Page 22 of Shadow Secrets
Sebastian stood in the middle of Sutton Crenshaw’s life and tried to determine whether someone had been through it or if this was normal. There was no mold, no smell, nothing unsanitary. Just the lived-in disorder of a person who existed alone on limited resources and didn’t perform tidiness for an audience.
But he couldn’t distinguish between a drawer Sutton had left open and one left open by an intruder. Not without her.
He holstered the sidearm. “Clear. Come in.”
Sutton stepped through the doorway and stopped. He watched her take in the room. She didn’t move for a long moment. Then she exhaled—slow, controlled, the release valve on something pressurized—and walked to the bed.
Sebastian closed and locked the door, then moved to the window. He angled himself beside the frame where he could see the street without being visible from below. The delivery truck had left. A man walked a dog on the opposite sidewalk. CB’s voice came through the earpiece: “Alley still clear.”
Behind him, Sutton was on her knees beside the bed, pulling out storage bins. Cardboard scraped carpet. Then came the soft thud of objects being moved. He kept his eyes on the street, but his awareness tracked her—the rhythm of her breathing, the pauses that meant she’d found something that hurt, the care she used handling the boxes. That care had nothing to do with their contents. It had everything to do with the fact Penn’s hands had touched them.
He heard her go still. He turned. She was sitting on the floor with a brown box open in her lap. Her hands rested on the edges, fingers curled over the cardboard, trembling. Inside the box were the notebooks along with a folded T-shirt and a pocket knife.
He wanted to go to her, but he knew she didn’t want that. She hadn’t asked for space, either, but he read her posture—the rigid spine, the locked jaw, the white-knuckle grip on the box. She was a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will. Crossing the room would crack the seal. So he stayed by the window. Gave her the dignity of falling apart or not on her own terms.
But he didn’t look away. She closed her eyes. Breathed. Opened them.
“Got them,” she said, almost steady.
“Gather what you need of your own things. We’re at six minutes.”
She stood, setting the sketchbooks on the bed. She grabbed a backpack and threw some clothes and bath products into it. She went to the beat-up desk and stuffed art supplies in next. Her gaze moved across the space—quick, sharp, the same instinct he’d seen at the parlor when she’d assessed him in the doorway. She wasn’t looking at her things with nostalgia. She was looking at them with suspicion.
“The dresser.” Her voice went tight. “The second drawer. I always close it all the way because the track sticks. It’s open.”
Sebastian crossed the room in three strides. The drawer had the kind of gap a casual observer would dismiss. The contents—folded T-shirts and tank tops—looked undisturbed at first glance, but the fabric at the top had been displaced. Pushed aside rather than lifted. The way someone searching in a hurry would do.
“And the bookshelf,” Sutton said. She’d gone pale. “My copy of The Urban Sketcher is on the wrong side. I keep it on the left of The Practice and Science of Drawing, not the right.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just misplace it?”
Her eyes met his. “I’m sure.”
Someone had been in this apartment. Careful enough to avoid forced entry, but not careful enough for a woman who organized her bookshelf and remembered which drawers stuck.
“We’re leaving,” Sebastian said. “Now.”
Sutton didn’t argue. The color drained from her face. She hugged the backpack against her body.
He keyed the comms. “Team, the apartment’s been searched. We’re coming out hot. CB, hold the stairwell. Mack, I need eyes on every vehicle on this block.”
CB’s voice, immediate and sharp, responded. “Copy. Stairwell’s mine.”
Mack said, “There are two new vehicles since we arrived. Silver pickup, Montana plates, north end. White sedan, no plates visible, south end, driver’s side window cracked.”
No plates, window cracked. Sebastian’s pulse didn’t change—it never did in the field—but the calculus in his head shifted from cautious to urgent. “Claire, we need that sedan checked. Possible hostile surveillance.”
“Moving,” Claire said.
Sebastian took Sutton’s arm. His hand wrapped above her elbow, steady, guiding. She let him.
They went down the stairs fast. CB filled the doorway at the bottom like a human barricade, his eyes scanning the street over Sebastian’s head. Sebastian moved Sutton to the truck, opened the passenger door, put her inside, and closed it. He was behind the wheel three seconds later.
His comm clicked with Claire’s voice. “Sedan was empty. No registration, no personal effects. It’s been wiped.”
A surveillance vehicle, parked on Sutton’s block. Waiting.
Sebastian started the truck and pulled out. In the rearview, CB was already moving to the Tahoe, Mack materializing from a doorway to meet him. Claire’s sedan fell in behind.
