Page 25 of Shadow Secrets
Sutton studied it. “It’s not one of his standard marks. He used circles for revision notes and X’s for rejected elements. This is different, though. It could be a reference—a tag for pages that connect to something specific.”
Claire marked it in her file. “What about the initials?”
Sutton read them off, one by one. They meant nothing to her, but Claire’s pen hesitated on two of them, and Garrett straightened almost imperceptibly.
Sutton caught the reaction. “You recognize those?”
“We’ll need to verify,” Claire said carefully. “But if these initials correspond to the individuals I think they do, this is significantly bigger than one assassination attempt and one murdered witness.”
The third sketchbook was the oldest. Penn’s earlier work, less refined, more experimental. Sutton turned the pages faster here—these were student-era designs, the kind of raw exploration every artist went through before finding their voice. Dragons. Skulls. A series of botanical studies that were surprisingly delicate for a man who’d built his reputation on bold, graphic work.
Eventually, she began seeing the first formations of the tattoo, scribbled here and there. Words, calculations, and crossed-out notes filled the pages. Then she turned a page and stopped breathing.
It was her. A portrait, rendered in graphite with a precision Penn rarely bothered with—he was a linework artist, bold strokes, high contrast, not the kind of careful tonal rendering that a portrait demanded.
But he’d done it here. Her face looked up from the page in three-quarter profile, chin slightly lifted, a half-smile. Her hair was longer—the way she’d worn it at Corcoran, before she’d started cutting it herself to save money.
The eyes were the part that made her breath come out a little ragged, though. He’d gotten the expression right. The openness. The look she’d had before the world had taught her to guard it.
The portrait was tucked between two pages of tattoo designs. The earliest renderings of the organization’s mark on one side. Her face on the other.
He’d been thinking about her while he was in the middle of whatever this was. While he was building tattoos for a secret organization, he’d stopped to draw Sutton the way he remembered her—young, unguarded, still whole.
The room fell silent. Everyone’s attention on her felt as if something private had been exposed under surgical lights. Her chest went tight. She stood so fast the chair scraped against the floor. “Excuse me.” The words were barely audible.
She was already moving—past Sebastian, past Jasper, past Claire, into the corridor. The hallway stretched in both directions, institutional and featureless, and she picked a direction and walked until she found an exit leading outside.
The cold hit her like a hand on the chest. She leaned against the exterior wall, tipped her head back against the concrete block, and felt the sting of tears. The sky above was enormous and blue, and her heart was too damn raw.
Penn had been branded the reckless brother, the failed artist, the man who’d done something monstrous. The portrait didn’t fit that shape. It fit the one of the brother she’d loved.
The door opened behind her. She didn’t turn.
Sebastian came to stand beside her, his gaze scanning the area. She was an idiot to run outside, even being here at this compound. He had every right to be angry, to order her back inside where it was safe.
But he didn’t. He leaned one shoulder against the wall and waited, the way he’d waited outside her bedroom door the previous night.
The silence stretched. The hawk was back, circling over the tree line.
“He used to quiz me,” Sutton said. Her voice sounded far away. “On anatomy for figure drawing. He’d hold up his hand and say, ‘How many bones?’ and I’d have to answer before he’d give me back my coffee. Twenty-seven. The answer is twenty-seven, and I can still hear him saying ‘wrong, it’s thirty-two if you count the sesamoids,’ which who does that? But he did and he’d argue about it for an hour if you let him.”
Sebastian nodded, that ghost of a smile lifting the corners of his lips.
“He was the one who told me I should apply to Corcoran. I didn’t think I was good enough. He sat me down in his apartment with a stack of my sketchbooks and went through them page by page and pointed to every piece that was better than what he’d been doing at my age. He said, ‘You have a better eye than me, Sut. You just don’t trust it yet.’”
She swallowed. The cold air burned in her throat. “He was stubborn. God, he was stubborn. Once he decided something, you couldn’t move him with dynamite. Our parents tried. Our mother would beg him to consider law school, something stable, and he’d just smile and tell her that stable was where creativity went to die. He drove them crazy. He drove me crazy. We’d argue about color theory until one of us threw something at the other.”
Sebastian chuckled.
She heard her own breathing in the pause. Felt the wall against her shoulder blades. “The brother I knew is not the man from the news. Not the shooter of a young girl. He was my brother. He was annoying and brilliant. He made terrible coffee and he believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. He was a real person.”
She turned her head, hoping she was making Sebastian see Penn the way she had.
He was watching the tree line, but his jaw was tight. “Stubborn must run in the family.”
The words landed softly. She blinked. For a second, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Then she saw the faintest crease at the corner of his mouth—not a smile, but the suggestion of one, offered with caution as if carrying something fragile across a distance he wasn’t sure he could bridge.
A sound escaped her—half laugh, half exhale, surprised out of her before she could stop it. “Did you just call me stubborn?”
