CHAPTER 16
Tessa
I’ve been here long enough that I’ve stopped noticing how beautiful the Jameson lobby is and that’s probably not a good sign.
I’m at the long communal table nearest the windows, Erik’s notebook open in front of me.
On my screen is a spreadsheet into which I’m transferring data into columns that Josie can cross-reference with the information already fed into BOB. My coffee went cold twenty minutes ago.
Erik was meticulous in his documentation.
The notebook I found in his sister’s shed is dense and methodical, his handwriting small and precise.
Every page is dated in the upper left corner, and every entry is structured the same way—date, name or company, amount or action, a brief notation in what looks like a personal shorthand that I’m still decoding.
I turn another page and find a column of dates that align almost perfectly with the fire timeline Josie built from satellite data. My fingers type steadily, transferring the information, my brain already three steps ahead, trying to understand what he knew and when he knew it.
“You’re here early.”
I look up to find Josie crossing the lobby toward me, coffee tumbler in one hand, tablet tucked under her arm. She’s dressed with her usual precise ease—dark wide-leg trousers, a fitted cream blouse, hair down and straight today instead of twisted up.
She pulls out the chair across from me and sits, setting her tumbler down and glancing at the spread of notes between us. “Where’s Cole?”
“Out,” I say, and I hear the edge in my voice before I can smooth it.
Josie hears it too. “Doing what?”
“Another job,” I say. “He and Reid left about an hour ago.” I keep my eyes on the page in front of me. “A client situation in Bellevue. Malik briefed them at seven.”
A beat of silence. “Ah,” Josie says knowingly, her eyes slanted with just a touch of sympathy.
“I’m fine,” I say, which is what you say when you’re not.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m pissy,” I correct, sitting back in my chair and pushing the notebook aside. “I’m pissy because I’m stuck here like a prisoner and I know I’m being unreasonable about it so I’m trying to just put my head down and work through it.”
Josie wraps both hands around her tumbler and regards me with the calm, assessing expression of a woman who has spent her career reading situations accurately. “You’re not being unreasonable,” she says. “You’ve been inside this building for four days.”
“Five,” I correct.
“Five days,” she amends. “And you watched Cole and Reid walk out the door this morning to go do fieldwork while you stayed here.”
“While I’m stuck here,” I clarify. “Like a very comfortable, very well-secured houseplant.”
The corner of Josie’s mouth twitches. “I’ve never heard anyone describe themselves as a houseplant before.”
“First time for everything.”
She studies me for a moment. “It won’t be forever, Tessa.”
“I know,” I say with a frustrated sigh because logically, I do know.
“It’s just—” I stop, tapping my fingertip on the open notebook.
“I’ve been chasing this story for weeks.
I’ve run toward danger, lost a source, witnessed a murder, had men break into my home, and through all of it I kept moving.
I kept working.” I look at her, holding out my hands helplessly. “Sitting still feels like losing.”
Josie nods slowly, a soft smile of genuine acknowledgment.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she says.
I sit back further, crossing my arms. “How do you stand it? Being at a desk all day?” I glance toward her glass-walled office. “I’m always moving. Talking to people. Running down leads in person. The idea of spending most of my working hours in front of a computer would make me absolutely insane.”
Josie laughs, eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Oh, dear Tessa… I am not a desk jockey,” she says, with the mild emphasis of someone who has made this clarification before and doesn’t particularly mind doing so again.
“I’m a fully operational agent. I go on missions, run field assessments and I’ve done extractions.
” She lifts an eyebrow. “I just also happen to be exceptionally good at what I do behind a screen, which means that’s where Malik puts me when there’s a choice. ”
I blink. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t,” she says easily. “Most people assume and it’s fine.
” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Intelligence is my specialty, not my limitation. And in fact,” she says with a sheepish smile, “I’m going out tomorrow to do some work with Cole down at the docks.
” She then winces at the reminder that I’ll be stuck here like a houseplant. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say with an exaggerated wave of indifference. “I’ll just sit here and shrivel up from boredom.”
Josie snickers. “That’s dramatic.”
“How did you end up in intelligence specifically?” I’m genuinely curious rather than just filling silence. Josie is the kind of person who makes you want to understand how they got where they are.
