Page 40 of Shadow Burn

Reid leaned back in his chair. “If the cat tripped an armed man, the cat outranks all of us now.”

“Priss already thinks that,” Jasper said.

CB barreled in, freshly showered and shaved. He snagged a plate and started filling it. “She’s not wrong. Sebastian said he’ll be in to see you in ten. He wants to go over the library exterior footage with you. He said something about a sedan that passed twice before we arrived.”

Jasper’s hand tightened around the edge of the tray before he caught himself. “He got a plate?”

“Partial. Mud on the rear bumper, no front plate visible.”

Good. A sedan. Maybe nothing, maybe the first thread.

Jasper balanced the tray with Katherine’s coffee and breakfast, then headed for the residential wing. He stopped outside her guest room and listened. No movement. No cat complaints. He knocked lightly.

No answer.

His pulse kicked once before he reminded himself that she had access to his office. He headed there next, passing two closed doors and the corridor camera that tracked his movement with a faint mechanical shift. The panel beside his office door registered him and unlocked with a soft click.

Katherine was on the couch, hair damp, dressed in slacks and a dark green sweater that made her skin look even paler. Priss sat beside her, washing one paw with the concentration of a monarch restoring order after a failed coup. One of Katherine’s leather notebooks lay open on the coffee table, but the page was blank except for three words written near the top.

Agency notification protocol.

Her phone sat beside it. Not her personal phone with the cracked screen; this one was for work. And next to that was the stun baton he’d given her last night, looking completely out of place next the rest.

She looked up, the bandage on her cheek was still in place with ridiculous little Elsa smiling bravely near the curve of her cheekbone. The gauze around her palm had loosened, probably from the shower. Her eyes were shadowed, but clear.

“I needed to work,” she said.

He set the tray on the coffee table. “Didn’t get much sleep, did you?”

Her gaze dropped to the plate. “You brought breakfast.”

Avoiding the question was answer enough. “Mack made too much.”

“Did he?”

“No, but my orders are to deliver it to you.”

The corner of her mouth moved, almost a smile. Priss abandoned her paw and leaned toward the plate with sudden interest.

“Absolutely not,” Katherine told her. “You’ve had breakfast.”

Priss chirped.

Katherine eyed the food. “Sorry, but I’m not hungry.”

Jasper sat in the chair across from the couch rather than beside her. “Mack said trauma burns through people, and Priss needs her human properly fueled.”

Katherine looked down at the cat, who’d placed one paw delicately on Katherine’s thigh and was staring at the bacon as if willing it into her mouth. “That’s slightly manipulative.”

“It’s Mack, so yes.”

She picked up the biscuit, seemingly more to satisfy him than because she wanted it. She took one bite, chewed carefully, and then took another.

Jasper reached for his coffee and nodded toward the notebook. “How’s work going?”

“I’ve been staring at that heading for twenty minutes.”

“Agency notification protocol?”