Page 12 of Anchor
Reid blinked once. Martin shifted for the first time.
Ian continued, steady but quieter now, “Tuition. Car. Rent. Security. Heather took the credit, but the money came from me. Through a Chase shell account, cleared and buried. Only one other man knows.”
“Alamo,” Martin said, just above a whisper.
Ian nodded. “Crockett was there the day I made the promise as Joseph died. Heather tried to shut the door on me. The minute I landed, I went to her with no sleep and blood on my boots. She didn’t want me near Claire.”
Reid leaned back slightly. His spine felt like it was recalibrating.
“What did you tell her?” Killian asked.
Ian didn’t blink. “The truth. How Joseph died. Who was responsible. She wanted NDAs, severance, and for me to pretend none of it ever happened. I refused.”
Reid’s hand twitched. “So why tell us now, sir?”
“Because her mother left her in this building after she flagged a threat. And that’s on me. If she’s caught up in this and possibly harmed—I’m the reason.”
Martin straightened, his hands curling slowly into fists. “You think Heather’s been using Claire as political insulation?”
Ian’s stare didn’t shift. “Heather’s not only using her. She’s controlling her. Claire’s not in those photo ops by choice.”
Martin blinked.
Ian kept going, the words clipped like a knife scraping bone. “She graduated MIT at seventeen—seventeen—and she went straight to the NSA. She was buried in classified work before she could legally buy a drink. Then, two years ago, she quit. She left the agency under sealed terms and showed up at the University of Michigan teaching graduate quantum algorithms like she’s hiding in plain sight.”
“And now?” Killian asked.
“She’s living in Kerrytown. Alone. No staff, no security. Refuses help. Refuses money. She’s doing everything she can not to owe Heather a cent. But Heather still drags her out, dresses her up, makes her smile for the cameras like she’s some kind of fucking trophy. The genius daughter. The patriotic prodigy. Just enough backstory to impress the donors, never enough to threaten the narrative. And she does it all because otherwise Heather will smear Joseph’s memory.”
Reid said nothing.
Ian’s jaw tightened. “Heather’s not just muting Claire. She’s rewriting her. Keeping her brilliance under glass. Claire could run circles around half the National Security Agency, but Heather makes her stand there like she’s an ornament.”
Something colder flickered across his face. “And tonight, Claire started to remember what she’s capable of. Seeing the anomaly came naturally to her. And judging by Heather’s reaction, I think…” He looked away for a second. “I think there’ssomething else buried. Something Claire doesn’t even know she knows—yet.”
Reid shifted his weight again, jaw tight. The floor didn’t creak, but he felt the movement in his shoes like it echoed anyway.This is the part they never train you for.
He could breach a room in under four seconds. Handle a surveillance drone in his sleep. Insert, extract, vanish. Precision. Movement. Orders. But this, this quiet, this room thick with memory and unfinished sentences, this was another battlefield entirely.
He didn’t know what to do with the ghosts in the room, things Ian wasn’t saying, but the pressure against his skin was like static. He could feel more of the story sitting there, just under the surface. Not facts—those he could handle. But history. Wounds that didn’t bleed anymore but still burned like hell when you stepped wrong.
Holding his ground in the silence of this room took more from him than any op. Because, in the stillness, there were no commands to follow. There were no tactical objectives. It was just the unbearable exposure of being seen without cover. And Reid didn’t know how to hold his weapon against that.
“From here forward,” Ian’s voice was steady but strained, no longer sharp, “we do this right.” He looked away for half a second, like he had to push the next part out. “No secret surveillance. No tracking her in the shadows. No more tracing her in the dark. No handlers. No passive monitoring. If, after I share what I know, she decides to stay close…” His throat worked. “We acknowledge it. We don’t hide from it. We engage it. Transparently.”
A pause. Then he spoke again, almost to himself: “She deserves that much, after everything.”
Reid gave a nod. “That means we can’t treat her as an asset, a commodity, a means to an end. She’s a very smart person.”
Ian turned toward him, gaze pinning him with quiet clarity. “She’s your responsibility now.”
Reid’s pulse ticked. “Sir?”
“You’re not her shadow. You’re not her leash. You’re her anchor. Get her to her home in Kerrytown safely. Stay in her line of sight. Explain to her we are examining what happened tonight, and until we get a handle on things, we would like to err on the side of caution to keep her safe. If anything smells off, you call me directly. No chains of command.”
Reid held his gaze. “Copy that.”
Killian cut in, “And if Heather tries to assert her power over Claire or you, Ian?”
