garrett leaned forward. “Federal?”
“Looks like it,” Jasper said. “Not standard local, state, or rental. Federal pool vehicle or a clone of one.”
The room spun so hard she had to slam one hand onto the table to steady herself.
Jasper whirled toward her, his expression instantly concerned.
A masked man had tried to kill her, and he’d been driving a sedan that might belong to the government she’d served faithfully for ten years.
She shut her eyes against the out-of-control feeling. Not just the room spinning; her whole world was.
Then a familiar hand landed on top of hers. When she looked up, Jasper was there.
“Hey,” he said, giving her hand a light squeeze. “We’ll get this figured out.”
Katherine nodded, and Priss meowed. Then Katherine put her hands on the keyboard and started typing her notification email with shaking fingers.