“Can we sit somewhere? Not the command center.” She handed back his phone. “Somewhere that doesn’t feel like a war room.”
They ended up in the living room. Morgan settled onto the leather couch with her tea still clutched in both hands, gripping it like it was the only solid thing in the room.
She didn’t drink. Just let the warmth seep into her palms while she stared at nothing in the middle of the room.
“I don’t know how to—” She stopped. “It’s different. Saying it out loud.”
“Start wherever you need to.”
Morgan took a breath. Released it. Took another.
“The conference. Library science. I was presenting a paper on—” She stopped. Shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is the parking garage. After.”
Lincoln watched her hands tighten on the cup.
“Two men. They knew my name.” A pause. Her throat worked. “They had the article.”
“What article?”
“Small-Town Librarian Never Forgets a Book—Or Anything Else.” The headline came out with the precision of perfect recall. “Whitefish Daily News. Six months ago. I let them print my face. My name. Details about—” Her voice cracked. “I made myself a target.”
Lincoln’s jaw tightened. They’d researched her. Found the article. Planned this. That made sense.
“There was a man in charge.” Morgan’s fingers had started their rhythm against the cup—da-DUM, da-DUM—but she didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t learn his nameuntil later. Randall. I don’t know if that was his first name or last. That’s what everyone called him. Randall.”
A name. Lincoln filed it away, felt something cold and focused take root in his chest.
“Clean-cut. Expensive suit. American, but the kind of polished that felt corporate.” She swallowed. “He looked at me like I was?—”
She stopped.
Lincoln waited.
“Like I was a purchase.” The words came out flat. “An investment.”
The cold thing in Lincoln’s chest grew teeth.
“He tested me.” Morgan’s voice had gone mechanical, that survival mode he was learning to recognize. “Fifty numbers. Recite them back. I tried to play dumb. Scrambled them on purpose. Thought maybe if they believed the article exaggerated?—”
She stopped again. Her knuckles had gone white around the cup.
“What happened?”
“He told his guard to kill me.”
Lincoln stopped breathing.
“The gun was already out. Already pointed.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was somewhere else—concrete walls, harsh light, the particular terror of a moment when death becomes immediate. “I had about three seconds to decide. I didn’t know what else to do.”
His hands had curled into fists on his knees. He forced them to stay there, forced himself to listen.
“So I proved myself. All fifty numbers. Perfect order.” Morgan’s laugh was a terrible sound. “And Randall smiled at me like I’d passed an audition. That’s when the knife came out.”
He’d seen those fucking cuts. He’d assumed they were punishment. Consequences.
“He cut me for lying to him. Just once. Shallow.” Her voice stayed flat, disconnected. “He said my mind was the only thing keeping me alive. That he found dishonesty tedious. He cut me for other reasons too. And sometimes for no reason at all.”
So, not just punishment. Conditioning. Training her like an animal to perform exactly as commanded.
