Chapter 1 #4
Holly glanced at the photo of herself and Roni on opening day.
Holly looked wrecked and happy, her dark blonde hair falling over one shoulder, her apron crooked, her smile too big for her face.
She’d been terrified that day. Terrified that no one would come, or that too many people would come.
Terrified the espresso machine would break, and that she’d mistaken a dream for a plan.
But beneath the fear had been something steadier.
This place is mine.
Now two strangers were standing in her office, telling her some predator may have walked through her front door, breathed in the scent of cinnamon and coffee, listened to customers laugh, watched Holly smile at people who needed kindness, and seen not community but opportunity.
She rubbed at her too tight chest. “What do you want from me?”
“We need your cooperation,” Dawson said. “Customer names, staff schedules, security footage, any incidents that seemed unusual. Anyone paying special attention to the victims or to you. We need a list of regulars and groups that meet here.”
Holly’s thoughts jumped to the courthouse crowd, the grief meetings that gathered around the big table on Thursday afternoons, Roni dropping in, Judge Madsen, Mrs. Alvarez, Maya, teenagers doing homework, women coming in after court with red eyes and shaking hands.
“You want to spy on my customers.”
“We want you to help us identify a killer,” Agent Dawson corrected.
The bluntness hit its mark. Holly gripped the back of the chair. “My customers are not killers.”
“One of them may be.”
She should tell them about the card. It was exactly the kind of thing a sensible person handed over to the FBI immediately.
But some instinct made her hesitate, because once she said it out loud, the card would become part of this. Sanctuary would become part of this. The threat would stop being theoretical and start being something that had already touched her counter.
Dawson seemed to read Holly’s face. “Has anything unusual happened recently?”
She took a deep breath and slipped the card out from her apron pocket. “I found this a little while before you came in.”
Dawson slipped a hand into an interior coat pocket and brought out a blue latex glove. She pulled it on and took the loyalty card. Her expression didn’t change until she read the message on the back.
Cahors leaned in to read it, too. “Do you know who wrote this?”
“No. It was just lying there.”
He took a small bag from inside his coat. Dawson slipped the card into it. “This is the kind of thing we need to know about immediately,” she said.
“I found it twenty minutes ago. I was still deciding whether it was a prank.”
“We don’t think it’s a prank,” Cahors said.
Holly wrapped her arms around herself. “Because of the wording.”
Dawson’s gaze met hers. “Because of the wording.”
Some people don’t deserve sanctuary.
Cahors tucked the bag away. “Until we have a better sense of who left this and whether you’re being directly targeted, we need to take precautions.”
“Precautions,” Holly repeated. “Like what?”
“We don’t want to alarm your staff or customers,” Dawson said. “This investigation is not public. If word gets out, the person we’re looking for may disappear or escalate.”
“Escalate how?”
Neither agent answered quickly enough.
Holly laughed once, humorlessly. “Right. Another detail I don’t want.”
Dawson stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Ms. Bristol, I know this is a lot. But if this person is watching your shop, and if he’s using your business to select victims, you may be at risk. We’re coordinating with local law enforcement and bringing in additional support for you.”
“What kind of support?”
“Shadow Point Security,” Cahors said.
Holly knew some of the men by sight. A few came in for coffee when they were in town. They were competent, quiet, and the kind of dangerous men that didn’t invite conversation.
Like Reid.
“Oh, no,” Holly said before either could continue. “I can’t have armed security turning this place into a spectacle and scaring off my customers.”
Dawson lifted an eyebrow. “You haven’t heard the arrangement.”
“I don’t need to.”
“SPS has resources we need and people familiar with the area and some of your customers.”
Holly knew who they meant. “You said local law enforcement was involved.”
“Limited,” Cahors said. “We’re keeping the circle tight.”
Holly’s pulse had begun to pound in a quick rhythm. “You don’t understand.”
Dawson’s voice was careful. “What don’t we understand?”
Her lips moved but nothing came out. She’d survived too much by keeping her pain private.
She hadn’t built this shop, this life, this careful version of herself to explain to two federal agents that Reid Fleming was not simply Shadow Point’s convenient legal asset or the guy who knew many of her customers because he’d grown up here.
He was the man who’d shown her exactly how it felt to be wanted by someone she wanted back, then vanished into the Navy.
It had been one night years ago. Adults had one-night stands all the time. They got over them. They moved on. They did not compare every perfectly decent man to the memory of dark eyes and warm hands.
Except apparently, sometimes they did. “I don’t need protection,” she insisted. “I have a dog and security cameras.”
Dawson gave her a sympathetic smile. “Someone left a message for you.”
“It’s just a statement, not a threat.”
The bell over the front door chimed.
She lunged for the doorway, eager to get away from this conversation.
For one heartbeat, all she saw was the rain-bright glass and the wet sidewalk beyond it. Then the man standing just inside Sanctuary Coffee turned his head, and the past she’d spent years folding into manageable pieces unfolded all at once.
Reid Fleming had filled out in the eight years since she’d last seen him.
He was tall enough to make her feel small in a way she’d once secretly loved.
His dark hair was shorter than it had been the night before he left, and a faint scruff shadowed his jaw, softening nothing.
He wore a dark jacket over a charcoal shirt, rain clinging to the fabric, his expression controlled in that infuriating Fleming way that made calm look like a legal strategy.
His dark, steady eyes found hers. “Hello, Holly,” he said.
Holly stopped breathing.