Page 20 of Anchor
PRIVATE SUITE – ANN ARBOR – 0218 HOURS
The room was sterile by design. No family photos. No keepsakes. Just clean lines, frosted glass, and furniture meant to impress without offering comfort. Exactly the kind of place Heather Bowman preferred. A place she didn’t have to explain.
She stood at the window, coat thrown over the couch, her hair still immaculate and her makeup untouched. But something beneath the polished poise had cracked. Not visible. Not loud. Just there in the way her fingers dug into the window ledge, in the tight exhale she hadn’t meant to release.
Claire had gone off-script. Again.
And this time, she hadn’t just defied her mother. She had done it in front of the one audience Heather could not afford to alienate: Ian Chase.
Heather pulled out her secure device, bypassing federal channels. This wasn’t a call she intended to log. She tapped the contact markedPendulum. A coiled serpent wrapped around a compass star filled the screen. It rang once. Twice.
“Hello, Heather.” Lucien Vos’s voice came smooth, even, not the least bit surprised.
“She’s in,” Heather said flatly.
“I warned you that might happen.”
“She wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near your people or that device,” Heather snapped, ice threading through every syllable. “She wasn’t credentialed. No clearance. No briefing.”
Vos didn’t argue. “And yet, she saw it. She flagged it before Ian’s staff did. That’s not a liability, Heather. That’s bloodline.”
Heather’s jaw tightened. “She acted without authorization. Pursued intruders into restricted zones at a gala. She made a spectacle.”
Vos almost sounded amused. “And she was right.”
Heather went quiet, fury held still beneath the surface.
“She’s not under your control anymore,” Vos said. “You didn’t call me to report a victory. You called me because you’ve lost containment. So, are we speaking about mitigation?”
Heather’s voice was quieter now, colder. “She’s dangerous when she thinks she’s right. She doesn’t ask permission. She doesn’t pause.”
Vos gave a low chuckle. “She doesn’t blink like someone else I know.”
Heather refused the bait. “She’s still looking, even after all this time. If she pulls the wrong thread…”
“Geneva,” Vos said, not a question.
Heather’s hand tightened against the edge of the glass. “You know what’s buried there.”
“She was never supposed to see Emberline’s footprint,” Vos murmured. “But if she keeps tracing, if she keeps looking…”
“She’ll find you,” Heather said, her voice sharp now, “and then she won’t stop. She’ll keep going. She cannot discover what happened in Geneva.”
Vos let the silence linger before answering, calmly and deliberately, “Then redirect her. Don’t suppress her.”
“She doesn’t redirect,” Heather said bitterly. “She dissects.”
“Then offer her something worth dissecting. There’s a unit standing up now. Hybrid intel, peripheral to NATO but off-structure. Not Chase. Not official. She’ll smell the seams. She’ll still take it—because it will feel like purpose. And she’s starving for it.”
Heather shook her head. “No fieldwork. She cannot bleed.”
“That won’t be your decision,” Vos said. “It never was.”
Heather looked at her reflection in the dark glass, polished but hollow. “I built a firewall around her. And now she’s the breach.”
“Then stop treating her like your daughter,” Vos advised. “Start treating her like what she’s always been—a weapon searching for a cause.”
Heather closed her eyes.
