Chapter 3
Three
JACE
The crowd was packed three deep at the bar of OBX Brewhouse, and the echo of voices reverberated off the high, open rafters.
That was the thing that got me first—not the noise level, which was considerable, but the quality of it.
These weren’t people executing a social obligation.
They were genuinely happy, and my brain filed the distinction automatically, the same reflex that clocked exits and sight lines and the body language of a man about to do something stupid in a crowded room.
That wiring didn’t just switch off because I was home for a while.
I did a slow read of the room from the door before I moved.
The regulars had turned out. Ed Cartwright behind his end of the bar, his cronies, the Gray Beards, occupying their customary stools like a parliament of old men who’d earned their opinions.
But they were outnumbered tonight by people who’d come specifically for Rios, and that was its own thing to register.
People who lived here and had watched this island decide what it thought about Rios Carrera for the better part of his adult life were here tonight because they’d changed their minds.
Or maybe because they’d never believed it in the first place and were relieved to finally say so out loud.
Sawyer found me before I’d made it three steps in. “There he is. What kept you?”
“Had a conversation with Marsha McCubbins about the library expansion grant.”
“Trapped by Marsha. Classic. And you’re too polite to cut her off.”
I accepted the beer he offered. “Wouldn’t do. I’m a Sutter by blood. Still an island son, even if I’ve been gone more than a decade.”
“Rios is holding court in the back. He clearly wants to escape but is too polite to slip out of his own party.”
“Some things don’t change.”
We worked our way through the crowd. Someone I half-recognized from high school clapped me on the shoulder and said something about it being good to have me back, and I replied with something that seemed to satisfy him.
That happened twice more before we reached the back of the room.
On small islands, you were never just yourself, you were also every version of yourself anyone remembered, and people had long memories here.
Rios had Gabi on one side and a man I didn’t recognize on the other, nodding along to something the man said with the patient attention of someone who had learned a long time ago how to be present in a conversation without giving anything away.
“—always said Carson had it out for you,” the man announced. “Never sat right with me. Not from the beginning.”
“I appreciate that.” Rios’s voice stayed even. Whatever he actually thought about people who’d kept that opinion to themselves for all these years stayed behind his teeth.
The man moved on, satisfied, and Rios looked at me over his beer. “How many of those do you think I’m going to get tonight?”
“Counting that one? Probably seventeen more.”
“I made a terrible mistake agreeing to this party.”
“You’re a public servant now. This is the job.”
He pointed at me. “I will arrest you for something. I haven’t decided what yet.”
Gabi grabbed Rios by the elbow. “Stop threatening your friends and come say hello to the Hendersons. Mrs. Henderson actually teared up when she heard the news.”
“I don’t want Mrs. Henderson to cry at me.”
“Too bad.” She steered him away, shooting me a grin over her shoulder.
I took Rios’s vacated spot against the wall.
From here I could see most of the room. Caroline had a booth with Hoyt and the kids, Aubrey eating chicken tenders with great seriousness while Logan tried to balance a straw on his upper lip, until Hoyt clocked it and shut it down with a firm Dad Stare.
At the bar, Daniel talked to Ford. We hadn’t known Gabi’s Coast Guard man that long, but both of them laughed at something with the easy back and forth of two men who’d figured each other out quickly and decided they approved.
Madden stood near the door talking to Bree, looking more relaxed than I’d seen her since I arrived back on the island last week.
Sawyer had found Willa, and they’d claimed a corner together, her hand in his, her massive black pit bull, Roy, parked across both their feet.
They weren’t performing for anybody. Just sitting there, in the ease of two people who understood each other down to the bone.
Their marriage might’ve surprised me, but I couldn’t deny it was good for both of them.
Ford drifted over from the bar. “You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you case the room like you’re expecting someone to pull a weapon.”
“Occupational hazard.”
He handed me another beer, even though I hadn’t finished the first. Apparently, everybody thought my hands should be occupied. “Rios looks good.”
“He does.”
