Page 86 of Shadow Burn

He’d told her security was his hobby. She’d told him that was the saddest thing she’d ever heard from a man with his skills and access to a gym, gaming center, and a ping-pong table.

The ping-pong table that hadn’t been used since he and Katherine had played.

Now he sat in his office, late afternoon light slanting across the empty wall where Katherine’s boxes had been, and watched a compound that didn’t currently need watching. Garrett, Mack, CB, Sebastian, and Reid were out on assignment. A client transfer in Idaho had pulled them away before dawn.

The place was too quiet. Quiet left room for memories. It left room for the image of her in the federal SUV, one hand lifted against the window as the gate closed between them.

It left room for the hollow place inside him where she’d been.

His phone sat beside the keyboard, silent for the moment. Katherine texted when she could. A line here and there. A photo of Priss. A complaint about congressional investigators misusing the word archive. Once, at two in the morning, she’d called and said nothing for three seconds after he answered.

He’d known then that she was exhausted and trying not to cry.

He’d asked if she’d eaten, and she’d laughed quietly. Then she’d admitted she’d had coffee and half a protein bar since breakfast, and he’d spent twenty minutes on the phone with her while she fixed herself some soup and told him, in careful, incomplete pieces, what it felt like to sit inside the institution that had nearly erased her and insist on being heard.

She’d been doing that for three months. Testimony. Depositions. Classified hearings. Internal review. More testimony. More questions. More lawyers. More people trying to make Richard Upton’s choices sound like procedural inportance instead of a deliberate cover-up that had protected a covert killer for decades.

Upton was still on administrative leave. Nathan Soot was still in federal custody. Michael Corrigan was still gone.

Katherine was still at Langley.

And Jasper was still in Blackridge, behind his monitors, exactly where she’d told him he belonged.

A soft knock sounded against his open office door.

He didn’t look away from the screens. “If this is about my dashboard, the answer is still no.”

Vivi stepped into the doorway. “I wasn’t going to ask you to simplify the dashboard.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I’m always thinking it.” She folded her arms and leaned against the frame. “I came to make sure you’ve eaten something that wasn’t coffee.”

“Coffee is not food.”

“Thank you for proving you still understand the basics.”

“I ate.”

“What?”

He paused.

Vivi sighed. “That’s what I thought. Come to the kitchen.”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“You’re watching twelve camera feeds of an empty compound. Not the same.”

He turned his chair slowly and gave her a flat look. “You know, Garrett lets me brood.”

“Garrett is not here, and when Garrett lets you brood, it’s because he’s brooding somewhere else and doesn’t want witnesses.”

That was unfortunately true.

Vivi’s gaze softened. “Ian’s been gone for two weeks. I don’t want to eat alone again.”

Ian worked for Shadow Force International, the mother company of Shadow Point Security. Vivi was always composed, always capable, and usually three steps ahead of whatever crisis tried to crawl through the front door. But there was a quietness around her today. She missed her husband, and even though she’d never admit she was lonely, Jasper knew she was.