Page 17 of Shadow Secrets
One side of his mouth quirked up. “Not if she doesn’t realize we did it.”
She didn’t want to think about why that tiny smile made her pulse skip. Why doing something secretive with this man held so much appeal that she nearly smiled back. “I’m game.”
The quirk almost turned into a full smile. “Can you follow my orders?”
That again. “Do I have to?”
“If you want your drawing supplies.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
They headed for the west wing, Sebastian leading her to the doctor’s office. Vivi wasn’t there. He grabbed Sutton’s hand for a few seconds to quickly draw her inside and shut the door behind them, leaving only an inch cracked open that he could peer through. “Black file cabinet, second drawer from the bottom. It’s filled with her notebooks.”
“Shouldn’t we just ask her if I can have one?”
“What fun is that?” he said without looking at her as he kept watch on the hallway.
Sutton shook her head and opened the drawer. Inside, there were a dozen or more brand new spiral-ringed notebooks. She selected one with a deep blue cover. “Got it.”
He chin-nodded at a towering bookshelf with colorful plastic baskets lining the highest shelf. “Pens are there.”
She was impressed by the doctor’s organizational style. Each basket contained pen colors that coordinated with its color. Sutton picked two black, a blue, a red, a yellow, and a purple.
Stolen stash in hand, the two of them snuck back out, but not until Sebastian snatched a book from Vivi’s collection. Sutton didn’t miss the title—The Mind of a Killer.
Rather than returning her to her room, he suggested they go to the lounge. She agreed.
Sutton spent the rest of the morning filling the pages. None of her supplies were artist-grade materials, but she didn’t care. The pens moved across the white space, filling it with marks she controlled. For a few hours, the carousel of memories that haunted her slowed to something manageable.
She drew the hawk she’d seen over the tree line. Then a lynx—not copying Sebastian’s design, but creating her own version. Hers curled on a rocky outcrop with its ears tipped toward something the viewer couldn’t see. She flipped the page quickly when she felt Sebastian’s eyes on her, which was childish, but the alternative was thinking about why she’d drawn it in the first place.
Lunch was sandwiches and sodas, much like what Mack had given her the previous night that she hadn’t eaten. Garrett interrupted to pull Sebastian out of the kitchen and speak to him alone. Sutton tried to eavesdrop, but they were too far away.
When Sebastian returned, he looked grim.
“What?” she asked.
“Claire is on her way. She has news—I don’t know what.”
The woman arrived at the compound at half past two. Sutton had built a mental image of an FBI agent in a dark suit, with a severe expression of a woman who viewed witnesses as sources of information to be mined.
Claire appeared younger than that image with auburn hair and sharp green eyes. She wore dark jeans and a navy blazer, with a badge clipped to her belt. When she shook Sutton’s hand, her grip was firm but not performative. “Sutton. I’m sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances. I know this is a lot.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because we all know it’s true. Let me give you what I’ve got, and then I’ll need you to walk me through last night again in as much detail as you can manage.”
The team assembled around the briefing table—Garrett at the head, Sebastian to Sutton’s left, Vivi at the opposite end with a notebook and pen in hand. Jasper entered with a laptop and sat on Garrett’s right, his fingers resting on the keyboard ready to pull up anything in seconds.
Claire opened a file and laid out what the FBI had so far.
The victim was confirmed as Virginia Galbraith. The cause of death was three gunshot wounds to the chest from a suppressed nine-millimeter. The ammunition was military-grade hollow points, the kind of rounds that weren’t available at a sporting goods counter. No casings recovered at the scene, which meant the shooter had policed his brass—a hallmark of professional training.
The vehicle had been located forty minutes after the shooting, burned to the frame in a gravel lot off Route 12. It had been stolen from a long-term lot at Missoula International two days prior. No prints, no DNA, no surveillance footage of the theft.
“This was a planned operation,” Claire said. “The vehicle was staged in advance. The ammunition was sourced through non-standard channels. The post-engagement protocol is consistent with trained operatives, not street-level violence.”
Hearing the details laid out in clinical language didn’t make them easier to absorb. It made them worse. Ginger’s death being translated into evidence categories and operational terminology seemed cold. The distance between the human version Sutton had lived and the procedural one Claire was narrating made her chest hurt.
