Chapter 4
Jonas hadn’t planned to follow her inside. He told himself he was only mapping patterns, time she left her flat, route she took, security coverage along the way. That was the mission. Stay outside. Keep control.
But when Clara Sutton walked up the broad stone steps of the museum and pushed through the oak doors, his feet moved before he gave them permission.
The air inside smelled of polished stone and old paper, faint traces of beeswax polish clinging to the bannisters. High arched ceilings caught every footstep, throwing them back with cathedral weight.
Jonas moved like another tourist, calm, unhurried, but his eyes worked at a pace no one else could match.
Guards: two, by the main hall, distracted.
Cameras: seven visible, two blind spots.
School group veering right toward the dinosaur wing.
Clara, already halfway down the corridor toward the medieval manuscripts, a slim figure with her bag hugged close.
Photographs hadn’t done her justice. He’d studied enough of them in Oliver’s file to know the curve of her face, the line of her jaw.
But up close, she wasn’t static ink on paper, her skin warmed under the light, her eyes were alive with thought, even when her expression stayed composed.
A faint strand of hair had slipped loose from her twist, brushing her cheek when she bent her head.
Jonas shouldn’t notice. But he did.
She disappeared into the side archive, her badge unlocking the door. He should leave now. Log her timing, note her habits, walk away.
Instead, he circled the gallery once, putting himself near a display case of fourteenth-century parchment.
The manuscript under the glass was one he’d catalogued in his head years ago.
His eidetic memory called up every detail: the loop of the “g,” the thickness of the ink where the scribe had pressed too hard.
He could almost smell the animal hide beneath the centuries.
The door clicked again. Clara emerged, carrying a folio and a tablet. She crossed toward the case, intent on her work.
Jonas knew better than to step closer. But his pulse betrayed him, pushing his body toward hers until he stood only a breath away. “Fascinating, isn’t it?”
Her head lifted sharply. Surprise flickered, then she steadied, polite and self-contained. But up close, Jonas saw the truth: the faintest flush at her cheek, the wary calculation in her eyes.
He nodded toward the manuscript. “Most people assume parchment is old paper. But it isn’t. It’s animal skin. This one’s calf. You can tell by the surface, it’s smoother than sheep. More expensive. Reserved for the wealthy or the church.”
Her brows rose. “That’s… very accurate.”
Jonas let his gaze rest on her, not just the folio, not the manuscript, her. “Fourteenth century. English hand, though the Latin’s unmistakable. See the way the ‘g’ loops here? That style never left the region.”
Clara’s lips curved. Not a full smile, she didn’t give those away easily, but something small and real. “You know a surprising amount for a casual visitor.”
“I remember things,” he said simply.
She tilted her head, studying him as though he were another exhibit. “Memory like that can be both a gift and a burden.”
Jonas stilled. The words cut closer than she knew. He cleared his throat. “Most labels here aren’t worth reading. They’re oversimplified. Stripped of context.”
That brought her gaze fully to him, sharp but not unkind. “And context is everything.”
For a moment their eyes held, a current sparking between them. It rattled him. He’d stood in interrogation rooms, stared down men with guns, but this, this quiet intensity in a museum gallery, unsettled him more than any battlefield.
She blinked, breaking the moment. “I should get back. Enjoy your visit.”
He wanted to stop her, to ask something, anything, but the archive door had already closed behind her.
Jonas stood there, heart unsteady, furious at himself. He’d come here to watch, not to talk. He’d broken his own rules, exposed himself for nothing more than the need to hear her voice.
He forced himself toward the exit, each step deliberate. Clara Sutton wasn’t a woman he could want. She was leverage. A key to Oliver. Nothing more.
His phone vibrated. He slipped it from his pocket.
Bás.
Jonas hesitated, then answered.
“Where the hell are you, Watchdog?” Bás’s voice was a gravel scrape, tired but direct. “You’ve been gone too long. I need you back. We’ve got threads unravelling and I can’t cover them without you.”
Jonas’s chest tightened. Guilt landed hard, heavy as lead. He could picture Bás exactly: leaning against the operations table, jaw tight, carrying too much weight as always. “I’ll be back soon,” Jonas said, keeping his tone even. “Just tying up loose ends.”
“Loose ends?” Bás’s suspicion was sharp enough to taste. “What kind of loose ends take you off the grid for this long?”
“Personal.” The word came out clipped, final.
The silence stretched, loaded. Then Bás exhaled, low and rough. “You know I trust you. But don’t make me regret it. Come home, Watchdog. The team needs you.”
Jonas swallowed against the knot in his throat. “I’ll try.”
He ended the call before the guilt could deepen.
For a long moment, he stood in the museum’s shadowed vestibule, the echo of Clara’s voice and Bás’s demand colliding in his head. One pulled him forward. The other pulled him back.
