Chapter 8 Marshall
MARSHALL
He’d spotted the watcher before the second refill.
Gray suit, no coffee, phone screen never lighting up, attention trained on the reflection in the café’s window instead of anything on his table. A professional trying not to look like one.
Marshall had clocked him halfway through Norah’s rundown of shell companies. While she talked—eyes fierce, hands steady despite the tremor underneath—Marshall’s focus had split cleanly in two between her voice and the man in the glass behind her.
If he hadn’t been distracted, he could have listened to her talk for hours.
The woman could disassemble a global conspiracy armed with a spreadsheet and a caffeine drip.
Heaven help him, it was attractive. He’d never known financial jargon could sound like flirting.
Or perhaps he was just as far gone as Jackson implied.
But he hadn’t been able to enjoy watching Norah’s lips as she expounded on derivative exposure patterns and risk-weighted asset distortions. He’d been too busy debating how to neutralize the threat seated three tables away.
Every instinct had said move now. But he didn’t. Couldn’t.
They couldn’t make a scene. Not two blocks away from her office.
So he’d stayed put, nodding at her explanations, pretending to sip his coffee while mapping sightlines. Two cameras in range. One exit that offered cover. And a stranger who wasn’t eating, drinking, or leaving.
He’d let the scene play out until she was safely in the cab. Until he could breathe again without worrying what his expression might give away. Now, standing on the rain-slick sidewalk, that restraint felt like acid in his veins.
After tucking Norah into the cab, Marshall looped back toward the corner. Rain slid off the brim of his borrowed umbrella, pattering on the pavement. The café’s chrome sign glowed behind glass.
He adjusted his path, checking the street’s reflection in the puddles the way he’d been trained to—angles, sightlines, shadows.
He slowed near the edge of the window, shifting his grip so the umbrella blocked his face from the nearest camera.
From the outside, he was just another commuter avoiding the downpour.
From beneath the canopy, his eyes tracked the gray suit as the man pushed off the wall and started walking—same direction as the cab.
Marshall shifted course and made the collision look accidental.
“Whoa—sorry about that.” He reached out, catching the man’s shoulder as if to steady them both. The umbrella tilted forward, the black canopy a curtain of privacy between them and the street. To anyone passing by, it looked like a polite recovery. To the man in gray, it was a vise.
The stranger tried to sidestep, eyes tracking the red taillights down the block. “It’s fine,” he muttered, accent faint but there—Baltic, maybe?
Marshall smiled like a man trying to smooth over an awkward bump. “You sure? You looked like you were about to walk into traffic.”
“Excuse me,” the man said, and tugged once. Marshall didn’t let go. His fingers tightened fractionally, enough to shift the balance of power.
He used his best impression of Jackson’s cordial nature. “You’re soaked. Why don’t you share my umbrella for a second?”
“Let go,” he demanded. “I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you’re fine,” Marshall said softly, “but we should make sure we understand each other.”
That got the man’s attention. His gaze snapped back, all pretense gone. Close up, Marshall saw the details—an ill-fitting suit, the cheap watch meant to look expensive, the faint bulge under the jacket that didn’t fit with the rest of the silhouette. Shoulder holster.
“You packing for a latte run?” he asked softly, his tone at odds with the fury in his veins at the realization that an armed operative was tailing Norah.
The man froze. Then his hand twitched toward his coat.
Marshall moved faster. He pivoted, twisting the stranger’s wrist with his left hand while his right still gripped the umbrella, using its shaft as leverage against the forearm.
He pressed it into the joint with surgical precision.
A dry crack snapped, the macabre sound barely cutting through the rain.
The man hissed, teeth bared, knees buckling.
Marshall shifted, keeping him upright—outwardly still just a pair of businessmen recovering from a stumble and having a casual chat.
“Bad idea,” Marshall murmured. “You keep reaching, you’re gonna need to sign your hospital waiver with a pen in your teeth.”
The man gritted something that might have been a curse.
“Who sent you?” Marshall asked, tightening the angle.
No answer. Just the defiant lift of a jaw. Professional enough to keep his mouth shut.
Marshall leaned closer, his voice nothing but a quiet threat. “I can tell you’re not local. You’ve done surveillance, but you’re not built for extraction. And you’re alone. So either you’re freelance, or you’re bait.”
Sleet slid off both of them now, the tiny ice particles gathering around their shoes.
