Chapter 5 #2
Sebastian crossed the room in three strides.
The drawer had the kind of gap a casual observer would dismiss.
The contents—folded T-shirts and tank tops—looked undisturbed at first glance, but the fabric at the top had been displaced.
Pushed aside rather than lifted. The way someone searching in a hurry would do.
“And the bookshelf,” Sutton said. She’d gone pale. “My copy of The Urban Sketcher is on the wrong side. I keep it on the left of The Practice and Science of Drawing, not the right.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just misplace it?”
Her eyes met his. “I’m sure.”
Someone had been in this apartment. Careful enough to avoid forced entry, but not careful enough for a woman who organized her bookshelf and remembered which drawers stuck.
“We’re leaving,” Sebastian said. “Now.”
Sutton didn’t argue. The color drained from her face. She hugged the backpack against her body.
He keyed the comms. “Team, the apartment’s been searched. We’re coming out hot. CB, hold the stairwell. Mack, I need eyes on every vehicle on this block.”
CB’s voice, immediate and sharp, responded. “Copy. Stairwell’s mine.”
Mack said, “There are two new vehicles since we arrived. Silver pickup, Montana plates, north end. White sedan, no plates visible, south end, driver’s side window cracked.”
No plates, window cracked. Sebastian’s pulse didn’t change—it never did in the field—but the calculus in his head shifted from cautious to urgent. “Claire, we need that sedan checked. Possible hostile surveillance.”
“Moving,” Claire said.
Sebastian took Sutton’s arm. His hand wrapped above her elbow, steady, guiding. She let him.
They went down the stairs fast. CB filled the doorway at the bottom like a human barricade, his eyes scanning the street over Sebastian’s head. Sebastian moved Sutton to the truck, opened the passenger door, put her inside, and closed it. He was behind the wheel three seconds later.
His comm clicked with Claire’s voice. “Sedan was empty. No registration, no personal effects. It’s been wiped.”
A surveillance vehicle, parked on Sutton’s block. Waiting.
Sebastian started the truck and pulled out. In the rearview, CB was already moving to the Tahoe, Mack materializing from a doorway to meet him. Claire’s sedan fell in behind.
Sutton sat in the passenger seat with her backpack in her lap, her arms wrapped around it, staring straight ahead. Armor. Anchor. The sketchbooks inside a piece of her brother she could still hold.
Sebastian drove. He didn’t tell her it was going to be okay, because he didn’t know that. He didn’t tell her she was safe, because safe had lost its meaning for her the previous night.
He checked mirrors and varied his speed. Beside him, Sutton held the box like it was the last solid thing in a world that had gone liquid.
Back at the compound, the team regrouped. Sebastian filled Garrett in. Claire had Jasper run the sedan’s description through law enforcement databases. Mack updated the compound’s threat board.
Sutton didn’t move from the briefing room chair.
She sat with the sketchbooks on the table in front of her, both hands holding them. This was part of Penn Crenshaw’s life’s work. The part that might contain the map to an organization that had killed a former Vice President’s daughter.
Claire leaned on the table. Sebastian read her intent before she spoke. “I need to take custody of those. They’re material evidence in a federal investigation. Chain of custody matters if this goes to prosecution.”
Sutton’s hands tightened on them like roots gripping soil. “No.”
“I understand they’re personal—”
“You don’t understand anything about them.
” Sutton’s voice was one degree from losing her control.
“These are his drawings. His hand made these marks. His brain made these designs. This is what’s left of my brother after everyone else took what they wanted—the media took his story, the courts took his reputation, the government took his name for a file.
These are mine. I’m not handing them to the FBI so they can sit in an evidence locker in Missoula.
We can look through them together, but they’re not leaving here. ”
Claire held her ground. She didn’t flinch, didn’t push, but she didn’t retreat, either. “I hear you. But the information in those books could be the key to identifying the people who killed Ginger. The people who are trying to kill you.”
An impasse. Two women on opposite sides of a table, one needing evidence, the other holding grief.
Sebastian recognized the look on Sutton’s face.
He’d worn that expression himself—not with sketchbooks, but with the Breitling watch his father had given him at his Service graduation.
The one object from his old life he’d kept.
You held on to something that hurt because letting go would hurt worse. The object wasn’t the thing you were gripping. It was a proxy for everything you’d lost. Release the object, release the grief, but grief had too many holds on you.
He pushed off the doorframe. “We’ll scan them.”
Both women turned, Claire with professional skepticism, Sutton with wariness .
“Jasper has a high-resolution scanner in the tech room,” Sebastian said. “We photograph every page. Front, back, margins, covers. Claire gets the digital copies—full resolution, admissible as documented reproductions.” He held Sutton’s gaze. “You keep the originals.”
Claire considered it. Sebastian watched her run the calculation—the legal viability of scans versus originals, the investigative needs versus the reality of a witness who wouldn’t cooperate if her brother’s notebooks were confiscated.
“The scans need to be forensic quality,” Claire said. “Every page, every mark, every margin note. Time-stamped. Logged.”
Jasper said, “Not a problem.”
Claire nodded. Not happy, but satisfied. She exchanged a look with Garrett, and moved to the tech room to set up with Jasper.
Sebastian turned back to Sutton. She was staring at him. The wariness was still there, but underneath it he saw something he hadn’t expected. Surprise. Not the shock of someone blindsided. The kind that happened when a person did something you hadn’t thought them capable of.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
He could have given her the strategic answer—that a cooperative witness was more useful than a hostile one, that preserving the originals maintained a backup, that keeping Sutton engaged was strategically sound.
All of those things were true. None of them were the reason.
“Because they’re his,” he said, “and you shouldn’t have to lose more of him than you already have.”
Sutton pressed her lips together hard, jaw flexing. She didn’t thank him, but blinked hard as if holding back tears. The look on her face said more than words could carry.
She rose and walked past him toward the tech room. At the doorway, she stopped. “I’ll turn the pages,” she said. “Nobody touches them but me.”
Sebastian nodded. “Fair enough.”
She disappeared down the hall. He stood in the empty briefing room, hands in his pockets, staring at the table for a moment. The surface was scarred with scratches and coffee rings. He traced one of the scratches with his thumb.
Because they’re his.
He’d said it because it was true. Because he’d killed Penn Crenshaw, and the least he could do was protect what was left of the man for the sister who still loved him.
He didn’t examine the other reason. The one that had to do with the look on Sutton’s face when she held those sketchbooks—the fierceness of it, the grief, the absolute refusal to surrender one more piece of herself to forces beyond her control.
He’d found it hard to breathe for a second, watching her.
That wasn’t professional. That wasn’t operational.
It was flat-out dangerous.