Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
For three full breaths, Katherine had truly thought the intruder was leaving.
She’d stood frozen beside the bedroom window with Priss clamped against her chest and Jasper’s voice low in her ear.
Her phone was slick in her hand from sweat.
Panic did strange things to the body. It made her fingers damp and her throat dry.
It turned a familiar room into a diagram of exits, obstacles, failures.
You should’ve stayed in the archives, Ms. Townsend. The words swam in her head, thick and haunting.
Her mind had split in two. One half had understood the distance from the door to the bathroom, the angle of the gun, the partial obstruction of the dresser, the likelihood that he would have to squeeze sideways to enter.
The other half had stood barefoot and useless, clutching a phone as if Jasper could reach through it and pull her out.
The man had hit the door again. The dresser shifted. The gap opened wide enough for his shoulder.
The gun was pointed at her. She saw the intent in the intruder’s eyes.
Katherine lurched toward the bathroom.
She dropped just as the gun went off. Her knees buckled, and she crashed onto her hands as the bullet punched through the window behind her. Glass exploded in a bright, violent spray. Cold air rushed into the room. Something hot stung across her cheek.
She screamed. The phone flew from her hand.
“Katherine!” Jasper’s voice came thin and distant through the speaker. “Katherine!”
She twisted on her hands and knees, half-blinded by shock, searching for it. The phone lay a few feet away, screen glowing, Jasper’s name bright against the floorboards.
She reached for it. The bedroom door gave way another foot.
The man jammed his body through the opening and came toward her. He was taller than she expected. Broader. His boot kicked her phone away and it crashed into the broken lamp. The screen went dark and Jasper’s voice vanished.
No.
No, no, no.
The man turned his masked face toward her. She scrambled for the bathroom, palms slipping on a few tiny shards of glass. Pain sparked in her left hand.
He caught her ankle. His gloved hand clamped around her bare skin, hard enough to bruise, and yanked her backward.
Katherine screamed again, twisting onto her back. She kicked with her free foot and caught him in the leg. He grunted but didn’t let go.
“Hellcat,” he said, breathing hard through the slit in the mask. “Didn’t expect that from an archivist.”
He dragged her another foot.
Something inside her snapped. Fury roared through her body. How dare he? How dare this man come into her room, put his hands on her, point a gun at her, say her name through a mask as if she were a problem to be managed?
She was not a file to be removed. She was not an anomaly to be reclassified.
She was not a goddamn clerical error someone could bury in the routing log.
She kicked again, harder this time, aiming for his knee. He shifted enough that she missed the joint and hit his thigh.
His hand tightened on her ankle. “That’s enough.”
“Go to hell.” She jackknifed upward, trying to rake him with her nails. He swore, released her ankle, and grabbed her by the hair instead.
Pain flashed white across her scalp. He hauled her upright.
Katherine staggered, one hand flying to his wrist, the other clawing for balance. Her feet slid. Her cheek stung. Her lungs burned. Under the bed, Priss made a horrible, low sound Katherine had never heard from her before.
The man shoved her toward the bed. The gun was still in his hand. She saw the dark fabric of his mask. The sweat at the corner of his mouth. Pale skin around his eyes, which were a dull, nothing brown. He had turned himself into absence.
But absence was data.
Her nightstand was at her hip. Books. She had books.
Her right hand closed around the top one in the stack, a heavy, hardcover history of Cold War intelligence failures she’d been rereading. She swung it with everything she had.
The book hit the side of his face with a flat, ugly crack. He grunted and stumbled half a step. Not enough.
But enough for her. Katherine shoved him with both hands.
At that exact moment, Priss shot out from beneath the bed like a gray demon launched from a cannon. She streaked between the intruder’s legs. He lost his balance, and his arm flew wide. The gun went off again.
The sound punched into the room. The bullet hissed past Katherine’s face so close she felt the air move. It buried itself in the wall near the closet with a hard thunk.
Priss vanished through the half-open bedroom door in a streak of fur and righteous panic. The gun bounced on the floor and spun away, disappearing under the bed, as the man fell into the dresser.
From the back of the house came the sound of the door crashing against the wall as it was thrown open. “Katherine!”
Jasper’s voice tore through the rental, no longer filtered through the phone. Real. Close. Furious.
The man heard it, too.
He glanced at the half-open bedroom door and then frantically searched for his weapon. Jasper was coming, and the man had seconds.
He turned for the window.
Katherine staggered back, raising the book again. But he lunged toward the opening, grabbed the frame, and hauled himself through.
Glass tore at his jacket. The old wooden frame groaned. He dropped and disappeared.
“Katherine!”
The bedroom door exploded inward, and the dresser toppled sideways with a crash. Jasper came through with his weapon drawn, eyes sweeping the room in a single terrifying pass.
Window. Bed. Bathroom. Katherine.
He reached her in three strides. “Where is he?”
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She lifted one shaking hand and pointed. Jasper’s gaze snapped to the broken window. “Out,” she managed.
He looked her over, his brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?”
Her throat was too tight to speak. She shook her head.
He moved to the window, weapon steady, as he looked into the yard.
For one awful second, Katherine thought he might go after him. “Don’t.” Her voice cracked on the word. “Don’t leave me. Please.”
Jasper turned back. Whatever he saw in her face ended the decision. He crossed to her, holstered his gun, and caught her just as her knees gave out.
She fell into him. Her face buried into his chest and she shook so hard her teeth chattered.
He wrapped an arm around her back, pulling her close. “You’re okay,” he said. His voice was rough, almost unrecognizable. “I’ve got you.”
