Page 17 of Shadow Burn

Katherine reached over, switched off the bedside lamp, and lay in the dark with her cat and her notebook. She still felt the warmth in her cheeks that hadn’t fully faded as she closed her eyes and fell asleep thinking of Jasper.

CHAPTER FOUR

The chili had been hot when he carried the bowl into his room.

It wasn’t now.

Jasper sat on the edge of the bed with the bowl on his knee and the spoon in his hand. He hadn’t eaten any of it. The film on the surface suggested it had been sitting untouched for a long time.

He set the bowl on the nightstand. He should be working. The Caldwell thread was open in three different windows on his laptop across the room, and he had two leads on the Vienna meeting he wanted to pull. He’d told himself, while carrying the chili from the kitchen, that he was going to eat dinner in his room precisely so he could work straight through without small talk in the kitchen and common area.

Instead, he’d spent twenty minutes on the edge of his bed with cooling food because of Katherine.

The clean, faintly citrus scent that wasn’t perfume had lingered around her chair today. He kept catching ghost traces of it now, even in his own room, where there was no possible source for it.

Then there was her laugh. The short, surprised, fully bodied sound that had come out of her when he’d made the joke about absence as data being her love language. Her shoulders had been up around her ears, and he’d made a dry remark, hoping to get her to relax.

It worked. The sound had warmed his chest in a way he still didn’t know what to do with.

Worse, he kept hearing the small, startled noise she’d made afterward when she pressed her fingers to her mouth as if she could put the laugh back.

The final straw had been her sympathy. She’d laid her hand lightly across the back of his when he’d told her about his father. The touch, the steady look in her pretty eyes—he hadn’t known what to do with it.

He’d flinched. Just the small contraction that caused her to pull her hand back at once, and her cheeks had gone a faint pink.

He hadn’t flinched because the touch was unwelcome. Not really. He just hadn’t been touched like that in a long time. He hadn’t wanted anyone’s sympathy. Hadn’t known what to do with a woman who offered it without pushing it at him like medicine he hadn’t asked for.

He stood and carried the bowl to the kitchen to dump it in the sink.

The walk didn’t help.

Neither did the walk back.

He sat at his desk in the corner of the room, opened the laptop, and stared at the Caldwell window. He read several of Caldwell’s consulting firm employee bios before realizing he was reading them in Katherine’s voice.

He closed the laptop.

This was a problem.

At his window, he stared out at the dark gravel of the compound lot. The trees on the hillside were a black mass against a navy sky.

Katherine was a client. The case was real, and his attention had to be where it belonged—on what the people who’d buried her flag were going to do next, not on the brand of soap she used or the sound of her laughter. Whatever was happening to him after one workday in a public library meeting room was not something he could afford to indulge.

At his closet, he pulled out his running shoes. A few miles in the cold air would clear his thoughts. Or at least give them somewhere else to go.

He sat down on the bed and started loosening the laces. His phone rang. He picked it up and frowned at the caller ID. “You’re working late. What’s⁠—”

Katherine spoke over him, her voice pitched higher than normal. “There’s someone at the back door. Priss heard him before I did. He’s working the lock—I can hear it. I think he has a pick or something.”

He shoved to his feet. “Where are you in the house right now?”

“The hallway outside the bedroom.”

“Get inside the bedroom. Now. Does the door lock?” He was moving as he spoke, scooping up his keys, grabbing his sidearm and jacket. He shot out the bedroom door and was halfway down the hall before she answered.

“Yes,” she said. The word came tight. “I’ve got to grab Priss.”

“Don’t worry about the cat.”