Page 79 of Anchor
Her hand cracked through the air in a slap meant to land. His grip caught her wrist with steel precision, halting it an inch from his face. Silence hit heavier than any blow.
“You don’t strike me, Heather,” Vos pulled her close until her breath hitched against his throat, “not unless you’re ready for what comes after.”
Her pulse thundered beneath his hand. “Why?” she demanded. “Why destroy the entire building instead of just taking the damn box?”
His lips curled in something too sharp to be a smile. “Because the box doesn’t matter. There’s nothing in it that isn’t already burned into Claire’s head. The ledger was a decoy. The real archive lives in her memory—her father’s codes stitched into her since she was a child.”
Heather’s eyes widened. “Then why?”
“Because I wasn’t after the ledger.” Vos’s voice dropped into a snarl, his eyes alive with hunger. “I wanted the explosion to take Reid Hanlon. His uncle killed one of my men. Reid’s death would have been the trifecta: hurt the girl, break Ian Chase, and bleed Tuck Hanlon, all in one stroke.”
He leaned down, his breath sharp against her ear. “Claire has more lives than a damn cat. That makes her useful. But Reid? Reid was supposed to burn.”
Heather stiffened, her fury folding into something darker, almost unwillingly drawn to the violence in his tone.
Vos’s fingers tightened on her wrist until she gasped. “Pain is leverage, Heather. Not ledgers. Not scraps of paper. People. I’m not here to win a battle. I’m here to salt the earth they stand on.”
Then he kissed her, hard, savage. Her lipstick smeared across his jaw, her fists tangled in his collar. The hotel room became a cage of fire and control neither wanted to escape. And just beyond the door, the corridor’s security camera blinked once, then went black.
EXECUTIVE SUITE – 1413 HOURS
The news hadn’t stopped.
She’d watched her apartment building collapse from every angle, pixel by pixel, neighborhood camera by camera. First responders, flames, smoke curling up from everything she thought was hers. The window she’d once read beside. The stairs she’d climbed up after a long day at work. Gone.
And Reid hadn’t called. She’d tried twice, but he didn’t answer.
She was pacing when the door finally opened. Reid stepped in, clean, but the faint scent of smoke still clung to him. His shirt was fresh. His face newly washed. But she could smell the fire in his hair.
Claire froze. His eyes found hers, and he didn’t wait. He walked to her in three strides and pulled her into his chest, his arms folding around her like armor.
“I thought…”
“I’m here,” he said, voice low, steady. “I told you I’d come back.”
Her arms didn’t let go, not for a while.
When they finally broke apart, he returned to the door and picked up the scorched metal box he’d carried to her room. Its corners were blackened, latch half-melted but intact.
“It was buried under your floorboards in the explosion,” he said. “Box matches the ledger dimensions. Took a hit, but itheld.” He pulled a pair of black gloves from his pocket and offered them. “Just in case.”
Claire reached for it with gloved hands, breath tight in her throat. Reid didn’t speak. Just watched her, steady and silent.
Inside were blackened folders, heat-warped documents, and a sealed plastic sleeve with photographs. Some were curled from heat; others remained pristine, like the fire hadn’t dared touch them. She sifted through them one by one.
Handwritten notes—her father’s writing. Diagrams. Pages of ciphered field entries. References to Vos. The word “firefly” marked once in red ink. Dates. Locations. Operations.
Then a photo.
Heather was standing in front of the Flower Clock in Geneva, slim but unmistakably pregnant. Her hand pressed over her belly. The timestamp read September 15, 1995.
Claire’s fingers trembled.
Reid leaned in. “That’s…?”
“She’s pregnant,” Claire said, voice faint. She shuffled deeper into the box. More papers. A Swiss birth certificate dated January 1996—female infant, unnamed. Mother and father both unknown.
Another document: A U.S. death certificate for a stillborn male. Heather and Joseph Bowman listed as parents, filed February 1996.
