Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Sebastian
The last time Sebastian had felt like this, he’d been lying on Italian marble with a bullet in his side.
The split lip was nothing—he’d taken worse in sparring. The bruised ribs would fade in a week. His body was a tool he maintained, and damage was part of the job description.
It was everything else that brought back bad memories.
He stood in the compound’s bathroom, gripping the edges of the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
Blood had dried along his jaw. His lower lip was swollen, the split raw at the center.
His pupils were dilated, the flat operational calm he’d worn like a mask for six years replaced by something raw. Something exposed.
He hadn’t felt this since the fundraiser.
Not when he’d resigned from the Service.
Not when his father had written him off.
Not when he’d driven to Montana and decided the rest of his life would be lived at arm’s length from every person in it.
Through all of that, the thirty-second rule had held. Feel it, seal it, function.
Today, the seal had cracked. Standing in that loading area, watching the muzzle rise toward Sutton, his body had done what it was trained to do.
But the thing driving it hadn’t been training. Training was controlled, measured. What he’d felt in the half second before he’d tackled that man was animalistic and absolute—a terror so complete it had wiped every tactical calculation from his brain and left nothing but a feral response.
He splashed cold water on his face. It stung the split lip.
He never should have taken her to the hospital. He’d known the risks and done it anyway.
Because Sutton had asked. Because she’d told him Dom was the closest thing she had to family anymore, and the look on her face had bypassed every professional instinct he possessed.
If that bullet had been two feet lower—
He shut down the thought. Pressed his palms against his eyes. Breathed.
He could still see Claire’s words in the text that had come through before they’d made it back to the compound. I warned you it was a bad idea.
She was right. He’d dressed it up in operational language—controlled environment, contained risk—but the truth was simpler and uglier. He’d let a woman he was supposed to protect walk into a kill zone because she’d looked at him with her brown eyes and he couldn’t tell her no.
He dried his face. Straightened his shirt. He changed into a clean one from his locker, ignoring the protest from his ribs as he pulled it over his head. Muscle by muscle. Conscious control.
By the time he walked into the briefing room, the mask was back in place.
Claire’s team would run the man’s prints, cross-reference databases, and produce a file in a few hours. But then Vivi walked into the briefing room, took one look at the photograph of their attacker on the screen, and said, “I know him.”
The room went quiet. The doctor stood with her arms crossed, studying the image. In the shot, the man was now stripped of the blue scrubs, photographed in Claire’s custody with scrapes on his cheek and a look of flat, professional indifference.
“That’s Axe Booker,” she said. “He’s a former NSA contractor. We briefly overlapped when I was conducting psychological assessments at Fort Meade. He was on the operational side—field work, not analysis. The kind of work that doesn’t appear in official reports.”
“Cleanup,” Garrett said.
Vivi nodded. “He took care of problems that needed to disappear quietly. He was skilled, discreet, and entirely without conscience. I flagged him in two assessments as a high-risk personality—narcissistic traits, diminished empathy, elevated comfort with violence. My recommendation was termination of his contract.” She paused. “The recommendation was overruled.”
Sebastian wanted to hit something. A man the NSA’s own psychologist had identified as dangerous, kept on the payroll because his particular brand of dangerous was useful. It was the kind of institutional failure that gave rise to true conspiracies.
Claire’s voice came through the speaker.
She was letting Booker cool his heels in interrogation before she took her first swing at him.
“We’ve confirmed he has one of the tattoos.
It’s on the back of his neck, hidden under his hairline.
Same design as one of those in Penn Crenshaw’s sketchbooks, but the placement is different from the inner bicep that Ginger showed Sutton. ”
“Rank,” Sebastian said.
“That’s my read, too.” The sound of shuffling papers came from Claire’s end.
“The bicep placement is standard—visible to other members during physical contact, but concealable under a sleeve. The neck placement, hidden under hair, suggests a higher position in the hierarchy. Someone who doesn’t need to display membership.
Someone who’s known by role, not by mark. ”
Vivi tilted her head. “The more hidden the tattoo, the higher the rank. Penn designed a system that communicates status through concealment. That’s remarkably sophisticated.”
“That’s Penn,” Sutton said from the corner of the room. She paced quietly, still keyed up. Her voice was steady, but her hands were fisted.
