Page 38 of Shadow Burn

She didn’t ask why. She wanted to, but they arrived outside her door.

“My room is three doors down,” he said. “If you need anything, knock. I’m a light sleeper.”

She wanted to hug him. The impulse was strong enough that she shifted forward an inch before she caught herself. She just wanted to be close to him again. Heat climbed into her cheeks. “Goodnight, Jasper.”

“Goodnight, Katherine.”

She stepped inside and shut the door, then heard his footsteps move down the corridor. A pause. A door opening and closing softly.

She turned the lock, more out of habit than fear. Priss was still asleep in the center of the bed, occupying roughly sixty percent of the mattress by virtue of physics Katherine had never been able to understand. She eased the cat to one side, pulled back the covers, and climbed in, still in her sweats. Changing required more effort than she could give it.

She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. She was in a strange bed in a strange building. Someone was trying to kill her.

Underneath all of that, tangled in ways she couldn’t separate, she had feelings about the man three doors down that weren’t professional. He’d saved her life, carried her boxes as if they mattered, and given her his office without a second’s hesitation.

Even her cat liked him.

She was losing control of everything. The investigation into Cinder, certainly. The break-in had proved that the work was no longer within her management.

But also the part of her that had spent most of her life deciding who to let in and who to keep at a distance. She’d been making that calculation on autopilot since she was eleven and packing for the fourth move. The math had always come out the same way—don’t invest in people. Don’t get attached. Life is always changing.

Less than two days with Jasper Perault and the math wasn’t working anymore.

Priss shifted and pressed her warm body against Katherine’s hip. Katherine reached down and scratched behind her ears, and the cat purred. I’m still alive.

And here with Jasper, she knew she was going to stay that way.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jasper ran before dawn because his body knew what to do even when his mind didn’t.

The compound was quiet behind him, locked down and silvered by the last hour before sunrise. Frost glazed the grass along the trail, and the mountains beyond Blackridge were still dark shapes against a sky just beginning to lighten at the edges.

He kept his pace fast enough to burn, faster than his usual morning run, letting the cold air scrape through his lungs and the impact of his shoes against the trail drive the night backward one step at a time.

His mind still spun. The gunshot stayed with him. So did the breaking glass, the static on the line, and the awful silence after Katherine’s phone went dead. He’d heard combat through radios before, heard men breathing hard under fire, heard shouted coordinates and clipped reports. This had been different. This had been Katherine’s voice going from controlled to terrified while he was still too far away to put himself between her and the man trying to kill her.

He lengthened his stride as the trail curved through a stand of aspens. The cold bit at his ears. His chest tightened for reasons that had nothing to do with the grade.

She’d fought. She’d hit, kicked, clawed, and survived, and then sat in a laundry room wrapped in a blanket, trying to apologize to him with her eyes for needing help. He’d watched her freeze outside her own bedroom and then force herself to choose the library because if she didn’t take back one decision, the fear might own the next one. Jasper had admired that even as every protective instinct in him had rejected it.

The trail rose, and he pushed harder.

By the time he crested the hill behind the compound, dawn had smeared pale gold along the horizon. From up here, Shadow Point Security looked calm and self-contained, the main building low and dark against the trees, the gate closed, exterior cameras tracking all angles of the landscape. Calm was a lie, but it was a useful one. He checked the sightlines out of habit, then again because Katherine was inside.

He slowed on the descent, not because he was tired enough to stop but because his thoughts had finally sorted themselves into categories. The intruder knew Katherine’s name. He’d known where she was staying. He’d ignored the file on the kitchen table, which meant his mission had not been retrieval. It had been termination.

The intruder had also made mistakes. He’d lost his weapon, left fabric on the broken window, fired twice inside a house, which gave Mallory ballistics, bullet trajectory, and evidence. The killer had been forced to flee on foot through a narrow yard rather than leave cleanly through his chosen entry point. Katherine and Priss had turned his controlled assault into a messy exit.

Jasper liked messy exits. Messy exits left trails.

He finished the run at the west entrance, breathing hard, sweat cooling beneath his shirt. The door opened before he reached it, and Garrett stepped out with a travel mug in one hand and a phone in the other. He was still in last night’s clothes, which meant he hadn’t slept either.

“Perimeter logs?” Jasper asked.

“Already pulled for you. Gate, outer cameras, east trail, this service road, and the rear lot. Sebastian added his notes from the library run and sent them to your email. I sent him and CB home. Reid is eating like he survived a famine, which means Mack is threatening him with a spatula and calling him CB Junior.”

“Normal morning, then.”