Miranda pressed a hand to her heart. “I would never. Almost never,” she amended with a guilty face.
Norah’s mouth twitched—almost a smile. She glanced at Marshall one more time, then slipped past Ross into the bedroom they’d designated as hers.
He tracked her until she disappeared around the corner. Only then did he drag in a breath and turn back.
Ross watched him watching her. That knowing glint in his eyes, even tired, made Marshall want to grit his teeth.
Miranda shifted. “I’ll...go check on Joey,” she said, reading the room with her usual accuracy. “See if she’s traced the satellite images.”
She snagged her own plate and slid out, leaving the door ajar behind her.
The kitchen felt quieter without them. The hum of the fridge. The faint rush of pipes somewhere in the walls. The distant sound of running water as Norah turned on the shower down the hall.
Ross dragged a chair back from the table and sat opposite Marshall, bracing his forearms on the worn wood. For a moment, he just looked at him. Measuring. Choosing his words.
“Start with the good news,” Marshall said dryly. “You look like crud, so I’m assuming there’s at least some.”
One corner of Ross’s mouth kicked up, then flattened. “Jackson’s alive.”
The words hit harder than he expected. Something in Marshall’s chest went loose and tight at the same time, like a fist unclenching and then slamming shut again.
He hadn’t let himself name the fear on the drive back from the hotel. He’d kept it compartmentalized—one more variable in a night full of them. But now, hearing it out loud, it landed.
He closed his eyes for half a second. Just long enough to picture his brother’s stupid grin, the way he threw himself into danger like he believed he was bulletproof.
Thank you, God.
“Okay,” he said. His voice came out steadier than he felt. “That’s one.”
Ross exhaled slowly, fingers lacing together. “Now the rest.”
Of course. There was always a rest.
“In the last twelve hours,” Ross went on, “every piece of intel coming out of Geneva points to Jackson as not only our mole, but a traitor on the largest scale.”
Marshall didn’t flinch physically. Years of training held, but the world tilted a degree to the left.
“Walk me through it,” he said. The words scraped on the way out, but they stayed level. “From the top.”
Ross nodded—a small tilt that said he approved of how Marshall was still thinking. “Coulter landed in Geneva two weeks ago. Standard security protocols. Russians were already on edge—intel chatter about a faction unhappy with the summit. Coulter wanted a few extra people he could trust.”
Marshall nodded. He knew all this already. That was why Jackson, Tank, Will, and Pierce had gone to Switzerland. Coulter trusted Black Tower more than half his own security detail. Consequences of finding deep FBI and Secret Service corruption when his predecessor was assassinated.
“Everything was going okay. The usual political theater and very little productive negotiation. Then yesterday morning, or the day before last? Geez, what day is it?” He ran a hand over his face. “Late Thursday night or Friday morning—Geneva time—NORAD hit the alarm on a missile launched from a base in central Russia, headed straight for western Europe.”
Marshall shook his head, his eyes glancing back to the TV, where the news coverage still played silently.
“As Defense scrambled to initiate DEFCON 2 and get Coulter into the air back to the States, someone took a shot at his hotel room. Missed him by inches. Shooter vanished. But in the sweep afterward, they found something worse.”
Marshall felt the first true spike of unease. “What?”
“Three hours before the attempt on Coulter,” Ross said, “your brother’s summit security credentials were used to access a restricted holding room reserved for the Russian delegation.”
Marshall stared at him. “That’s impossible.”
“I know,” Ross said quietly. “But the logs came from the summit’s secure system. His credentials pinged the door lock.”
“What the—” He cut himself off before the anger surfaced. None of it fit. None of it aligned with the man he knew or the job Jackson had been performing.