Her hands grasped at his shirt. “He knew my name,” she said.
Jasper was quiet for a heartbeat. “He’s gone now.”
“He had a gun.”
“I know.”
“He shot at me.”
Jasper’s grip on her tightened. “I know.”
Cold air poured in through the broken window. She felt his heart beating hard beneath her cheek. Too hard. In that moment, he wasn’t the Jasper who made dry jokes about her love language.
This Jasper had been afraid.
For her.
The realization slid through the terror and lodged deep in her chest.
A siren wailed in the distance. Priss appeared, belly low to the floor, tail puffed and eyes enormous. She stopped just beyond the toppled dresser and gave one indignant, warbling meow.
Katherine made a sound that broke somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
Jasper looked over his shoulder. “She okay?”
“I think so.” Katherine tried to pull back, but her legs wobbled.
Jasper didn’t let go.“Look at me.”
She tilted her face up.
His eyes moved over her with controlled intensity. Cheek. Throat. Shoulders. Arms. Hands. A quick, efficient inventory as he followed the blood.
His jaw flexed when he came back to the cut on her cheek. His thumb wiped at the blood dripping down her skin. “Glass?”
“I think so.”
“Anywhere else?”
She showed him her palm. “It’s not deep.”
He cupped the side of her face, eyes searching hers. “You’re going to need to sit down.”
Her gaze dropped to the bed. The sheets were twisted. The man had touched them when he stumbled. While this room had never felt like hers in the time she’d stayed here, she couldn’t stand being inside it anymore. “Not in here. Not on the bed.”
“Of course,” Jasper said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
He guided her ever so gently into the hall. Priss darted ahead of them, then doubled back to weave around Katherine’s ankles. Katherine nearly tripped.
Jasper steadied her. “Careful.”
“She saved my life.”
His gaze flicked down to Priss. “Good girl.”
Another sound escaped Katherine. Closer to a sob this time. “You and Priss—you both saved me.”
The siren grew louder. Jasper helped her into the living room and eased her onto the couch. She sat because standing required a version of herself she could no longer locate.
He crouched in front of her. “Stay here. I need to clear the house and check the yard.”
“No.” Her hand shot out and caught his sleeve. He was the only solid thing in this house for her.
His gaze dropped to her grip on him, then came back to her face. “I won’t go far,” he said. “I need to make sure he’s not still outside.”
“Don’t leave me.” The words came out before she could stop them, shaky and as panicked as Priss had sounded.
His expression shifted, calming and reassuring her. “Okay,” he said, patting the top of her hand. “I won’t.”
She released his sleeve slowly, embarrassed and not embarrassed at all.
Headlights swept across the front window. Jasper glanced out. “That’s Garrett. He’s head of operations at SPS.”
A man’s voice called from the open back door. “Jasper?”
“Living room,” Jasper answered.
Garrett appeared, weapon in hand, expression grim. His gaze swept Katherine, the hallway behind them, Jasper’s face.
“Jesus,” Garrett said.
“He went out the bedroom window,” Jasper told him. “He was masked and armed. We need the perimeter checked. He fired at her.”
“His gun,” Katherine said. “I think it’s under the bed.”
“He dropped his weapon?” Jasper seemed shocked.
Katherine wrapped both hands around herself and tried to stop shaking. It didn’t work. “Because of Priss. I fought him, but she tripped him.” Her teeth chattered again. “He fell and dropped it.”
Jasper glanced up. “We need to secure it.”
Garrett’s expression hardened. “I’ll take care of it.”
The sirens arrived outside in a burst of red and blue. The lights flashed through the front windows, striping the room, Jasper, the walls.
Garrett returned, and went to greet the officers.
Jasper stayed with her. Katherine looked up at him. “The file.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Did he take the file?” Her voice sounded distant, detached.
“No,” Jasper said, and there was something dark in his voice now. Something she hadn’t heard before. “He didn’t come for the papers.”
She swallowed. Her throat hurt. Everything hurt. “Then he was here for me. The way he said my name…”
Jasper lowered himself beside her on the couch, close enough that his shoulder touched hers.
“He came for you,” he said, “but he failed.”
She stared down at her shaking hands. A thin red line crossed her palm. The smeared blood looked too bright against her skin. “I froze.”
“You fought.”
“I froze first.”
“You still fought.”
She closed her eyes. The image came back of the black mask and the eye at the crack in the door. The gun. The window exploding. His hand on her ankle. His fist in her hair.
Her eyes flew open with a gasp. “I hit him with a book,” she said.
Jasper blinked. “What?”
“I hit him with a book.” The absurdity of it made her huff a tight lauch. “It’s about Cold War intelligence failures.”
His mouth moved, not quite a smile. “That tracks.”
Another broken laugh escaped her, and this one became a sob halfway through.
Jasper put an arm around her shoulders. “After we talk to the police, we’ll get your cuts cleaned up.”
Outside, figures moved through the flashing lights. Voices rose and fell. Someone called for crime scene tape. Someone else asked about the broken window.
Over the next twenty minutes, the world resumed around her in procedures, reports, photographs, and evidence markers. Katherine sat on the couch in the middle of it, wrapped in Jasper’s steadiness, Priss between her ankles, as she answered the officers’ questions, then a detective’s.
It was all a horrible dream. A nightmare. Someone had come into this house to kill her.
She glanced at Jasper, a few feet away, talking to the detective. If not for him—and her cat—she might be dead.
But she wasn’t. She was still alive.
And mad as hell.