Page 16 of Shadow Secrets
“Correct.”
“Creative.”
“We get to pick what we want, as long as it’s an animal. Not very professional, if you ask me, but no one did. I didn’t actually come up with mine. Vivi suggested it with Garrett’s approval.”
She almost laughed. The sensation was so foreign that she caught it in her throat and held it there, afraid to let it out because laughing felt obscene when Ginger Galbraith was in a morgue and a professional killer was looking for Sutton.
But it was there—the involuntary twitch of something lighter trying to surface through the weight of everything else. “So they picked Lynx because…?”
“Vigilance. Spotting what other people miss. It’s a trait of the animal. They’re solitary, sharp-eyed, patient. I like it. It fit.”
“And you want it tattooed somewhere on you.”
“It’s mine, not the Service’s. Not the media’s. Something I chose.”
She understood the hunger for something self-determined, untouched by the identity other people had stamped onto you. She’d felt it every time she sat down at her personal sketchbook and drew the things that had nothing to do with tattoo flash or client requests—the dragons, the enchanted forests, the warrior women. Art that belonged to the version of herself that still existed underneath the wreckage.
“You’re an artist,” he said. “The work on the parlor wall. Those aren’t just tattoo designs.”
“They pay the bills.”
“More than that.”
She cut him a sideways look. He was watching the tree line, not her, which made it easier to answer. “I was at Corcoran School of the Arts—illustration, with a focus on sequential art. I want to do comics, graphic novels. You know, visual storytelling.” The words felt like artifacts from a museum of someone else’s life. “Two and a half years.”
“What happened?”
“You know what happened.”
The silence that followed was different from the earlier ones. It had a different texture—an awareness that they’d stepped onto ground where the landmines were buried close to the surface.
“Penn’s arrest—his death—went through my life like a bomb,” she admitted quietly. “My father left my mom within six months. Said he couldn’t handle the embarrassment. My mother folded. I dropped out because I couldn’t afford tuition without my dad’s help, and also because every person on campus knew I was the sister of the guy who tried to assassinate the Vice President’s daughter. Hard to focus on panel composition when your professors are googling your last name.”
“That definitely sucks.”
“A friend brought me to Blackridge. She left. I stayed.” Sutton shrugged, a gesture she’d perfected—casual, dismissive, the kind of shrug designed to signal that the story was over and didn’t hurt. “Dom gave me a chair. Turns out fantasy art translates well to skin. So here I am.”
“You’re here,” he said.
She started walking, feeling that restlessness rearing its head again. “As are you. Apparently, I’m not the only one who ran from the aftermath of what Penn did.”
He remained quiet. They walked toward the residential wing. The walk had taken maybe twenty minutes. What the hell was she going to do now?
At her door, she stopped. “I can’t sit in that room with nothing to do,” she said. “I’ll lose my mind.”
“What do you need?”
The question was simple. The fact that he asked—instead of deciding for her—seemed like a step in the right direction. “A notebook. Pens. Pencils. Something to draw with.”
“I’ll find you some.”
“Can I…” The tightness in her chest at the thought of being alone was too suffocating. “Can I go with you? To find the supplies?”
His face brightened just a touch. Or maybe it was only the shadows from the overhead lights that made her think that.
“We can raid Vivi’s office.”
“Won’t she be mad?”
