Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sebastian
Garrett found him in the hallway at twenty-two hundred, reading the book he’d stolen from Vivi’s office.
Sebastian was in his usual position—back against the wall, sidearm on his knee—when Garrett’s boots appeared at the edge of his peripheral vision. “You’ve been awake for thirty-six hours,” he said.
“Thirty-eight.”
“Which proves my point. Go get some sleep. I’ll take the door.”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’re running on caffeine and whatever’s happening in your head that you won’t let Vivi look at. Both of those things have an expiration date. An exhausted operator is a liability. You know that.”
Sebastian did know that. Fatigue degraded reaction time faster than alcohol.
He’d been very convincing when he’d spouted those words to fellow teammates. Now, he was a hypocrite, because the moment the person behind the door was someone who mattered, the textbook went out the window.
He opened his mouth to argue. The door beside him opened first.
Sutton stood in the gap, one hand on the frame. She’d changed since the scanning session—the borrowed thermal replaced by a tank top and cotton shorts. Her feet were bare. Her hair was damp from a shower, pushed behind her ears.
“I can hear you two through the wall,” she said. She looked at Garrett. Then at Sebastian. Then back at Garrett. “He can sleep in my room. On the floor. That way everyone gets what they want.”
Garrett raised an eyebrow at Sebastian. The expression said several things simultaneously, none of which Sebastian intended to acknowledge. “I guess that works,” Garrett said. Neutral. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched as he turned away.
Sebastian stared at her. “You want me in your room while you sleep?”
“Do you snore?”
“Everyone snores.”
“Keep it to a minimum, and I won’t have to kick you out.”
She left the door open and disappeared inside.
His knees protested—he’d been on the floor for hours. He closed the book, grabbed the blanket he’d been using as a pad under his ass, and stared for a minute at the open door.
“I don’t bite,” she called, “unless you piss me off.”
He stepped to the threshold, saw her in bed on her side with her eyes closed. “Or I snore.”
One lid popped open. “Or you snore.”
She closed it again and snuggled in, seemingly unbothered about him staying in her room.
He hesitated, watching her. Thinking about the damaged soul underneath that bravado.
“Make up your mind,” she said. “In or out, but close the damn door.”
With a sigh, he stepped inside.
The room was small and smelled of something floral.
Vivi had given her some of her own shampoo and soap, but Sutton had swapped it out for something more citrusy.
The rose gold stud in her nose caught the light of the soft bedside lamp.
A soft sheen of moisture drew his attention to the swell of her breasts.
He’d been trained to classify and record visual information rapidly and move on.
This time, he wasn’t moving on. The ink on her forearms was fully visible—the stylized florals winding from wrist to elbow, the hidden symbols he’d noticed at the parlor but hadn’t been able to study in detail.
A rose nested in the vines above her left wrist. A tiny key at the base of her right thumb.
A serpent—thin and elegant—tracing the inside of her forearm.
Her own work. Her own language on her skin.
When she opened her eyes and caught him staring, her brown eyes registered his watching her with an expression that was equal parts wariness and curiosity. “You’re making it weird, Lynx.”
Hearing her say his callsign made his chest loosen. He’d shared why he’d embraced it, embraced the animal, because it was his. Not his family’s, not his former Secret Service role. Just his.
She quirked an eyebrow. He dropped his gaze to the floor and spread the blanket against the wall opposite the bed. He sat down, determined not to look at her again.
And then she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. “You were staring,” she said.
He pretended not to be embarrassed. “Threat assessment.”
“Of my tattoos?”
“Of the room.”
“You weren’t looking at the room.”
She wasn’t letting him off the hook. “If you’re going to ink me once this is over, I need to assess your workmanship.”
She chuckled. “If I ink you. The jury is out on that.”
That disappointed him for reasons he didn’t want to consider. He still didn’t meet her eyes. “Fair enough.”
She sighed dramatically. “I’m kidding. You’ve done a lot to help me in the past twenty-four hours.” Her voice softened. “I’ve been stupid and letting my emotions get the better of me, yet you haven’t called me on it.” A pause. “I might be dead if it weren’t for you.”
She would be dead, he had no doubt. If she’d tried to handle this on her own, she wouldn’t be sitting across from him right now, giving him grief about staring at her. Whatever she wanted to shovel at him over the past, he would take it. All he wanted was to keep her alive. “Just doing my job.”
