Page 49 of Anchor
He could see it as if he’d been in the room. Claire’s voice steady, her eyes bright, her conviction burning so hot, she forgot the crosshairs she’d stepped into.
“Come on, Bluebird,” he muttered under his breath, checking mirrors, checking the GPS route. Two klicks out. Every red light felt like a noose tightening.
His mind moved three beats ahead. If Vos had ears in that room, the feed was already in his hands. If anyone flagged Claire’s name, they’d trace her to Heather and to the Bowman machine. If someone moved on her, it would be fast—in and out before she even realized.
Reid’s chest tightened, but his grip stayed steady. Panic was useless. Anger was worse. What mattered was reach, speed, and control. He pressed the comm. “Bluebird, this is Anchor. Status.”
A crackle, then her voice came over, cool, clipped, reliable. “Claire’s with me. Moving her to office now.”
“Office? I told you no stops.”
“And, sir, um… Claire reminded me she has agency in her choices.”
Reid exhaled once, sharp. “Keep her tight. I’m two minutes out. Nobody lays a finger on her.”
He hit the accelerator, the SUV roaring forward. Downtown Ann Arbor blurred past in streaks of brick and glass, every second dragging like a lure on a fishing line ready to snap. Claire made herself seen. Now it was his job to make her untouchable.
Claire’s heelsclicked fast against the linoleum as she cut a path through the hallway of Weill Hall. The four operators from Tree Town One moved with her in a tight formation—silent, alert, and understated.
Bluebird walked a step ahead, eyes sweeping every corner with unflinching precision. Lockjaw matched Claire’s pace to the right, while Shade and Spartan ghosted the rear, scanning every doorway like they expected it to breathe.
It should have felt suffocating. Instead, it felt surgical. They weren’t boxing her in. They were containing the fallout.
“I need access to my office,” Claire said, voice even despite the pressure in her chest. “There’s a secure folder I have to retrieve personally.”
Lockjaw’s voice was low, automatic. “You could have told us what to grab. We’d have sent someone.”
Claire didn’t slow. “It’s not just paper. It’s a redline draft for a pending grant application containing a classified partnership. Handwritten annotations, cross-referenced with restricted field cases. It can’t be replaced, and no one else would know what to look for.”
Lockjaw gave a slight grunt. Not quite agreement. But not resistance either.
“I also left my hard key in the inner drawer,” she added. “That’s not something I log remotely. I don’t leave it unsecured, not even for intel.”
That landed. Bluebird glanced back briefly, then keyed her badge at the door. The lock disengaged with a metallic snap. Bluebird swept in first, fast and fluid. She didn’t speak, just did a sharp sweep-and-clear in practiced silence. A heartbeat later, she gave the nod.
Claire stepped inside. Her office was untouched. Neat rows of books. Graded essays stacked with militant precision. The faint, bitter trace of yesterday’s coffee drifting up from the wastebasket.
She moved straight to the desk. Her hands didn’t fumble. Beneath the pile of midterm assessments was the real object: a plain manila file she’d concealed three weeks ago when the firstclassified draft of Emberline’s internal review had arrived off-record. Thanks to Ian.
She slipped it beneath the essays, pinning the whole bundle to her chest like a shield. It wasn’t just paper. It was proof. Leverage. Or maybe just something she still had control over.
Behind her, Spartan murmured into his comm. Claire didn’t turn, but she caught the phrase clearly enough: “Anchor en route.”
Reid. The name pulled something in her chest taut. No time to unravel what.
She turned to Lockjaw. “I have what I need.”
He didn’t ask again. None of them knew what was really tucked inside the folder.
The SUV atethe streets in hard, straight lines. Daylight didn’t soften the edge. If anything, it made it worse. Threats were harder to pick out when everything looked open and normal.
Reid’s grip on the wheel was tight, jaw locked as the campus buildings came into view. His phone buzzed once. Spartan’s voice came through, short and clipped: “She’s secure. Office sweep clear. Anchor ETA?”
“One minute.”
Bluebird keyed up. Reid didn’t answer. He pressed harder on the gas.
He pictured her there with papers in her arms, stubborn in the way only Claire could be, standing her ground in a world that had already marked her without her consent. And for the first time since he’d been given Tree Town One, Reid felt somethingthat had nothing to do with orders or chain of command. It wasn’t just protection. It was possession.
