Page 79 of Shadow Burn

Behind him, Cinder cursed as Garrett hauled him upright and Detective Mallory read him his rights.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You’re going to be.”

Her laugh came out weak and hurt. “That sounds ominous.”

“It is. I’m going to keep you awake long enough to yell at you properly.”

The pressure in her chest loosened. Not much but enough.

Rain blew through the open gate, cold against her face. Jasper shifted closer, blocking it with his body as if he could shield her from weather, bullets, conspiracies, and every bad decision she’d made in the name of love.

Maybe he couldn’t.

But he would try.

Katherine let her eyes close for one second.

“Don’t pass out on me,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m an…excellent liar,” she whispered. “I got past Sebastian.”

“I heard that,” Sebastian said.

Jasper let out a breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t shaken. “Open your eyes, Katherine.”

She did.

The door opened. Vivi stood there, shaking her head. “Get her off that wet ground,” she said to Jasper, “and bring her to the medical suite.”

“I need her statement,” Mallory called.

“Medical attention first,” Vivi said.

Jasper gently took Katherine’s arm. “Can you sit up?” Raindrops dotted his hair, blood marred his sleeve, and fury and fear were written all over the face she’d thought she might never see again.

She held the sleeve tighter and tried to rise. The world tilted, and it took Jasper and Sebastian to get her on her feet.

Cinder was alive. Upton was exposed. Vance had left them the truth in paper, ink, code, and flame.

And Katherine had made sure the archive revealed the truth.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three days after Katherine took down Cinder at the east service gate, Jasper stood in his office and watched federal agents pack the Vance papers into evidence containers.

He hated every second of it.

They wore gloves, worked in pairs, photographed each box before touching it. They logged each folder and treated the old papers with the kind of respect Katherine demanded from where she stood six feet away, supervising the process. Her sprained wrist was wrapped in a brace, and her mouth was set in that calm, professional line that meant she was one inconvenience away from verbally skinning someone.

And Jasper was hopelessly and irrevocably in love with her.

Her color had returned. The bruising along her shoulder was fading from angry purple to yellow-green. The knot at her temple had gone down, and the doctor had cleared her concussion symptoms as mild, with the usual warnings about headaches, dizziness, and not trying to solve an entire federal conspiracy while sleep-deprived.