Chapter 7
Given the hour, the team assembled downstairs with impressive speed and wildly uneven levels of consciousness.
Tom arrived first. That tracked. “Piper’s still in the truck,” he muttered, his voice still thick with sleep.
Gabe tossed him the thumb drive. “Need you to boot this.”
That woke Tom far faster than a triple espresso.
Reagan followed close behind Tom, looking more disheveled than Gabe had ever seen the impeccably put-together diner owner. Her dark hair was twisted into a loose knot that looked assembled strictly through force of will, and one sleeve of her sweater sat halfway inside out.
She eyed Skye, the kind of assessing glance that could probably calculate dehydration, blood pressure, and whether somebody was lying before coffee.
Piper clomped down the stairs next, technically awake in the sense that she remained upright and ambulatory, one sock on, the other foot bare, hoodie half zipped. She blinked at the fluorescent lights. “Why does this basement feel aggressively fluorescent right now?”
Cara was on her heels. “No kidding.”
Wade came down last. Which meant he’d already checked the perimeter, locked the exterior doors, and probably verified sightlines from the alley. He moved quietly through the basement and stopped near the conference table while the room settled around him.
Skye stood against the far wall with her shoulders angled slightly toward the room, her back to solid concrete. Sightlines on both exits. Hands loose at her sides. Calm on the surface, though Gabe could see the exhaustion underneath now that adrenaline had burned off.
In her position, he would’ve picked the same spot.
Wade dragged a chair away from the table and set it directly across from her. Then he sat down without hurry.
They stared each other down, veteran warriors searching out strengths. And weaknesses.
The room went very still.
“I won’t hurt any of them,” Skye said finally. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Not worried.” Wade’s voice stayed level. “It won’t happen.”
Not a threat. Not reassurance either.
More like an agreement between two people who both understood exactly what violence cost and exactly how quickly things could go sideways if somebody made the wrong move.
Gabe watched Wade arrive at some internal conclusion and file it away without announcing it. Whatever decision he’d made seemed to align with Gabe’s own instincts ever since Skye sat on the prep counter upstairs eating lemon shortbread without flinching when the flashlight hit her face.
Reagan already had a water glass in hand. She crossed the room and set it on the conference table in front of Skye with the calm efficiency of somebody who’d spent years taking care of stubborn people against their will.
Then she looked at Gabe. Your turn.
Piper had found a stool near Tom’s workstation and dragged it toward the table. Her attention fixed on Skye’s wrist. “Wait,” she said, squinting. “Is that an actual climbing carabiner?”
Skye glanced down at the thin black cord and the aluminum clasp beneath her jacket cuff. “Yes.”
“Like real climbing?”
“Yes.”
Piper’s eyes widened immediately. “Oh, that is objectively cool.”
Gabe could practically see the next fifteen questions lining up behind her eyes, but her dad crossed toward the secondary laptop station before she could launch into them.
He plugged the drive into the air-gapped laptop instead of the main rig, which reassured Gabe slightly. Tom might occasionally blur the line between genius and felony, but he still respected operational security when it mattered.
Mostly.
The drive spun up. A ledger opened on-screen.
“What are we looking at?” Cara asked Skye as columns of transactions filled the monitor, large portions redacted or partially stripped, but enough remained visible to tighten the room instantly.
“This is the last job I worked with Ray.” Gabe caught the slight tremble in her voice as Skye said his name. “I figured you need to know what he was working on when he… you know.”
Dollar amounts. Courier references. Institutional initials.
And one name. Coastal Heritage Trust.
Tom went motionless. Gabe had worked with him long enough to recognize what that stillness meant.
For the last month, Sweet & Sawyer had been trying to pry open the Coastal Heritage Trust without success.
Public filings looked pristine. Financials dead-ended into shell nonprofits that looped neatly back into protected holding groups.
And now the name sat in the middle of a dead marshal’s ledger.
Cara moved beside Tom so quietly Gabe didn’t notice until she spoke. “Hello,” she murmured softly, “way in.”
Tom nodded once without looking away from the screen. “Very way in.”
Gabe looked toward Skye. At the exhaustion lining her face. At the rainwater still darkening the hem of her jeans. At the USB drive that had probably just escalated everybody’s lives considerably. “Also hello, enormous problem.”
Nobody argued with that either.
Wade watched Skye. “So what’s the story?”
Skye explained things carefully after that. Not nervously. Not defensively.
Ray Harney had been her handler, then when the operation they’d been working blew up, her savior. Unofficial. Off book. Quarterly check-ins and an emergency dead drop at the Overlook that she’d never had to access. Until yesterday. Only the cache was empty.
Whoever got there first now had her alias information, and her new ID, plus probably a nice chunk of emergency cash.
“Ray would have thought of that,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes.
She cleared her throat, clearly shaking off the emotion. “Then they came to my studio,” she said. “Two of them. Sent to grab me, I’m certain. I came here because I heard them say they were going to question Cara. Today. You don’t want that.”
