Page 32 of Anchor
Reid straightened. “Understood.”
“Good.” Noah’s eyes held his for a measured beat, then flicked to Dean. “Tree Town One is yours now. Make sure they wear it well.”
With that, he turned to leave. The sound of the door shutting left them in steel silence with the rack between them.
Reid let out a slow breath. “Zero-six. We don’t just break them in. We start building.”
Dean gave one short nod. “And it starts with us.”
ELEVEN
EXECUTIVE SUITE – PENTHOUSE – 1900 HOURS
The elevator eased to a stop atPH. Claire tugged Reid’s tuxedo jacket tighter around her shoulders as the doors parted, a reflex more than need. The suite was quiet and expansive, framed in glass with the city glittering beyond like scattered stars. Marble floors and low lights. Air faintly warm with a waft of cedar and tea.
“Claire.”
Her name, spoken with calm warmth, carried from the seating area by the windows. Ian Chase stood as she stepped inside, tall but not imposing, dressed in a dark suit with his jacket unbuttoned. Not the man of sharp authority from the gala but gentler now, with the kind of composure that filled a room without pressing down on it. “Come in. I’ve been looking forward to talking with you.”
She moved forward, careful, but his open gesture toward a chair angled close to his own made it harder to feel like prey. She sat. He poured tea from a silver pot into a porcelain cup and set it in front of her. Not whiskey. Not scotch. Tea.
“You look like no one’s asked you what you want in a long time,” he said, not unkindly.
Something pricked in her chest, surprising in its sting. She folded her hands in her lap to keep them still.
Ian studied her for a moment, then leaned back with a quiet breath. “Claire, last night you saw something others didn’t. Three men moved through a crowded ballroom with no equipment, no backup, and no hesitation. You spotted them seconds before our tech personnel notified one of our operators. That’s not luck. That’s awareness. And it matters.”
Her throat tightened. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
He lifted a small remote from the table beside him. “You don’t have to take my word for it. Let me show you what we saw.”
A screen recessed in the far wall flickered on, filling with crisp security footage. The ballroom came into view from above, chandeliers glinting, the crowd shifting in waves of silk and tuxedos.
“This,” Ian pointed to the screen, “is what my operators saw.”
The camera zoomed. Three men, dark suits, weaving through the crowd. Heads turned one way, then another, with every guest around them oblivious.
“Now watch here.” The angle shifted, isolating Reid at the gallery doors. He was sharp in his tux, posture coiled. But the image caught the moment, the split second he lost line of sight. The isolation. He looked alone in the frame, exposed.
“That,” Ian said softly, “is what they saw.”
Claire stared, the air in her lungs turning thin. Seeing Reid like that, cut off, unaware of the shapes just out of frame, tore something raw in her.
Then Ian pressed another button. The feed jumped again. This time, it was her. Standing at the far edge of the room, eyes cutting through the crowd. Her focus locked on the three men asthey slipped along the wall. She tracked them before anyone else did.
“And this,” Ian said, his tone almost paternal now, “is what I saw.”
The footage froze on her own face staring back at her from the screen, sharp and unyielding.
Ian set the remote down carefully. His gaze returned to hers. “You are not invisible here, Claire. Not to me. Not to Chase. And not to Reid.”
Her breath caught, the words lodging like heat under her ribs. She wasn’t being judged or measured, but seen.
Ian let the image on the wall go dark. “Claire, I want you to understand exactly what happened with Reid last night. From your side of the room, it looked as if he lost contact with his team. That is true, but it wasn’t just a simple failure.”
He leaned back slightly, folding his hands. “Our support team below us monitors every signal during an event. What they saw was Reid’s communication link being caught and held. Not broken. Not jammed. Held. Someone made sure his line went quiet so he would be cut off. It was on purpose.”
He paused, watching her face. “At the same time, the rest of the team was drawn away, steered in another direction. It was a controlled move. Whoever orchestrated it wanted Reid to be standing alone. And they wanted the distraction on the floor, the three intruders, to pull attention while the real test was happening.”
