Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Sebastian
The argument lasted twelve minutes.
Sebastian knew because he glanced at the clock on the briefing room wall when it started—Sutton saying “I’m going” with the flat certainty of someone stating a natural law—and glanced again when it ended, which was the moment he realized he was going to lose.
The team was assembled around the table. Claire had laid out the operational considerations: Sutton’s apartment was a known location, meaning anyone who’d tracked Ginger to Blackridge could track Sutton to her studio above the laundromat.
The sketchbooks were a priority asset. “Speed is essential,” Sebastian said. “In-and-out, minimal exposure, controlled approach. We send a two-man team. CB and Mack. They retrieve the box, bring it back. Nobody’s at risk who doesn’t need to be.”
“The box is under my bed,” Sutton said. She sat next to him, arms crossed, chin level. Behind two storage bins and a suitcase. It’s a brown box with no label. There are six brown boxes under there. I know which one has the sketchbooks because I packed them. Your two-man team doesn’t.”
“They can figure it out.”
“They’re identical boxes. I bought them in bulk from U-Haul.”
CB, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, made a sound that might have been a cough or a laugh. Sebastian ignored him.
Sebastian knew how to handle disgruntled principals. “CB and Mack can figure out which one.”
“No.” The word came out sharp enough to cut. “You don’t get to send strangers to rifle through my brother’s things—my things. Those are Penn’s sketchbooks. His drawings. The last pieces of his work that exist.”
“We can grab all six,” Mack said.
“I need clothes and my shampoo,” she argued. “And my art supplies.”
Sebastian kept his face neutral, even while his guts churned. “I can grab anything you want. Make a list.”
“You’re not leaving me.” Her voice punched at him. Then she dropped her eyes and her voice, which was worse. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
Sebastian turned to Garrett, looking for backup. Garrett studied Sutton for a moment, then caved. “This isn’t a prison. She’s free to go if she wants, even if it’s against our recommendation. You can take a team. Sebastian, you’re lead.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. He swallowed the argument he wanted to make because Garrett knew the risks—he didn’t need Sebastian repeating them.
“I’ll accompany you,” Claire said. “Consider me backup.”
Sutton stared at him with those big, brown eyes, filled with determination but also fear that he would argue again.
“Fine,” he said. “But you don’t leave my side or speak to anyone without my clearance, got it? You’re with me from the truck to the apartment and back. Non-negotiable.”
Sutton opened her mouth. Closed it. She must have seen something in his face that made her decide this particular hill wasn’t worth dying on, because she nodded once. “Non-negotiable,” she repeated dryly, like she was filing the word away for future weaponization.
CB definitely laughed that time.
They rolled out in two vehicles—Sebastian and Sutton in his truck, CB and Mack in the black Tahoe, Claire following in her federal sedan.
Three vehicles on a residential block in Blackridge’s worst neighborhood would attract attention, so the plan was layered: Mack would park two blocks north and approach on foot to establish a counter-surveillance position.
CB would take the alley behind the laundromat.
Claire would hold at the intersection of Calder, close enough to respond but far enough away to avoid drawing eyes.
Sebastian would take Sutton in through the front, once he was sure the apartment was clear.
The drive was quiet. Sutton sat in the passenger seat, thumbs tapping against each other in a rhythm that looked involuntary. She was wearing his shirt and jacket.
Sebastian parked a half block from the laundromat, killed the engine, and scanned the street.
Mid-morning in the industrial district appeared normal.
The pawn shop was open, its window display unchanged from yesterday.
The check-cashing place had a customer inside.
A delivery truck idled outside the auto body shop three doors down.
The laundromat’s front window showed two women folding clothes.
Normal rhythms. Normal noise. But normal was just the surface, the part you could see.
The part you couldn’t see was what killed you.
His ear comm clicked, and Mack’s voice said, “North position set. No hostile surveillance. Two pedestrians, both appear local, neither interested.”
CB reported in next. “Alley’s clear. Back entrance to the laundromat is unlocked. I’ve got eyes on the stairwell to the second floor.”
Claire followed up. “Holding at Calder. You’re clear to approach.”