She twisted her fingers together, avoiding eye contact. “That’s why I broke in. Partly. Also, I don’t have anywhere to run now. They ruined my Plan A. I need time to think through my next move. Not long. I just need––“
“I get it,” Cara interrupted. “I’ve been where you are. Take all the time you need.”
“But any intel you can share would sure help us help you,” Reagan added.
“For sure,” Skye continued calmly. She walked them through the courier routes Ray used. She’d personally run four of them herself. She could connect the Coastal Heritage Trust to a shadowy outfit called Neptune logistics. “Nothing you’ve probably heard of,” she added.
Wade choked. Tom laughed, one harsh, disbelieving chunk of sound. “You’d be surprised. We’ve––“
“––heard of them,” Gabe finished for him.
Tom winced, catching his own error. “Exactly.”
Head tilted, Cara studied the woman. “We’ve worked cases that lead in their direction,” she specified. “If they’re behind your handler’s death, running won’t be the smartest option.”
Face blank, Skye shrugged her thin shoulders. “Not much choice.”
“You could help us take them down,” Reagan said. “Then you’ll never have to run again.”
“That’s adorable.” Skye smiled for a second. “I love that you really believe that. The organization’s called the Neptune Brotherhood, only it runs so deep no one even says that name. It’s like that wizard book, Harry Potter? You know, where no one names the super bad guy.”
“We’re aware,” Wade said. “Both the wizard thing and Neptune. And we’re still planning to take them on.”
“The Neptune dudes,” Tom corrected. “Not the wizards.”
That at least got a smile from Skye. “This is what I can give you, for now.”
“Because you don’t trust us yet,” Tom said.
Skye shook her head. “Because I don’t know you yet.” Her voice stayed calm. “Those aren’t the same thing.”
Tom leaned back in his chair, clearly dissatisfied.
Gabe understood the reaction. Skye was exhausted, grieving whether she admitted it or not, and off-balance in ways that probably made her more willing to talk now than she’d be tomorrow.
Tom saw opportunity. Efficiency, not cruelty.
Still.
“We move at her pace,” Gabe announced. “Or we end up exactly where Ellie warned we’d end up.”
Skye studied all of them quietly. “I usually don’t announce boundaries,” she said after a moment. “But I’m trying to save everyone time.”
Piper snorted softly. “That might be the most terrifyingly competent sentence I’ve ever heard.”
Reagan pointed toward her. “You are not allowed to admire the paranoid witness.”
“I’m not admiring. I’m observing.”
“You’re absolutely admiring.”
“Maybe a little.”
Cara smiled.
The tension eased just enough for everyone to breathe again. Then Gabe brought up the part he knew they were all thinking about. He shifted to face Skye. “You came here tonight. If they connected you to us already, we’ve got a limited window before that becomes a much bigger problem.”
Wade understood it first. Gabe saw it happen behind his eyes.
“I’ll take the couch,” Gabe said.
“Storage room’s fine for me,” Wade added.
Cara was already moving toward the linen cabinet upstairs in her mind. “I’ll grab blankets.”
Skye looked faintly alarmed for the first time all night. “I don’t need the room,” she said. “I don’t really do…” She paused slightly. “Families.”
Nobody said anything.
“I have a safe place,” she continued. “Well. A place.”
“If Neptune is hunting you, there’s nowhere safe,” Wade said baldly. “Except with us.”
Skye’s mouth dropped open. “But––“
Cara held up her hand, but her voice was gentle. “If they find you, we’ll just end up in more danger when we have to plan a rescue. You’re staying with us. It’s the selfless thing to do.”
Skye’s eyes glazed over with panic, but she didn’t argue, at least.
“You’ve been awake for over thirty hours,” Reagan interrupted. “You are not sleeping in a marina shed.”
The silence stretched roughly four seconds before Skye sighed. “Fine.”
Victory. Tiny. Exhausted. Temporary.
Still victory.
Cara disappeared upstairs for blankets while Tom kept working through the ledger files, monitor glow reflecting across his face. Wade checked the lock on the storage room window without comment. Reagan rinsed out the water glass and set it upside down beside the sink rack.
"One more thing," Tom said, already pulling up the perimeter dashboard. "Those two men. The ones who said the bakery was next." He typed without looking up. "I'm setting the exterior system to maximum sensitivity. Six AM to noon. Anything comes within fifty feet, our phones go off."
"Good," Gabe said.
Wade leaned forward slightly in his chair. "We want to know before they reach the door."
"They won't knock," Skye said.
Nobody argued with that.
Somewhere during all the bodies moving here and there, Agent vanished.
Gabe realized the cat was gone almost twenty minutes later while stretched across Cara’s couch with one arm behind his head, nowhere close to asleep.
The bakery below had gone quiet.
Cara had retreated to her bedroom down the hall. In the room behind him, a woman who didn’t do families had accepted extra blankets from strangers instead of disappearing back into the dark alone.
And downstairs, in the concealed safe behind the inches-thick steel doors securing Wade’s weapons locker, sat a USB drive capable of detonating half the investigation they’d been building toward for months.
Problem column definitely longer now.
At some point, despite himself, Gabe finally fell asleep.