Page 45 of Shadow Burn

“You’re sure?” Mack asked.

She nodded once. “I’d know those lips anywhere.”

Mack turned to Jasper. “What if I bring in Alyssa to draw what Katherine remembers about his face?”

Mack’s wife was a sketch artist for the FBI. Jasper glanced at Katherine. “You game to describe what you remember so we can get a sketch of him?”

“I only saw his eyes and mouth.”

Mack shrugged. “Even that might be enough to run it through software databases. Alyssa’s had less to go on and managed to help the Feds capture criminals with it.”

She swallowed hard and nodded at Jasper. “I’ll try.”

Jasper turned back to the screen and started typing. “Call Alyssa, Mack. I’ll work on the plates.”

A ringing came from Katherine’s bag. “That’s my Agency phone,” she said.

The room quieted, all of them recognizing a threat.

She opened the bag and drew out the phone. Jasper didn’t think it possible for her to go even stiffer, but she did.

“Who is it?” he asked.

She seemed frozen. CB leaned over and read off the caller ID, “R. Upton.”

Jasper left his chair. “Is that your boss?”

She gave one nod. “My boss’s boss. Richard is the Associate Deputy Director of Analysis.”

Jasper looked from the screen to Katherine’s face. “Do you trust him?”

Her bandaged hand tightened around the phone. “No.”

CHAPTER NINE

Katherine stared at the Agency phone in her hand and felt the room narrow around the glowing name on the screen.

R. Upton.

Associate Deputy Director Richard Upton carried weight through internal memos, policy reviews, classified historical appendices, and decisions that moved people across the board without explaining why. He’d signed off on her reassignment to Montana.

The phone continued to vibrate against her bandaged palm.

Around her, the conference room was silent. Reid sat up, fully awake. CB no longer looked amused. Mack’s expression sharpened. Sebastian stood near the large screen still as stone. Jasper remained beside her.

Sebastian’s gaze flicked to Jasper. “An Associate Deputy Director is high in the ranks.”

“Yes.” Katherine’s mouth had gone dry. “It is.”

The ringing sounded sharp and official. She’d had the phone turned off until half an hour ago, when she’d been debating about calling in. She’d tossed it in her document bag with the notebook because leaving it behind had felt impossible. Her document bag was her portable archive, her chain of custody, her last illusion of control.

Her stomach knotted, her breathing came fast. If she let the call go to voicemail, that would be a statement. If she answered, she might be condemning herself. Senior officials rarely called people of her level directly. They had assistants, deputies, and layers of hierarchy for that.

The fact that his ID even lit up said something. He was using his direct office line and bypassing Taysha, his executive assistant, who ran half the senior staff calendar with the ease of Priss ripping her catnip toys to shreds.

The problem with senior officials was that silence and speech both became evidence of something, depending on who wrote the memo afterward.

“Don’t answer it,” Jasper said. “You can call back later on your own terms.”