Chapter 9
Cara reached for her shoes. "I'll go up with her."
You stay, she mouthed at Gabe.
Something about Skye gave her the sense Skye would be more open with another woman there.
Skye set down the pencil she’d been balancing on her finger. "A sound move. You don't trust me alone with a civilian."
"That's not why."
Skye tilted her head slightly. The small analytical tilt Cara had already started to recognize. The one that meant she was recalculating.
"There's no reason you should have to handle whatever's in that envelope alone," Cara said. "That's the reason."
Skye shrugged. "No worries. I work alone. That's how I've survived."
"Not anymore." Cara picked up her coffee mug, realized it was empty, set it back down. "Not when you're with us."
Skye looked at her for a beat that stretched past comfortable. "Noted."
Cara couldn't tell if the word was an acknowledgment or a warning. She decided it didn't matter, and headed for the stairs.
She observed him from the doorway — corduroy trousers, trail runners that had never seen a trail, the manila envelope beside him placed and not dropped. Academic. Careful. Here to do one right thing and increasingly uncertain what right was going to cost him.
At her side, Skye was doing the same thing. Cara wondered if she’d come to the same conclusion.
Diane had clearly been managing Owen Harney. There was a fresh pot of tea on the table beside him, a scone he hadn't touched. She glanced at Cara when they came through the kitchen door. One eyebrow, a fraction of a millimeter. Cara gave her the smallest nod.
Harney stood up when he saw them. True manners, not performance. Cara noted the difference.
Owen Harney was a man who'd prepared for this moment and was discovering the preparation wasn't quite right. His tea had barely been touched. Not because he wasn't thirsty. Because he was waiting.
He wanted to do this right.
Genuinely lost. Not a threat.
"You're Skye?" he asked, eyes wide, clearly already intimidated.
When Skye didn’t respond, Cara stepped smoothly into the gap. "Exactly right. And I’m Cara. This is my bakery."
"I'm Owen." He automatically pulled out the chair across from his own. "Owen Harney. Ray was my uncle."
Skye pulled out her own chair and sat. Cara took the chair Owen offered.
Owen wrapped both hands around his cold tea mug. "I wasn't sure you'd actually be in Haven Cove," he admitted to Skye. "I almost turned around twice coming down the coast."
Cara leaned back slightly in her chair. Easy posture. Non-threatening. The same posture she used on nervous customers and grieving widowers and teenagers trying to buy birthday cupcakes with crumpled dollar bills. "What stopped you?"
Owen blinked at her, like he'd expected interrogation instead of conversation.
"My uncle didn't really..." He adjusted his glasses. "He wasn't dramatic. If he said something mattered, it mattered."
Skye said nothing. The silence stretched half a beat too long.
Cara smiled lightly. "From what I’m piecing together, your uncle doesn't strike me as a man who used exclamation points."
To Cara's surprise, the man gave a short laugh. "Definitely not. He once mailed back an order of Christmas cards because they had too much glitter."
Skye nodded seriously. "Totally reasonable."
Cara bit the inside of her cheek.
Owen stared at Skye for a second, trying to determine if she'd made a joke. Apparently deciding not to risk it, he pushed on. "I got the call yesterday morning. From the Marshal's office." His fingers tightened around the mug. "They said there'd been an accident."
Still no response from Skye, visual or verbal.
"And then?" Cara prompted gently.
Owen nodded once, clearly grateful for the help. "I flew to Portland. They released his personal effects this morning." He swallowed. "I honestly thought there'd been some mistake. My uncle was..." He stopped. Recalibrated. "He was the most careful person I've ever known."
Skye's expression didn't move, but Cara saw the tiny shift in her shoulders.
"What did they tell you?" Skye asked.
"Almost nothing." He gave a helpless little shrug. "That he fell. That the investigation was ongoing. That someone from the local office would contact me eventually."
"But your uncle already had instructions waiting," Cara said.
"Yeah." Owen looked down at the envelope immediately, like he'd been trying not to. "He told me about it on a visit maybe four years ago? He said if anything ever happened to him, there was an envelope in his filing cabinet with your name on it."
His eyes lifted to Skye again. "He made me repeat the instructions back to him."
"What instructions?" Skye asked. She sounded more like a robot than a woman.
People handled grief different ways, Cara reminded herself. Only she had a hunch this was pure Skye, even on a good day.
"'Don't trust phones. Don't trust email. Put it in her hand and walk away.'" Owen gave an awkward little laugh. "At the time I thought he was being paranoid."
Skye's face went still in a different way.
Cara saw it immediately.
Not paranoia. Protocol.
Owen kept going, words picking up speed now that he'd started.
"I almost mailed it anyway. I mean, I teach medieval economic systems. I am profoundly unqualified for whatever this is.
" He gestured vaguely between Skye and the envelope.
