Chapter 1
Wade was trying to feed the cat sashimi again.
“Wade.” Cara Sweet’s new manager, Diane, didn’t even look up from the Sugar and Salt register. “No.”
The big man scowled. “It’s fresh albacore.”
Diane rolled her eyes. “He is a cat, not a longshoreman.”
Wade held the fishy paper bag in one hand and looked down at the cat with the expression of a man being unfairly denied the chance to share a meaningful culinary experience.
At his feet, Agent stared back without blinking.
Cara smiled down at the cinnamon-roll dough.
Wednesday afternoons at the bakery had a rhythm she’d grown unexpectedly fond of over the last eleven months.
The lunch rush was gone. The espresso machine had stopped shrieking.
Rain threatened outside without fully committing, leaving the marina wrapped in a soft gray light that made the bakery windows glow warm against the street.
Even the dough under her hands seemed sleepy today.
Honestly, same.
Still, she had tomorrow morning’s cinnamon rolls proofing by two-thirty, which counted as victory. The bar was low these days.
Close to a year ago now she’d stepped off a Greyhound bus into Haven Cove carrying a fake driver’s license, and paperwork claiming she’d inherited a bakery from a woman she’d never met. All thanks to her NYPD handler, who sent her into hiding to avoid the federal warrant for her re-arrest.
Today she was arguing silently with pastry dough while Wade tried to feed premium tuna to a rescue cat named Agent.
The Lord worked in mysterious ways. Miraculous ones, honestly.
Diane handed Bruce Schwartz his change with the weary patience of a saint. Bruce had been discussing the city council’s drainage debate for nearly ten uninterrupted minutes now, and somehow Diane still looked only mildly homicidal.
“Appreciate you ladies keeping up with local politics,” Bruce said cheerfully.
“Mm-hm,” Diane replied.
Bruce finally left, still talking to himself.
Wade immediately slid the fish toward the cat again.
“Don’t you dare,” Diane warned.
“It’s protein,” he insisted.
But Diane didn’t back down. She was probably the only person involved in Sweet and Sawyer investigations who wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Wade’s size and un-specified military background. “It’s three in the afternoon.”
He watched the cat eat. “Time has no meaning to fishermen.”
Diane stuck her head into the pastry case to straighten the last of the croissants. “That explains so much.”
Cara laughed softly and reached for another section of dough. She liked this: the bakery, and the people. More than she probably ought to.
The strange little found-family operation that had somehow grown up around her life like ivy over old brick.
For years she’d measured safety in exit routes and fake names and the weight of cash hidden inside go-bags.
Even after Dom had smuggled her out of New York with enough money and paperwork to disappear into the Pacific Northwest, she’d spent months waiting for the floor beneath her new life to collapse.
Instead, somehow, she’d ended up here, in a tiny coastal town where the diner owner sent soup over when Diane caught a cold, and Wade fixed everybody’s engines whether they asked him to or not, and Tom’s teenage daughter treated the bakery like a second home.
The bell over the front door banged open.
“ACT scores post on Saturday,” Piper announced. The teen stormed inside carrying her backpack, car keys, and enough nervous energy to power the state of Oregon for at least several days.
“Mm-hm,” Diane said.
“Time is a wheel, Diane.”
“Mm-hm.”
Piper rounded the counter, scooped Agent off his towel, and immediately began explaining standardized testing anxiety to him in rapid detail.
Agent tolerated this with visible resignation.
Across the kitchen, Wade caught Piper’s eye over the cat’s head.
You okay? He mouthed.
Piper paused mid-spiral and gave him a quick nod before resuming her monologue about the math section.
Cara went back to shaping cinnamon rolls, warmth spreading quietly through her chest.
Not that long ago, all of this would’ve felt impossible.
The bakery. The basement headquarters downstairs. Sweet & Sawyer Investigations.
The fact that they were all still here at all.
Two months earlier, billionaire heiress Elena Whitfield had quietly funded the team after Cara and the others helped expose the nightmare Elena’s family had spent years hiding around her.
Sweet and Sawyer Investigations was now a fully funded, state-of-the-art operation, able to take on any cases they wished, no client fees required.
Now Wade and Tom weren’t paying expenses out of pocket anymore.
Piper had a college fund. Reagan was finally considering reducing her seventy-hour workweeks at the Saltwater Grill.
And Cara herself had started doing something even stranger.
Planning for a future.
That thought still startled her some days.
So did the fact that most of those future thoughts somehow included Gabriel Sawyer.
Which was significantly more complicated.
Gabe was honest in a way Cara still found mildly alarming. Fifteen years at the FBI had sharpened him into somebody observant and disciplined and almost painfully decent. Meanwhile the woman he knew as Cara Sweet had once been Carly Reid, professional grifter and current federal fugitive.
Not exactly a fair matchup.
She was praying before she fully realized she’d started. Lord, thank You for this.
For dough and rain and a fisherman trying to feed sushi-grade tuna to a cat. For a Wednesday, I’m tired in instead of running through. The prayer softened as her hands worked the dough. Maybe You brought me here for more than hiding.
The bell over the front door dinged again.
Cara looked up.
Gabe Sawyer had a face women loved. Strong jaw. Steady eyes. Dark hair perpetually in need of a trim. He carried competence the way other people carried jackets — effortlessly and without appearing aware of it.
Especially unfair was the fact that he somehow looked even better wet. Mud darkened the cuffs of his jeans and spotted the shoulders of his jacket. Rain still glimmered in his hair.
Wade straightened immediately.
Gabe stopped beside the prep counter. “Marisa Vega just called me.”
Cara felt the tiny shift in her stomach before he even continued. New case energy. Haven Cove’s new chief of police wouldn’t have contacted Gabe about a local softball game.
“The Coast Guard pulled a body out of the surf below the Overlook this morning,” Gabe said. “Male. Mid-fifties. No ID.”
Wade was already wiping his hands on his jeans.
“She wants me to look at the trail,” Gabe continued. “Fresh set of eyes.”
“Mind if I ride with you?” Wade asked.
Gabe nodded once. “Was hoping you would.”
They headed for the back door fast enough the bell jingled twice after it slammed shut behind them.
Silence settled briefly across the bakery.
Piper lowered Agent slowly. “Okay, that definitely sounded murder-y.”
Diane pointed a spatula at her. “No murder-y at the prep counter.”
“Sorry. Suspicious-death-y.”
“Better.”
Cara tried to focus on the dough again, but couldn’t quite manage it. That little tingle in her stomach had arrived fifteen seconds after Gabe walked in and now refused to leave.
A case. Maybe.
Sweet & Sawyer hadn’t had real work in nearly three weeks, not since helping recover a stolen corporate laptop for a Vancouver consulting firm whose CEO had hugged Cara afterward and called them heroes. A perfectly nice job. A perfectly nice client.
Nobody had nearly died, though.
And unfortunately, that meant the entire team had been getting twitchy. Especially Cara.
Which probably said troubling things about her personality.
She dusted flour from her hands and glanced toward the rain-streaked windows. Somewhere beyond town limits, a body had washed up beneath the cliffs.
And Haven Cove’s brand-new chief of police had called Gabe for help.
The dough finally stopped fighting her hands and settled into smooth elastic folds beneath her palms.
She’d take it.
Though this time she didn’t entirely trust it.