And Jonas knew, sooner or later, he’d have to choose.
He left the museum, sliding into the anonymity of the streets and walked seemingly endlessly, but each step was calculated, measured, recorded in his brain for future reference.
One hundred steps from the Museum took him to the edge of Monk Street.
Four hundred paces and he reached the entrance to the park.
All day he walked, making sure every route was memorised, every eventuality was accounted for.
By the time he reached his bolthole, night had pulled down fully, the city thinned to puddles of light and the occasional hiss of tyres on wet asphalt.
Inside, he shut the door, checked the lock twice, then dropped into the chair by the table. The laptop blinked awake at his touch.
He shouldn’t look. That was the rule. Personal interest clouded analysis. But Clara Sutton’s face had already carved itself into the back of his mind, and Jonas had never been a man who tolerated unanswered questions.
He typed her name.
Her background unfolded in a lattice of records, cross-referenced with the ease of breathing.
Born 1995. Parents: Richard and Margaret Sutton.
Listed owners of an estate in Sussex. Financial records were thin but telling: two mortgages layered over one another, deferred payments, a trust fund half-emptied.
Jonas scrolled deeper, his eyes narrowing.
The house itself was crumbling financially, bleeding money faster than they could stem.
His stomach tightened. So that was it. Oliver Grant’s money wasn’t just comfort; it was salvation. Clara wasn’t marrying him for love. She was marrying him to keep her parents afloat.
Jonas leaned back, jaw tight. He knew that kind of sacrifice. The silent, back-breaking loyalty that asked for nothing in return.
He dug further, tracing phone records, cross-links.
A second name appeared again and again in Clara’s call history.
Lena Markovic. Searches pulled Lena up easily, photographer, part-time gallery assistant, social feeds loud with colour and wit.
Pictures of Lena with another woman, smiling, unapologetic.
Jonas clicked through a handful before stopping himself.
Her parents would hate it. That much was clear. The Suttons valued polish, appearances, and lineage. Lena Markovic was a rebellion wrapped in laughter, fiercely at Clara’s side for years. Jonas pictured the late-night call records, the constancy of it. Loyalty like that meant something.
He rubbed his thumb against the edge of the laptop.
The file wasn’t just information anymore. It was a map of Clara’s life. And he wanted to know more. Too much more.
Jonas pulled up one of the candid photos Lena had posted months ago, a blurry shot of Clara at a café table, hair loose, mid-laugh. Not polished. Not posed. And beautiful in a way the photographs Oliver had supplied never captured.
Something twisted hard in his chest.
He shut the window with more force than necessary.
This wasn’t why he was here. Clara was leverage. She was a path to Oliver. He wasn’t supposed to want to protect her from her own family. He wasn’t supposed to admire the loyalty of her best friend. He wasn’t supposed to imagine what her laugh had sounded like when that picture was taken.
Jonas dragged both hands down his face, breathing out hard. He’d survived by keeping lines sharp. Cross them and you blurred everything. And blurred lines got people killed.
He needed to anchor himself.
Jonas reached for the phone, punching in a number without looking.
The receptionist answered on the second ring. “St. Brigid’s Care Home. How may I help you?”
“This is Jonas Mason. I’m checking on Margaret Mason. Room twelve.”
“One moment, please.”
The hold music was soft, tinny, the same piano loop he’d heard a hundred times. Jonas stared at the laptop screen, at the dark reflection of his own face.
He could have opened another window, tapped into the feed from the hidden cameras he’d installed in his mother’s room.
He’d never told the staff about them; he didn’t trust anyone, not fully, not when it came to her safety.
The cameras showed everything: if a nurse lingered too long, if his mother struggled at night, if someone left a tray untouched.
They were his way of making sure she was never neglected.
But sometimes he couldn’t bring himself to look.
Seeing her blank expression, her hands folding a napkin repeatedly or speaking to people she didn’t recognise, the way she stared at the door as if expecting someone who never came, it cut too deep.
It made him feel like a stranger in his own mother’s life.
Finally, a nurse’s voice came on. “She’s resting, Mr Mason. Quiet night. She ate well at dinner.”
“Did she…?” His throat tightened. He had to force the words. “Did she ask for me?”
A pause. Kind, but certain. “Not tonight.”
Jonas shut his eyes, nodding though she couldn’t see him. “Thank you.”
When the line disconnected, the silence pressed in, heavier than before.
His mother didn’t remember him. Clara Sutton didn’t know him. The team thought he was tying up loose ends.
And Jonas sat alone in a bolthole with too many ghosts and the wrong woman pulling him across lines he couldn’t afford to cross.
He closed the laptop and sat in the dark until the radiator clunked, and the city’s night noises steadied his breathing again.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow, he’d put it back where it belonged, mission, leverage, nothing else.
Even if he didn’t believe it.