"But then someone from the Marshal’s office called again yesterday, asking whether Ray kept personal notebooks or storage devices and... " He stopped.
Cara kept her tone soft. "And what?"
Owen looked at her.
"They already sounded like they expected those things to be missing." He pushed the teacup away from him. “So I grabbed a flight from LA to Portland, and here I am.”
Diane set a plate of untouched shortbread on the counter harder than strictly necessary.
"I didn't know what I was walking into," Owen admitted quietly. "I still don't."
Skye finally spoke. "You walked into danger."
Cara resisted the urge to kick her under the table.
Owen inhaled. "...Okay. That’s…not good."
“It’s not,” Skye agreed, completely unnecessarily, in Cara’s opinion.
But instead of crumbling, Ray Harney’s nephew rose to the occasion. “So I’m guessing Uncle Ray’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“No,” Skye responded before Cara could figure out a way to cushion the news.
Owen nodded to himself. “Got it.” When he looked up there was a new determination steeling his features. “So what do we do about it?”
“We’re looking into it.” Cara tried to sound as non-committal as possible.
“They do that,” Skye added. “Cara and her team. They investigate things.”
Owen’s eyes widened.
The manila envelope sat on the table between them. Skye's name on the front in a cramped, angular hand — the kind that got smaller when the writer was focused. Below her name, one line: In person only.
Skye reached for it.
Cara watched her pick it up and turn it over and read the front. Just her name, and that one line, written in a dead man’s hand. A dead friend’s hand.
She tore open the envelope.
Inside: a single sheet of legal paper folded in thirds, and a leather notebook, slim, sealed into a small steel sleeve with a combination lock at the clasp. Evidence-grade.
The notebook didn't give when Skye pressed the sides. Skye unfolded the letter. The same cramped hand, covering maybe a third of the page.
Cara was close enough to read the first line.
Skye — if you're reading this, I'm gone.
She looked away.
The bakery was quiet. A car passed on Marina Street. The espresso machine ticked as it cooled. Owen turned his tea mug in a slow circle without looking up.
Skye read the letter without expression. Then she set it down flat and put both hands on either side of it on the table.
Owen leaned in her direction, eyes on the note. "What does it say?"
"It says you can't go home," she said.
“What are you talking about?” Owen pushed his glasses back up his nose. “This isn’t about me.”
"Ray was killed," Skye told him, but her gaze was on Cara. "Neptune killed him. They will look at everyone connected to him. You are connected to him. Also, he said so."
She shoved the papers toward Owen, close enough that Cara could read the letter, too.
Don't trust the system. Trust Owen. He's the only person I have who's clean, and he can read what no one else can. Don't let him go home. R.
Owen groaned and did a facepalm. "I teach medieval history. No matter what my uncle thought might happen, that's the full extent of my involvement here."
No. It wasn’t. Not as far as the Neptune Brotherhood would believe.
Cara leaned forward slightly. "Owen. The Marshal’s office called you as next of kin. That call is on record somewhere. The people who killed your uncle are going to pull every thread he left — his files, his contacts, his family. Your name is going to be at the top of that list."
"That's —" Owen stopped. Started again. "I have final grades to post, and then, you know, things to do. I’m giving a paper in Norway at the end of the month.
" He looked at Skye, then at Cara, then at the letter still sitting flat on the table.
"I study the fourteenth century. What kind of threat could I be? "
"Ray studied people who come after people," Skye said. "He still chose you to find me."
Owen took his glasses off and set them on the table. Without them he looked younger and more lost and, Cara thought, considerably more like a teenager at a family reunion he hadn't wanted to attend.
He picked them back up, put them back on, and cleared his throat.
"This is exactly like the situation of the papal legate's notary at Avignon in 1378.
The notary wasn't a party to the Schism.
He was just the man who could read the documents.
Just present. And then he was in it for the rest of his life. "
Cara looked at Skye.
Skye shrugged. “I say we go with this.” She nodded at Owen. "Exactly like that. Probably."
Owen nodded, apparently satisfied. It had clearly resolved something for him that nothing else had. “Okay.”
Skye turned and looked at her. "We need somewhere to keep him."
"We have somewhere," Cara said. What was one more house guest in her tiny place?
Outside, the afternoon light was coming off the water at a low angle. Diane was pretending not to listen from behind the espresso machine, which meant she'd heard every word and would take it to her grave.
Owen Harney sat at the window table with his cold tea and his carefully kept promise, looking like a man who had driven hours for an answer and received instead a whole new set of questions.
Skye’s letting us in.
That was the thought that arrived, quiet and certain. The doorway that had opened at three in the morning when Skye sat on the prep counter eating lemon shortbread — they were all the way through it now.
Whatever came next, they were going to face it from the same side of the door.
Lord, she prayed. I hope we're ready.