Page 56 of Shadow Burn

“But we’re close?”

She was still pale and exhausted, but looked more alive than she had all day, as if the evidence had given her back a piece of herself the intruder had stolen.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re close.”

The words had barely left his mouth when Garrett appeared in the doorway, phone at his ear and expression grim. “CB just called in from town.”

Jasper turned his chair. “Tell me he found the sedan.”

“He did,” Garrett said. “Abandoned behind an old service garage off Route 12.”

Katherine went still.

Garrett’s gaze moved to her, then back to Jasper. “There’s blood on the driver’s seat, glass in the floorboard, and a black ski mask in the trunk. But no sign of the driver.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

That evening, Katherine had read the same paragraph in Walter Vance’s handwriting four times and still didn’t understand it. The words were clear enough. Vance’s penmanship was neat. The sentence referred to a 1998 meeting in Vienna, a secondary review of an unnamed asset, and a request for “discretionary containment pending final historical determination.” The phrase should have meant something. It did mean something. Her mind knew there was a hook buried inside the language, one of those dull bureaucratic hooks that looked harmless until it tore skin.

But every time she tried to follow it, the sentence blurred.

Upton’s forty-eight-hour deadline hung over her like an execution order written in memo format. By tomorrow morning, she was supposed to be ready to return to Langley with the Vance materials, or at least to justify why she wasn’t doing so. She had a notification memo in the Agency system now, narrow enough to be technically compliant. She had a government-issue sedan connected to a decommissioned vehicle tied to Legacy Shield, a classified review program chaired by Upton and linked to Caldwell Strategic Risk. She had a sketch of the man who’d tried to kill her, a partial plate that had opened one door with ten more behind it, and a growing stack of Vance anomalies that suggested someone had been massaging records for years.

What she didn’t have was the sentence, memo, signature, or direct reference that would make the whole thing undeniable.

She blinked hard and pressed her bandaged palm flat against the edge of Jasper’s desk. Pain tugged at the cut beneath the gauze. The boxes of Vance papers lined the wall in disciplined stacks, red-tabbed files separated from blue, fragile correspondence boxed separately, the Cinder materials locked in Jasper’s lower cabinet because she’d needed to put them somewhere that felt like a vault. Jasper’s office had become a strange hybrid of archive, war room, and borrowed sanctuary.

His monitors glowed at his desk. Her notebooks were spread across the coffee table. Priss had claimed the top of an empty archival box near the couch, where she slept with the smug satisfaction of a creature who had discovered that a private security compound came with multiple people willing to provide treats.

Everyone was absurdly in love with her.

Mack had brought her something called “recovery chicken,” which Priss had accepted after pretending to be suspicious of it for approximately six seconds. CB had walked past Jasper’s office twice and saluted her through the glass. Vivi had sent down a folded fleece blanket because “trauma and cats both required soft surfaces,” and Garrett, who looked like a man carved out of stone, had crouched beside Priss earlier and asked her whether she preferred salmon or tuna treats when someone made a supply run.

Priss had blinked at him, slow and regal.

Katherine had almost cried.

She bent over the letter again. Discretionary containment pending final historical determination.

“Discretionary containment,” she whispered.

Priss opened one eye.

“I know. It’s terrible language.”

The cat closed her eye again, as if terrible language was beneath her concern unless snacks were involved.

Katherine turned the page carefully. The paper was thin, faintly yellowed, and soft from age. Vance had made a note in the margin beside a reference to Caldwell, but the ink had faded enough that she had to tilt the page beneath the lamp.

Caldwell—interim review, asset D? Cinder risk not closed.

No initials. No date beyond the letter’s heading. No full name for the asset. No direct connection to Legacy Shield, which shouldn’t have existed under that name yet if Vivi’s contact was right.

Katherine’s eyes burned.

She wrote the note into her log anyway. She underlined “not closed” twice, then stared at the phrase until the ink seemed to lift off the page.

The office door opened.