Page 39 of Shadow Burn

Garrett’s mouth twitched. “Normal for us. Not for her.”

Jasper glanced toward the residential wing. “She up?”

“Haven’t seen her. Vivi checked on her an hour ago. Said she was awake but calm. That could mean anything from actually calm to assembling a legal argument against God.”

“That tracks.”

Garrett studied him over the rim of his mug. “You good?”

Jasper almost answered the way he usually did. Fine. Working on it. I’ll be in the tech room. Instead, he looked past Garrett to the building where Katherine had spent the last few hours trying to sleep in a strange room after a man with a gun had forced his way into her bedroom. “No,” he said. “But I’m functional.”

Garrett nodded once, accepting the distinction. “Functional works. For now.”

Jasper showered fast and changed into jeans, a dark long-sleeve thermal, and a gray hoodie. He checked the mirror long enough to decide he looked less like a man who’d spent half the night imagining the line between Katherine alive and Katherine dead, and more like someone who might be trusted with coffee. That would have to do.

The kitchen was warm when he walked in. The smell of eggs, bacon, toast, and Mack’s terrifyingly strong coffee wrapped around him with the closest thing to comfort the morning could offered. Mack stood at the stove in a black T-shirt, flipping something in a skillet with more focus than most people brought to disarming explosives. Reid sat at the long table with a plate that looked like it he was preparing for hibernation.

Both of them had returned from a protection detail around four, which explained why Mack was at the compound instead of home with his wife. The job had involved a mining executive, a disgruntled former employee, and a six-hour drive through bad mountain roads.

“You look like roadkill with hair product,” Reid said when Jasper walked in.

Jasper went to the coffee station. “You look like a man eating four people’s breakfast.”

“Three. I have boundaries.”

Mack snorted. “You ate the fourth person’s breakfast while claiming it was a structural taste test.”

“It failed structurally,” Reid said. “Fell apart right in my mouth.”

Mack pointed the spatula at him. “Touch the biscuits before I say they’re ready, and I’ll feed you to Vivi’s birds.”

Reid glanced toward Jasper. “He’s testy because the mining executive offered me a full-time bodyguard job and not him.”

“I’m testy because I covered your ass when the shooting started and you didn’t even say thanks,” Mack said. “How’s Katherine?”

The question softened the kitchen just enough that the humor settled into something steadier. Jasper pulled two mugs from the cabinet and filled one with black coffee for himself before preparing Katherine’s with cream, no sugar. “Awake, according to Garrett. I’m taking her breakfast.”

Reid set down his fork. “She hit the shooter with a book, right?”

“Hardcover and thick as your thigh.”

He made an impressed face. “Really? Tell me it was a law book.”

“It was about Cold War intelligence failures.”

Reid stared at him for half a second, then nodded with solemn approval. “I respect a woman who themes her violence.”

Mack slid eggs onto a plate and added toast, bacon, and a biscuit. “Take this to her. Trauma burns through people. She may say she’s not hungry.”

“She will.”

“Then tell her Mack said to eat anyway.”

“That won’t work.”

Mack added a small dish of jam to the plate. “Then tell her that cat needs her human properly fueled.”

“That might.”