Page 22 of Shadow Burn

The man had hit the door again. The dresser shifted. The gap opened wide enough for his shoulder.

The gun was pointed at her. She saw the intent in the intruder’s eyes.

Katherine lurched toward the bathroom.

She dropped just as the gun went off. Her knees buckled, and she crashed onto her hands as the bullet punched through the window behind her. Glass exploded in a bright, violent spray. Cold air rushed into the room. Something hot stung across her cheek.

She screamed. The phone flew from her hand.

“Katherine!” Jasper’s voice came thin and distant through the speaker. “Katherine!”

She twisted on her hands and knees, half-blinded by shock, searching for it. The phone lay a few feet away, screen glowing, Jasper’s name bright against the floorboards.

She reached for it. The bedroom door gave way another foot.

The man jammed his body through the opening and came toward her. He was taller than she expected. Broader. His boot kicked her phone away and it crashed into the broken lamp. The screen went dark and Jasper’s voice vanished.

No.

No, no, no.

The man turned his masked face toward her. She scrambled for the bathroom, palms slipping on a few tiny shards of glass. Pain sparked in her left hand.

He caught her ankle. His gloved hand clamped around her bare skin, hard enough to bruise, and yanked her backward.

Katherine screamed again, twisting onto her back. She kicked with her free foot and caught him in the leg. He grunted but didn’t let go.

“Hellcat,” he said, breathing hard through the slit in the mask. “Didn’t expect that from an archivist.”

He dragged her another foot.

Something inside her snapped. Fury roared through her body. How dare he? How dare this man come into her room, put his hands on her, point a gun at her, say her name through a mask as if she were a problem to be managed?

She was not a file to be removed. She was not an anomaly to be reclassified.

She was not a goddamn clerical error someone could bury in the routing log.

She kicked again, harder this time, aiming for his knee. He shifted enough that she missed the joint and hit his thigh.

His hand tightened on her ankle. “That’s enough.”

“Go to hell.” She jackknifed upward, trying to rake him with her nails. He swore, released her ankle, and grabbed her by the hair instead.

Pain flashed white across her scalp. He hauled her upright.

Katherine staggered, one hand flying to his wrist, the other clawing for balance. Her feet slid. Her cheek stung. Her lungs burned. Under the bed, Priss made a horrible, low sound Katherine had never heard from her before.

The man shoved her toward the bed. The gun was still in his hand. She saw the dark fabric of his mask. The sweat at the corner of his mouth. Pale skin around his eyes, which were a dull, nothing brown. He had turned himself into absence.

But absence was data.

Her nightstand was at her hip. Books. She had books.

Her right hand closed around the top one in the stack, a heavy, hardcover history of Cold War intelligence failures she’d been rereading. She swung it with everything she had.

The book hit the side of his face with a flat, ugly crack. He grunted and stumbled half a step. Not enough.

But enough for her. Katherine shoved him with both hands.