“Doesn’t have any idea what to do with any of this yet.”
“No.” Across the room, Rios accepted another handshake, saying something that made the man laugh. “He’ll get there.”
“Yeah.” Ford leaned against the wall beside me, both of us scanning the room in companionable silence for a moment. “You know what’s next with whatever it is that brought you back?”
That was his roundabout way of asking if the classified mission that had brought me back to the Outer Banks was going well. Not that I could confirm or deny.
I tipped back the last of the first beer. “I’m figuring it out.”
Bree waved from across the room.
Ford pushed off the wall. “Bree needs help with a keg. Don’t disappear.”
I didn’t commit to that. I was damned good at disappearing. It was another of those occupational hazards.
Gabi found me next, appearing at my elbow with a basket of something fried and the determined expression that said she intended to feed me whether I wanted it or not. “Eat. You’ve been home for a week, and I haven’t seen you sit down to a real meal once.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“If I didn’t see it, it didn’t count.” She pushed the basket into my hands. “These are hushpuppies. They’re perfect. Eat them.”
I ate one. It was perfect.
“Thank you,” she said, as if I’d done her a favor.
“How are you liking being back on the island after all those years away for school?”
“It’s good. Busy. The clinic is more than I expected, which is actually great. I needed the distraction.” She glanced toward Daniel at the bar. “And some other things are going better than expected.”
“I noticed.”
She looked back at me with that look she’d had since we were kids that cut right through whatever surface story you’d constructed. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Don’t do that. You know what I’m asking.”
I ate another hushpuppy. “I’m fine, Gab.”
“You’re standing against a wall at Rios’s party, watching everyone else have a good time.”
“I’m observing. It’s different.”
“It really isn’t.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “You could just be here. You don’t have to act like a fly on the wall.”
She drifted back toward Daniel before I could answer, which was probably deliberate.
I stayed where I was and watched the room.
Military intelligence work—the real work, not the version people imagined—was mostly this.
Reading the way people moved through space and what that movement said about what they carried and what they hid and what they were trying not to look at.
The skill didn’t care whether I was in the Horn of Africa or a microbrewery on the southern tip of the Outer Banks.
It just ran. A computer program in my brain.
An integral part of my operating system.
What it assessed right now was the fact that every person in this room had someone.
Sawyer and Willa in their corner. Ford, who kept finding reasons to end up at Bree’s end of the bar and pretended each time that it was incidental.
Rios finally making it back to Madden’s side, and the way his posture changed in the last three feet of crossing the room toward her.
Something he probably didn’t know he was doing.
Caroline laughing at something Hoyt said, her hand resting on the table between them in that way of couples who’d stopped needing to be touching but always did anyway.
I’d made choices. The work had required a particular kind of life, and I’d chosen the work, which meant I’d chosen the life. I didn’t have any legitimate grounds for complaint about where that left me now. I knew that. I believed it.
I took my beer and worked my way toward the door.
Nobody saw me go. Rios was deep in conversation. Sawyer had his arm around Willa. Ford laughed at something Bree had said, and his expression in that moment wasn’t something I needed to examine on his behalf.
Outside, the November cold arrived with a slap.
The beach access between the Brewhouse and the marina was a narrow path that opened onto the sound side sand.
Off-season meant nobody was out here, just the dark water and the lights of the village reflecting off it.
I pulled my jacket tighter and walked south along the waterline, the sand firm under my boots where the tide had been.
I walked until the lights behind me were small enough to be any lights. Then I stood at the edge of the water for a while, looking up.
Same sky as it always was out here. Bigger than it had any right to be, the stars more present than anywhere with real light pollution, the Milky Way faint but there if you looked for it.
I looked.
Gwen would have been thirty today. Somewhere, under this same sky, if things had gone differently. Laughing at something, embarrassed by the sound of her own laugh. Rolling her eyes at country music she secretly loved.
I stood at the edge of the water for a while longer.
Then I turned around and walked back toward the lights.