Page 1 of Shadow Burn

CHAPTER ONE

Blackridge, Montana

Katherine Townsend let herself into the Blackridge Public Library at six-thirty, the way she had every weekday for the past month.

The side door key was cool in her palm. Margie, the head librarian, had pressed it on her during the second week Katherine showed up, claiming Katherine was going to freeze to death waiting on the steps. It was only September, but the nighttime temperatures were already dipping into the thirties and hanging on in the early mornings.

The same key worked for the private back meeting room, which Katherine’s boss had approved as a temporary, sanctioned CIA workplace after reviewing its layout and security. Katherine entered and flipped on the lights, pausing for a moment to take it in. She loved these early mornings with the hushed quiet of the room and the smell of paper and her coffee. The long oak table seated twelve and was perfect for spreading out the papers she was archiving. The whiteboard at the front was one she would never use, so she’d stacked the boxes of files, photos, and more in front of it.

At the end of the table, she set her travel mug to the left and her document bag to the right, then pulled on cotton gloves before lifting the lid of the next archival box she needed to catalog.

Walter Vance, retired Station Chief, had died three months ago in his home here in Blackridge. His widow had donated his personal papers to the University of Montana. She’d had no idea what she’d handed over.

Katherine did. Lifting one of the letters in its sleeve, she read it again. Vance’s handwriting was unmistakable, the date September 2003, with no addressee. There were three references to the operational cover name Cinder.

The problem? That cover had belonged to a spy who’d been dead for nine years when Vance wrote the letter.

She pulled out her notebook and added the cross-reference, then checked the time. She had three hours before she needed to be back at the rental for her ten o’clock meeting. The man Dr. Vivian Montgomery had recommended when Katherine had contacted her was a security expert, not a bodyguard. Katherine didn’t need a bodyguard, but Montgomery, the head of Shadow Point Security, had spent a notable amount of time on the phone explaining what he wasn’t willing to do.

“He doesn’t take fieldwork,” Dr. Montgomery had said. “He doesn’t do client-facing assignments like this. He’s internal support, and he’s made his preferences clear. I respect those preferences. I’ll offer him your job, but he may say no.”

“All I need a tech consultant,” Katherine had replied, “not a bodyguard.”

Dr. Montgomery had hesitated, then simply said, “Good luck.”

Which meant Katherine would have to convince this Jasper Perault that helping her trace and straighten out this anomaly about the dead spy was a job worth taking.

She worked through the next entries in the box, photographing each page with her personal phone before adding her notations. The Agency phone stayed at the bottom of her bag. She didn’t want it near this work for now, and she was beginning to suspect she didn’t want it anywhere near her at all. Not until she was sure this was only a clerical mistake and nothing more.

Two months ago, she’d come across the file on a 2019 reference to Cinder, another mention long after the spy was supposed to be dead. She’d submitted it for internal review and discovered shortly afterward that it had been quietly downgraded to clerical anomaly, resolved, and routed away from her without notification.

Three weeks before that, her colleagues had toasted her ten-year anniversary as Senior Archivist with paper cups of cheap fizzy wine that was supposed to replace real champagne. For an Army brat who’d moved every few years during her young life, staying in one place for ten years had felt more significant than anything else she’d done with her life.

And yet, here she was assigned a job far beneath her. She suspected the Cinder flag was the reason.

She suspected a lot of things she couldn’t prove.

After sipping her coffee, she held the next page to the light, checking for the watermark that would place it within the correct office chain. Most analysts never bothered. Archivists did. Paper could reveal so much more than words.

She locked up at nine-twenty and drove back to her rental, watching the mountains the whole way. They never stopped looking like a postcard. Six weeks in this town, and she still couldn’t reconcile the amazing view with this transplant assignment far beneath her station and the message it was sending.

You’ve stirred the wrong pot.

Priss met her at the door. Five years of cohabitation had taught the cat the sound of a key in a lock, and the gray tabby was already winding around her ankles before Katherine could set down her bag.

“You’re going to trip me.”

Priss replied with a chirp that conveyed neither apology nor concern.

“I’ve been gone three hours. You can’t be hungry already.”

The cat gave a longer, more dramatic meow that echoed in the foyer. Katherine stepped over her and headed to the kitchen. She set her bag on the counter and started a fresh pot of coffee. She had ten minutes to set up the table and prepare her careful explanation of her situation without actually saying too much. No one in Montana was cleared to know everything she knew.

“You’re not allowed on the table during this meeting,” she told Priss. “I mean it.”

Priss jumped onto the kitchen table in clear defiance.

“Off.”