Chapter 11 #3
She shook her head, but she was still smiling when they left the common area. Priss trotted ahead of them, tail high, apparently satisfied with the outcome of the evening’s athletic event.
“I’d like the rest of that sandwich,” Katherine said.
Jasper’s smug look made her punch his arm, but he retrieved it from the kitchen.
She finished it off on the walk back to his office.
The thread pulling Katherine back to the Vance papers was still there, but it wasn’t as tight now.
Her shoulders had loosened. Her breathing had settled. She could think again.
Just as they were about to enter Jasper’s office, Vivi came around the corner from the residential wing.
She wasn’t running, but there was urgency in the way she moved. Her gaze landed on Jasper first, then Katherine, and the lightness from the game room vanished.
“Jasper,” Vivi said. “We have a visitor at the gate.”
Jasper stopped. “Who?”
“Agency courier. He says he’s here under Upton’s authority to retrieve the Vance papers.”
The floor tilted beneath Katherine’s feet.
“The deadline isn’t up,” Jasper said. “Upton didn’t mention sending anyone.”
“He has a hard-copy transfer order with Katherine’s name, the Vance collection number, and what looks like an authorization code from Upton’s office,” Vivi said. “He’s also in a dark SUV with government-issued plates.”
Katherine’s stomach tightened. “How did he know I was here?”
The question stripped the last bit of air from the hallway.
Jasper’s gaze sharpened. “Not your laptop. I routed the Agency login through a shielded connection.”
“My phone?”
“Powered down and isolated.”
“Then how?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer scared her more than she wanted it to. Jasper always knew, or at least he knew where to start looking. The fact that this had reached the gate before he could explain how made the compound feel less sealed than it had five minutes ago.
Vivi’s expression had gone grim. “The order creates a problem. We can’t verify it without calling Upton’s office directly.”
“And if Upton sent him, he’ll confirm it,” Katherine said. “If he didn’t, we alert him that someone is using his name.”
“Either way, nothing leaves this compound,” Jasper said.
“Agreed,” Vivi said.
Jasper entered his office first, Katherine and Vivi on his heels.
The bank of security monitors on the wall showed the front gate in crisp black-and-white.
A dark SUV waited outside, clean government plates visible beneath the gate lights.
A man stood beside the passenger door with a document folder tucked under one arm.
Jasper stepped to the console and adjusted the camera angle.
The image sharpened, but not enough to give them a clean view of the man’s face.
He looked like every federal courier Katherine had ever passed in a hallway: dark coat, patient posture, paperwork in hand, the bland confidence of someone who expected procedure to open doors.
“I’ll go look at the order,” Jasper said. “Nothing gets through the gate.”
“I’m going with you,” Katherine said.
“No.”
“You don’t know who he is.”
“That’s why you’re not going.”
“He asked for me.”
“That’s another reason you’re not going.”
His voice had gone flat and final. She hated it. She also understood it, which made hating it more complicated.
“Jasper—”
“You stay with Vivi. You do not step outside this building.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he was already moving. He opened a locked drawer in his desk, and Katherine saw the weapon as he clipped it at his waist.
The office door closed behind him.
Katherine’s heart plummeted. She should be the one confronting whoever Upton had sent a full day before the deadline.
Anger rolled through her. Of course, he’d sent someone and hadn’t informed her.
Of course, the retrieval order looked proper enough to create doubt and early enough to create panic.
Her fingers tapped the desktop. She was being locked out of this—whatever it was—all over again.
Vivi stayed beside her, phone in hand. There was no one useful to call. Not without alerting Upton, and not without giving someone inside the Agency a chance to make the order legitimate after the fact.
On the monitor, Jasper crossed the compound yard toward the gate.
His posture was easy, almost loose, but Katherine knew enough about him now to see the readiness beneath it.
The man at the gate turned slightly, tracking his approach.
For one second, the camera caught the lower half of his face in profile.
The world went white at the edges.
Thin upper lip. Fuller lower one. Slight asymmetry that made even a neutral expression look cruel.
Katherine heard the words again, low and bored through broken wood. You should’ve stayed in the archives, Ms. Townsend.
Her breath left her body. Her muscles locked up. “That’s him.” The words were nothing but a whisper.
Vivi’s hand tightened on her arm. “Katherine?”
“That’s him.” Her voice came out louder but raw this time. “That’s the man from my bedroom.”
Outside, Jasper was still walking toward the gate, and the man who’d tried to kill her had one hand in his coat pocket. Katherine didn’t stop to think.
She ran.