Sebastian looked at her. She met his eyes, held them. He saw exhaustion, fear, the residual tremor of adrenaline. But underneath all of it, the same stubborn clarity that had carried her through everything since the night she’d shown up on his porch.
“Is Booker talking?” Garrett asked.
“Not yet,” Claire said. “He lawyered up immediately. But we’re building the case independent of his cooperation. His background, and now this NSA connection, the tattoo placement—it appears Booker isn’t just a member of this organization. He’s a recruiter. Possibly the recruiter.”
Sebastian watched Sutton’s face as the implication landed. If Booker was a recruiter—if he was the man who identified assets, cultivated them, pulled them into the network—then he was likely the man who’d done that with Penn.
Sutton stopped pacing, narrowed her eyes at his picture.
“We’re working to establish a direct connection between Booker and Penn,” Claire continued. “But the tattoo is strong circumstantial evidence.”
“No one but Penn could have done it,” Sutton said, as much to herself as the room.
“In the meantime,” Claire said, “Booker’s not going anywhere.
But I want to be clear—until we know the full scope of this network, until we understand who he reports to and whether there are additional operatives in play—Sutton remains under protection.
Booker may be their cleanup man, but that doesn’t mean he’s the only one. ”
Sutton’s gaze swung to his, her eyes wide. She’d thought it was over. Thought she might get to sleep in her own bed tonight.
Was it wrong that he was glad he got another night with her?
An hour later, Vivi found the two of them in the kitchen, Sutton turning one of her pens over and over. Sebastian was at the table across from her, pretending to read a security brief on his tablet. He wasn’t reading—he was monitoring his principal.
“Sutton.” Vivi leaned against the doorframe, casual, unhurried. She’d changed from her blazer into a cardigan—a deliberate softening Sebastian recognized. “Would you come sit with me for a bit? My office is more comfortable than this kitchen, and I’d like to talk. Just talk. No agenda.”
Sutton’s gaze flicked to Sebastian. He saw the instant wariness—the resistance to therapy warring with the fact that she’d nearly been shot three hours ago, Dom was in a hospital bed, and the walls of this compound were closing in.
“Only if Sebastian comes,” Sutton said.
Vivi’s eyebrows rose a fraction. Sebastian kept his face neutral. Vivi had been trying to get him into her office since he’d arrived at SPS, and he’d dodged every attempt with the practiced evasion of a man who’d rather take another bullet than sit on a couch and discuss his feelings.
“That’s not—” he started.
“I need you there.” Sutton’s eyes locked on his. A woman who’d been through too much in too few days, asking the one person she trusted to sit in a room with her while someone tried to help. “Please.”
The please did it. Just like at the parlor—the word she dragged out against her will, the one that cost her something to say. He couldn’t refuse it then. He couldn’t refuse it now. “Sure.”
Vivi’s office was warm. Not physically—the HVAC kept every room in the compound at the same regulated sixty-eight degrees—but in the way the space was arranged.
Bookshelves filled with volumes that had been read.
A framed photograph of Vivi and Ian on what looked like a hiking trail, both of them laughing at something off-camera.
The famous Costco couch. The sound machine, mercifully silent.
Her pet birds sat in the cage in the corner, chirping quietly.
Sutton sat on the couch. She patted the cushion next to her, and Sebastian eased down on it.
Vivi settled into her desk chair and picked up a mug of tea. “First things first,” she said. She fixed them both with a look that managed to be stern and amused simultaneously. “The notebook.”
Sutton went still. Sebastian felt a flicker of guilt.
“You two raided my office like a pair of teenagers,” Vivi said. “All you needed to do was ask.”
Sutton bit her lip. “In our defense, you weren’t here.”
“I’m always reachable.”
“It was his idea.” Sutton pointed at Sebastian.
He opened his mouth to object. Closed it. She wasn’t wrong.
Vivi shook her head, the amusement winning over the sternness.
“The notebook is yours. Consider it a gift. But next time, a text message will suffice.” She set the tea on her desk and let the moment settle.
“Sutton, you’ve been through multiple traumatic events—your brother’s death, witnessing Ginger’s murder, Dom’s assault, and now today’s incident at the hospital.
That’s a significant accumulation of stress and fear. ”