Page 49 of Shadow Burn

He tapped several keys on his keyboard. “I’ll route it through a shielded connection.”

“Do I want to know what that means?”

“No,” CB, Mack, and Garrett all responded.

“It’s always good to be paranoid,” Reid said. “The Agency has ways of tracking all of us.”

“Write the narrow version,” Jasper told her, gesturing at the laptop to log in. “No Cinder. No speculation. No names except the police contact and the existence of the attack.”

She nodded, entering her password. “Right.”

Lines of code displayed on his monitor. “Don’t mention SPS by name unless protocol requires it.”

“It does, but I won’t put it in for now.”

Garrett took the seat across from her. “While you do that, we’ll keep working the sedan.”

Jasper turned back to the monitor. “Partial plate is still cleaning up. I’ve got the two letters, maybe the number three.”

Mack lifted his phone. “I’ll call Alyssa about the sketch.”

CB looked at Priss. “And I’ll keep watch on the cat.”

Priss blinked at him.

“She’s judging you,” Katherine said.

“That’s cute. She’ll have to get in line.”

The room moved around her again, voices low, focused, competent. Even at his workstation, Jasper was close enough that she could sense his presence without looking at him. That helped more than she wanted to admit.

She began drafting the memo in her notebook first, because handwriting gave her time to choose every word before committing it to the Agency system. Each phrase felt like stepping onto thin ice. Too much truth and she might alert the wrong person. Too little, and she might leave herself exposed. She wrote quickly, worried about Upton possibly tracing her to this location through the laptop, regardless of Jasper’s shield.

The wording was sterile. It made no mention of the black mask, the man, or his gun. It made no mention of Jasper saying he’d stop the predator or the way her body had believed him, even while her mind continued to catalog risk.

When she finished the draft, she looked up and found Jasper watching her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You look like you’re about to tell me not to send it.”

“I’m not.”

“But?”

“But I want to know where it routes before you do.”

“I can check the reporting protocol and distribution list before sending.”

“Can you do that without triggering attention?”

“Yes.” Then she thought about it. “Probably.”

“Probably is not my favorite word.”

“Mine either.”