Page 14 of Shadow Secrets
The fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “You called my boss?”
“The police are speaking to him about the murder, but it’s a formality. He said to tell you to take off as much time as you need.”
“Time off? I can’t take time off. And you don’t get to call my boss. That’s my job. He’s the only—” She caught herself. What was he to her? A friend? More like the closest thing she had to family here.
Sebastian didn’t even glance up from his food. “You’re not going back to work until the threat against you is resolved.”
“The threat against me.” She set the fork down. The food lost its appeal. “I have rent. I have utilities. I have a phone bill, which is currently irrelevant because my phone is sitting on the counter at Iron Rose. I can’t afford not to work. I can’t afford not to work for one day.”
“You can’t afford to be dead, either.”
She blanched. The others in the kitchen tiptoed around. “So what’s the plan? I sit in that room and stare at the walls until the FBI catches whoever killed Ginger? That could take weeks. Months. Meanwhile, my life just—stops? My clients go somewhere else, Dom replaces me, I’m evicted from my apartment because I can’t pay, and when this is all over, I have to start from nothing? Again?”
The again cracked at the end. She hadn’t meant to say it. It revealed too much—the rebuilding she’d done after Penn, the life she’d scraped together from wreckage, the terrifying possibility of watching it collapse a second time because of something her brother had been involved in.
Sebastian leaned back in his chair, wiping his too-perfect lips with his napkin. His expression was unreadable, but his blue eyes scanned over her face with an attention that felt like a searchlight. “I understand that this disrupts your life?—”
“Disrupts my life.” A laugh escaped her, bitter and thin. “That’s a hell of a way to put it. Penn disrupted my life, and here I am, six years later, still dealing with the fallout, still rearranging everything around his choices. And now you’re doing the same thing—making decisions about where I go, when I work, who I talk to?—”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing. You just think it’s justified because someone may be after me.”
Jasper—Bobcat—started whistling, turning off the stovetop and busying himself with his own plate of food at another table along the far wall.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. “Someone is after you. That’s not a philosophical position, Sutton. It’s a fact. You witnessed a murder by what appears to be a professional hitman. He’s not going to leave loose ends.”
“But I didn’t see his face.”
“He thinks you did.”
They stared at each other across the table. The coffee machine gurgled. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed.
“Well, good morning.” The voice came from the doorway—calm and measured. “This discussion seems productive.”
Sutton turned. The woman from last night—Vivi—stood in the kitchen entrance. She was dressed in a charcoal blazer over a simple cream blouse. Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head.
She had a face that was both kind and unnervingly perceptive. “Sutton, I run the operational psychology program here, among other things, and I’d like to speak to you after you’re done about your brother’s death.”
“Forgot to mention she’s the team shrink,” Sebastian said.
“I’m everyone’s shrink when they let me be.” Vivi shot him a look that seemed to hold an entire unfinished argument. He stared back with the flat expression of a man who’d been on the wrong end of that look before. She met Sutton’s eyes again. “Last night’s situation must be bringing up your emotions around your brother’s death.”
Sutton braced herself. Here it came—the gentle probing, the concerned head-tilt, the suggestion that she talk to someone about her feelings as if her feelings were a leaky faucet that could be fixed with the right wrench. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“What you witnessed last night was violent, sudden, and personal,” Vivi continued, as if Sutton hadn’t said anything. Her voice didn’t shift into a therapeutic register—it stayed conversational, direct. “And it’s layered on top of a loss you’ve been carrying for six years. The public nature of that took a great toll on you and your family. I suspect it’s redefined your identity without your consent. And now this.”
Sutton’s throat tightened. She hadn’t expected such specificity. The campus counselor she’d seen twice before dropping out of Corcoran had spoken in generalities—processing grief, healthy coping mechanisms, giving yourself permission to feel. Vivi Montgomery had walked into the room and named the exact shape of Sutton’s wound in a few sentences.
Sutton was going to need more coffee.
“I’d like to talk with you when you’re ready,” Vivi said. “No pressure. No timeline. Just a conversation.”
“I’m fine,” Sutton gritted out.
Vivi’s expression didn’t change; she’d probably heard that line a thousand times. “The offer stands. I’m in the building most days.” She glanced at the untouched second half of Sutton’s breakfast. “Finish the toast, at least. Low blood sugar makes everything worse, including arguments with stubborn men.”
She left.