Her expression brightens and she crosses her arms on the table. “I was born into it, honestly. My dad was in intelligence in the marines. He’s a general now.” A small private smile crosses her face. “Growing up, dinner table conversation was… educational.”
“I imagine.”
“He never told me anything classified,” she says.
“But he taught me how to think. How to look at a system and find where it was vulnerable. How to follow a thread without pulling it too hard.” Her lips quirk upward.
“I was taking apart computers and putting them back together by the time I was eleven. Dad thought it was funny. Mom thought it was expensive.”
I smile. “Where did you go to school?”
“Undergrad at UW,” she says. “Computer engineering. Then Carnegie Mellon for my master’s in cybersecurity analytics.”
“Carnegie Mellon,” I repeat, impressed despite myself. “That’s serious.”
“It was serious work,” she agrees. “After that I went to the NSA.”
My eyebrows lift. “The NSA. That sounds—”
“Incredible,” she finishes. “It was. The work was extraordinary. The access, the resources, the scope of what we were doing.” She pauses, turning her tumbler slowly on the table. “I loved it.”
“So why leave?”
She’s quiet for a moment and the pause feels lightly curated rather than evasive.
“The NSA is all-consuming,” she says finally.
“Which is fine when you’re twenty-six and the work is everything.
But I started wanting…” She stops, offers a sheepish smile.
“I wanted a life. Dinner somewhere other than my desk. A dog, maybe. Someone to come home to. The whole embarrassingly clichéd white picket fence scenario. Does that sound stupid?”
The way she says it holds a vulnerability behind her desire to find a deeper connection than just work—makes me like her more than I already did. “I think that makes you not just smart, but well-rounded. Is that why you came to Jameson?”
“Seattle specifically,” she confirms with a nod. “A ground floor opportunity and I could still do work that matters without it overtaking my entire life.” She shrugs one shoulder. “Still working on the rest of it.”
“The white picket fence.”
“The white picket fence,” she agrees dryly. “Although I haven’t found the man to inhabit it with me yet, and I’m still working on a dog.”
I open my mouth to respond—I’m not sure with what, maybe something about how she’ll find it, which sounds so hollow—when her phone buzzes against the table.
She glances down at it and goes still.
“What?” I ask immediately, because I have spent enough time around people to know when a response resonates.
Josie picks up the phone, reading. “Facial recognition results came back,” she says, her voice carefully even. “From the breach at your house.”
My pulse ticks up. “And?”
“One confirmed hit.” She looks up at me. “A man named Thomas Vega.”
The name hits me like a static shock. “Thomas Vega,” I murmur as I grab the notebook and start flipping pages. The name was one of a dozen Erik had listed that I’d flagged to research, and I hadn’t gotten to it yet.
There.
Thomas Vega. A date beside it from eight months ago and a second date three months later. Both circled. A notation beside the second one in Erik’s shorthand that I haven’t decoded yet but that suddenly feels a great deal more urgent.
I press my finger to the page and look up at Josie. “He’s in the notebook.”
“Really?” she asks, eyebrows raised in pleasant surprise.
“Erik circled his name as if it was more important for some reason.”
For a moment we just look at each other across the table, trying to grasp the magnitude of this information. A man who broke into my house was on Erik Lanning’s radar.
“This is big,” she says.
“Huge,” I agree.
Josie holds up her hand, palm out, and I slap it without hesitation. The high five echoes off the exposed brick and the reclaimed timber ceiling and probably reaches the second floor, and neither of us cares even slightly.
“Okay,” Josie says, pulling her tablet toward her, already typing. “Let me pull everything on him. Military record—because you just know a man like that has prior experience—financials, travel—”
“We need to connect him to SAPG,” I murmur thoughtfully.
“Mmm,” Josie agrees, fingers flying.
I look down at the notebook, the name circled twice by a man who knew exactly how dangerous Thomas Vega was and tried to leave a trail before anyone came looking.
Erik documented atrocities that he’d stumbled upon and it cost him his life.
“Pull it all,” I say quietly. “Everything you can find on him.”
Josie is already working.