“Wow, that’s the best you’ve got? Come on. This security gig is more than a job to you, isn’t it?”
The question came too close to setting off the emotions he’d buried for so long. He stretched out on the blanket and covered his eyes with his forearm. “Get some sleep, Sutton.”
After a long, pregnant silence, she turned off the light. The room dropped into near-darkness, broken only by the faint blue glow of the hallway emergency lighting seeping under the door. He heard the creak of the bed as she settled in again. The rustle of sheets.
Her voice cut through the dark. “How do you think he got involved?”
Sebastian stared at the ceiling. “With the organization?”
“Yeah. How does a tattoo artist from Falls Church end up designing coded identification marks for some shadow network with ties to the intelligence community?”
He’d been turning that question over since Claire had told them about Inkwell.
The operational part of his brain had already built a working theory.
“Recruitment usually starts with the work. So someone walks into his shop and becomes a regular client. They test him with small asks first. Design something custom. Something with specific elements. They pay well and in cash. They flatter his talent and build trust.”
“And then the asks get bigger.”
“Always. By the time you realize you’re into something illegal or dangerous, you’re already leveraged. You’ve done work you can’t undo. You know names you can’t unknow. The exit disappears behind you.”
The bed creaked as she sat up again. He could feel the weight of her eyes on him in the dark.
This was safer territory, and the fact he couldn’t see how the tank top molded to her shape helped. “Did Penn have political leanings?” he asked. “Anything that might have made him a target for recruitment through ideology?”
“Penn didn’t even vote.” A pause. “But he had opinions. Strong ones. He hated the machine—the revolving door between government and private money. Lobbyists, defense contractors, the way policy gets made in back rooms. He used to rant about it at dinner until my dad told him to shut up and eat.” She was quiet for a moment.
“But I don’t think ideology is what got him in. I think it was money.”
Money was the most common reason, but not always. “Why?”
“Because I know what a tattoo artist in D.C. makes and Penn’s apartment was nicer than it should have been.
I noticed. I just—I thought he was doing side work.
Or Mom was sneaking him money. He did do custom pieces for high-end clients.
Even a few celebrities and politicians who wanted ink but didn’t want to be seen in a street-level shop.
” She exhaled. “Turns out I was half right.”
The mattress shifted. He heard pages turning. She’d pulled one of Penn’s sketchbooks from beside the bed. She flipped the light back on, her brow furrowed.
“The coded designs start about a third of the way through this book,” she said.
“Everything before that is standard client work. No margin notes. No initials. Just clean, beautiful tattoo art. Then there’s a gap—five or six blank pages—and after that, the organization work begins.
Like he made a decision. Crossed a line. ”
“Or was pushed across one.”
“Yeah.” Her voice was barely audible. “Or that.”
Sutton closed the sketchbook and set it on the nightstand. The room went quiet again as she turned off the lamp and crawled under the blanket. “Goodnight, Lynx.”
“Goodnight, Ink.”
A pause. “Ink?”
“All clients get a callsign, too.”
“Client?” Panic laced her voice. He heard the rustle of sheets as she sat straight up. “Oh, shit. How am I going to pay you?”
He smiled to himself in the dark. “There’s no bill, relax.”
“What? No, that’s not right. You and your team are protecting me. I’m a client, right? You have to get paid.”
He didn’t want to tell her he’d already covered the down payment required of all clients.
That he planned to pay the bill out of his savings.
What else did he have to spend it on? But she would balk at that and insist on paying him back.
“We have a discretionary fund for certain cases,” he told her.
In this case, it was his fund, but she didn’t need to know that. “The bill is covered.”
He felt her stare through the dark. “That’s…generous.”
“Vivi established from the beginning that we don’t turn anyone in need away, regardless of their ability to pay.” That was mostly true. “All you have to do is follow instructions and not put yourself in obvious danger.”
“Which I’ve already done by insisting on going to the apartment.” She heaved a sigh. “Shouldn’t that render this agreement null and void?”
He admired her ability to overthink like a champ. “Only if I say so.”
She snored. “You like that, don’t you?” Her voice held a teasing note. “Having a say over me and me having to follow your orders.”