Sebastian turned to Sutton. “Stay behind me going in. Don’t stop moving until we’re inside with the door locked. If I say down, you get down. If I say run, you run to the truck.”
She held his gaze for a beat. He watched the reality of the situation settle over her—the earpieces, the coordinated positions, his orders rubbing against her independence. This wasn’t a ride home from the compound. This was an operation.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Let’s go.”
Sebastian led, his hand resting on the sidearm beneath his jacket.
He told Sutton to place a hand on his back and keep it there.
She didn’t argue for once, her hand resting just above his belt.
Trust, even reluctant trust, was necessary.
She was inside his radius now. Anyone who wanted her would have to come through him first.
The entrance to the apartment was a narrow door beside the laundromat’s rear exit, opening onto a steep staircase with institutional carpet worn thin in the center.
The hallway at the top was dim—one fluorescent tube, the other dead.
Two doors. Sutton’s was on the left, marked with a brass number that had tarnished to brown.
“Key?” he asked.
She pulled it from her pocket—she’d had her keys on her the night of the murder, not her phone. Small mercy. She held it out. He took it, positioned her behind him against the hallway wall, and unlocked the door.
The apartment was dark. He went in first, sidearm drawn, clearing the space in the systematic sweep he could do in his sleep.
It was a studio layout, one room serving as bedroom, living area, and kitchen.
There was a bathroom the size of a closet.
A window facing the street, another facing the alley.
No one inside. No signs of forced entry.
But the place was a mess.
Clothes were draped over the back of a chair. Sketchbooks were stacked on the counter beside a cold coffee mug. A thrift-store quilt bunched at the foot of an unmade bed. Dishes sat unwashed in the sink. Three succulents decorated the windowsill, two of them surrendering to entropy.
Sebastian stood in the middle of Sutton Crenshaw’s life and tried to determine whether someone had been through it or if this was normal.
There was no mold, no smell, nothing unsanitary.
Just the lived-in disorder of a person who existed alone on limited resources and didn’t perform tidiness for an audience.
But he couldn’t distinguish between a drawer Sutton had left open and one left open by an intruder. Not without her.
He holstered the sidearm. “Clear. Come in.”
Sutton stepped through the doorway and stopped. He watched her take in the room. She didn’t move for a long moment. Then she exhaled—slow, controlled, the release valve on something pressurized—and walked to the bed.
Sebastian closed and locked the door, then moved to the window. He angled himself beside the frame where he could see the street without being visible from below. The delivery truck had left. A man walked a dog on the opposite sidewalk. CB’s voice came through the earpiece: “Alley still clear.”
Behind him, Sutton was on her knees beside the bed, pulling out storage bins.
Cardboard scraped carpet. Then came the soft thud of objects being moved.
He kept his eyes on the street, but his awareness tracked her—the rhythm of her breathing, the pauses that meant she’d found something that hurt, the care she used handling the boxes.
That care had nothing to do with their contents.
It had everything to do with the fact Penn’s hands had touched them.
He heard her go still. He turned. She was sitting on the floor with a brown box open in her lap. Her hands rested on the edges, fingers curled over the cardboard, trembling. Inside the box were the notebooks along with a folded T-shirt and a pocket knife.
He wanted to go to her, but he knew she didn’t want that.
She hadn’t asked for space, either, but he read her posture—the rigid spine, the locked jaw, the white-knuckle grip on the box.
She was a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will.
Crossing the room would crack the seal. So he stayed by the window.
Gave her the dignity of falling apart or not on her own terms.
But he didn’t look away. She closed her eyes. Breathed. Opened them.
“Got them,” she said, almost steady.
“Gather what you need of your own things. We’re at six minutes.”
She stood, setting the sketchbooks on the bed.
She grabbed a backpack and threw some clothes and bath products into it.
She went to the beat-up desk and stuffed art supplies in next.
Her gaze moved across the space—quick, sharp, the same instinct he’d seen at the parlor when she’d assessed him in the doorway.
She wasn’t looking at her things with nostalgia. She was looking at them with suspicion.
“The dresser.” Her voice went tight. “The second drawer. I always close it all the way because the track sticks. It’s open.”