9. Jasmine
JASMINE
The city gives up on us somewhere past the second toll. Glass towers flatten into brown winter fields, and Sebastian still hasn't touched the coffee I handed him an hour ago.
"You're allowed to drink it," I say. "It isn't evidence."
"I don't trust roadside coffee."
"It's from the café on your own ground floor."
"Then I especially don't trust it." Both hands stay on the wheel, easy and exact, as if even driving has a protocol. "Sleep if you want. We have two hours."
"And miss a billionaire driving himself? No one would believe me."
"Driving clarifies things."
"Such as?"
"Whether I want Kestrel Systems. Access control — doors, elevators, archives. The locks people forget they're standing behind."
"Riveting."
"It will be, once I own it."
I take notes anyway, because that's the job, and because listening to him is easier than ignoring him. Outside Hartford the fields go to scrub, and the quiet between us turns into the kind I don't usually allow.
"My father drove like you," I say. "Slow. Like the road owed him an explanation."
"Drove."
"He died when I was nine." I fix my gaze to the passing fields.
"It looked like a robbery gone wrong. They said he surprised someone.
But nothing was taken, the case closed in a week, the story never held.
" I haven't said the next part aloud in years.
"Two marks on his neck. Here." I touch my own throat.
"Like punctures. They blamed the struggle. My mother found him."
He doesn't fill the gap with anything useless. He just lets me have it.
"He was kind, from what I remember. Not soft.
Just decent in a way people noticed. He was an investigative journalist, a good one, and I think he found something that got him killed, and the people who decided it was a robbery didn't want it found twice.
" I take the photo from my purse, the corners fading from years of carrying it.
"That's him. I look like him. Same stubborn face. "
He takes it carefully, studying it. "He does have a kind face," he says, and returns it. "I'm sorry you went through that. It's a heavy thing to carry in childhood."
We pull up to Kestrel's office. The parking lot is half-empty.
It would have been considered modern thirty years ago.
The current owner, Lattimer, is sweating through his shirt and pretending he isn't desperate for the sale.
He pitches the software, patents, and municipal contracts. Sebastian nods through the pitch.
"Your legacy installations," Sebastian says. "Private archives, restricted buildings. How many still use manual override?"
"Those? Barely revenue. We'd retire them in the deal."
"I'd keep them. Especially the older permissions. Master credentials, emergency bypasses, audit trails that predate your current platform." Pleasant, unhurried. "And you list several clients as private. I'd want them named before close."
Lattimer's smile shrinks. "Some clients value discretion. Old money. Old contracts."
"Missing access logs," Sebastian says mildly. "Curious, for a security company."
"Migration error," Lattimer says, too fast.
I write it all down. It sounds like risk management. It also sounds like Sebastian came here already knowing where to press.
We start packing up shortly after and leave. We get ten minutes of highway in before I crack.
"You're not that interested in the software," I say.
"I'm interested in it all."
"No, you let him talk about software. You asked about the buildings. The elevators. The places still staffed after dark. And every time he avoided naming a client, you noticed."
"Old infrastructure is a liability. If I acquire the company, I acquire its exposure — I'd rather know which I own than be surprised by them." Reasonable. Clean. An answer designed to close the subject.
"Right," I say, and let him believe it worked.
Crowe Technologies has changed in the time we were gone. Two new faces sit at the security desk, and a man I've badged through a hundred times is asked for a second ID. People are stopped, checked, and checked again before the elevators will take them up.
Once I'm in my seat, I do the only thing my access allows.
My job. I open the archived calendar, the executive inbox, the meeting records I inherited when I took this chair.
The month before I started is messy, unusual for Sebastian.
Board calls declined with no replacement time.
Investor meetings canceled the same morning.
Five security reviews marked complete without notes.
In the inbox, people ask if he is still attending, and the replies come from other names. Not his.
I find Penny near the coffee bar, pretending she has nowhere better to be.
"You look like you're solving a murder," she says.
"Tell me about the month before my badge existed."
Her smile dims. "Strange month. Men in old-fashioned coats — the kind who don't have appointments and get them anyway. Closed doors all day. I honestly thought we were going under." She lifts a shoulder. "Then it just stopped. Fixed itself overnight. We never found out what it was."
"Did anyone ask?"
"Questions don't live long here, Jazz."
A woman appears beside me — pale, elegant. I know her before she speaks. Not her name, but her face. The woman from the gala.
"Ms. Carter," she says. "Mr. Crowe would like a word. He sent me to bring you up."
Penny half-waves me off, but I don't move right away. "You know Sebastian?"
Her smile gives me absolutely nothing. "Well enough."
That is not an answer. It is, however, plausible enough for the lobby, with guards nearby and people crossing between us. I follow until she steers us toward the street doors instead of the elevators, and my mind stops agreeing with where we are going.
"His office is up," I say. "Why out there?"
She doesn't answer. She keeps walking, certain of something I'm not.
"I asked you a question."
"He's terribly protective of you," she says, as if that explains anything.
Before we reach the doors, Sebastian steps out from the private corridor near security, already moving toward us. I don't know how he knew we were here. Before the woman reaches the glass, Sebastian's shoulder cuts across my path.
"Adriana." Just the name, low. "You're stepping over a line you shouldn't cross."
"I was being neighborly." She tips her head at me, amused. "She still doesn't know, I see."
"Watch your mouth." Quiet. Final.
She measures him, then me, and her smile loses its ease. It's as though she's seen something I haven't and steps back. "Charming girl," she says, and exits.
Sebastian turns me back toward the elevators, one hand barely at the small of my back — near enough for me to notice the cold of his hand without feeling trapped by it.
"You shouldn't go anywhere with people you don't know," he says.
"That isn't what just happened."
"No," he agrees, and offers nothing else.
I should be frightened, but I'm not. His hand feels almost caressing, and I imagine something I shouldn't.
I remind myself he's my boss. I can't let these feelings surface.
They need to stay buried. His once intimidating aristocratic features are becoming appealing.
I need to know more about him, who he is, where he's really from.
I want the pieces that are missing to make sense in my mind.