The man’s breath came short. Marshall’s didn’t change at all.
He should’ve stopped at the disarm. But the image of Norah glancing over her shoulder replayed in his head, and the line between control and anger blurred just enough for him to tighten once more.
Marshall glanced toward the street, then released him without warning.
The stranger stumbled, cradling his arm.
“Walk away,” Marshall said evenly. “Now. Before I decide to check the other pocket.”
The man hesitated, hate flashing behind his eyes, then turned and melted into the after-work crowd—favoring the injured wrist but not running.
Marshall watched until the gray suit vanished into the blur of umbrellas. His own pulse stayed steady, but the ghost of the crack replayed in his head. He flexed his fingers once, shaking off the adrenaline before pulling his phone.
“Joey,” he said when she picked up.
“We’ve got Jackson on it. Miranda’s already got him and Will on a flight to Geneva.” He was glad they’d found someone else to respond to the President’s request, but that wasn’t his main concern right now.
“I’ve got trouble. Gray suit, Eastern bloc accent, armed,” he said. “He was watching Norah. I intercepted.”
A beat of silence. “Define ‘intercepted.’”
“He won’t be typing for a few weeks.”
Joey muttered under her breath. “You think it’s Syndicate, or outside?”
“Outside,” Marshall said. “But on someone’s payroll.”
He started toward his car, rain slicking his hair to his forehead. “Pull traffic cam footage from K Street—five forty-five to eight. I want to know who he reports to.”
“Copy. And Marshall?”
“Yeah?”
Joey’s voice softened, rare for her. “You can’t keep this up. You’re wound too tight.”
He gave a small, humorless laugh. “Tight doesn’t slip.” He ended the call before she could argue.
The café glowed behind him, cozy and oblivious. Somewhere out there, Norah was staring out a cab window, still thinking she was being careful.
He hadn’t meant to break the guy’s wrist. But the second he realized she was being hunted, every disciplined reflex had turned into fear.
Marshall closed the umbrella and slid into his car. The rain drummed harder, a rhythm he couldn’t shake. He started the engine and checked the mirrors for anyone watching him. Clean—for now.
But he had a feeling it was going to be a very long weekend parked on Norah’s street.
Norah’s townhouse sat second from the corner—brick, narrow, tidy. One of those DC row houses that pretended security could be bought with a deadbolt and a motion light. Her living room light still burned, soft and gold against the rain-smeared glass.
She moved inside, a silhouette framed by the window.
Loose hair. Probably bare feet. A mug in one hand.
She wasn’t pacing—but she was thinking. He recognized the posture from years ago, when she used to sort homework problems out loud, letting the rhythm of logic soothe whatever emotion tried to intrude.
She still did that, apparently—talked with her hands, frowned when the numbers didn’t fit. She crossed to a shelf, pulled down a stack of papers, and started marking something up.
Sheer curtains. No awareness of the angle from the street.
It made him want to put his fist through a wall.
He told himself he was here to make sure the gray-suit hadn’t doubled back. But part of him—the part that refused to name itself—just wanted to see her safe, breathing, ordinary. Unaware that someone had followed her.
Headlights approached, tires hissed against the curb. A compact car idled outside her building. He straightened in his seat, pulse slowing automatically.
The driver got out—a kid, couldn’t be more than twenty. Hoodie. Baseball cap. White plastic bag in hand. Harmless. Probably.
Marshall still slid his hand beneath his jacket, fingers brushing the grip of the sidearm holstered there. He hated the reflex and appreciated the comfort it brought at the same time.
He watched Norah open the door. She was cautious—half a step back, one hand on the frame, not blocking the threshold. She checked the bag before paying, smiled once, said something he couldn’t hear. Then the door shut again.
Marshall took a deep breath as the delivery guy made his way back to the car, his fingers drifting away from his weapon as he relaxed incrementally.
He sat there with the headlights off. The habit of waiting came too easily.
He leaned back against the headrest, rain transitioning to snow then melting against the windshield.
He tried not to think about the way she used to hum when she worked—low and tuneless, a rhythm that got lost in her focus.
Tried not to think about what she looked like when she laughed without trying.
Tried not to remember the sound of her voice saying you should go.
But his memory didn’t take orders.
It came the way it always did when he stopped moving—sneaking through the cracks in discipline. Taking him back to that night.