Chapter 10
Owen came down the basement stairs Friday morning to find the team had already made room for him.
Tom had shifted his secondary monitor six inches to the left.
Reagan had set two extra mugs on the shelf above the espresso machine.
Wade had positioned a folding chair at the near end of the conference table.
Nobody had discussed any of it. The basement had simply adjusted through some combination of Reagan's quiet management and the team's collective decision to just get on with things.
Cara had been downstairs since six. She'd watched all of it happen.
Owen came down at quarter to eight, still wearing yesterday's corduroy trousers, looking like a man who had slept adequately in a spare room and made his peace with it.
Wade had been on Cara's block since midnight.
Nobody had asked him to. He'd come in at seven with two bagel-and-egg sandwiches and an industrial-sized bottle of Zyrtec, which he set on the conference table in front of Owen's folding chair with no explanation.
"Allergies?" Owen asked.
"It’s for you. There’s a cat. You'll want those," Wade said.
Owen’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know––?”
Wade and Tom exchanged a quick look. Cara could guess the rest. So could Gabe, judging from the glare he shot their computer expert. Tom grinned sheepishly, then ignored him.
Agent materialized from somewhere within thirty seconds of Owen sitting down, stepped directly onto his lap, and arranged himself with the serene confidence of a cat who had decided he was worth gracing with his presence.
Owen sneezed. Agent didn’t even startle.
"This is Agent," Cara said. "He chooses people. It's not optional."
Owen looked down at the cat with the expression of a man recalibrating several things at once. He reached for the bottle.
Across the room, Skye was on the workbench with a paper bag of dry oats, eating them with a spoon and reading something on Tom's secondary monitor.
She'd been there when Cara came down. She'd probably been there for hours.
She had a yoga mat rolled against the wall behind her that told its own story about the night.
Cara had offered to share her queen-sized bed, but Skye had been quick to refuse.
So it had been her, Owen, and Gabe on the couch in the living room last night.
Owen reached into his jacket pocket and produced an apple. He held it out toward Skye without preamble.
Skye looked at the apple. Then she took it and put it in her own pocket.
Owen blinked. Tom, who had not looked up from the rig, said, "That's actually progress."
Cara was refilling her coffee when she heard Gabe's phone buzz.
She raised her eyebrows, a fraction.
He grimaced. “David and Sophie’ll be getting in this afternoon.”
Cara turned back to her coffee. Gabe wouldn’t like his brother heading back into the line of fire, but David was extraordinary at what he did.
So was Sophie, his podcast producer and assistant.
And they were coming in with their eyes open.
Having been kidnapped during his last investigation, David knew exactly how ruthless Neptune’s operatives could be.
That was both useful and the problem. More help, but also two more people to put into possible danger.
The steel evidence sleeve had been sitting on Tom's secondary station since the night before, combination lock intact.
Tom had spent an unspecified portion of the night trying to open it and had reached an impasse he hadn't admitted to yet, but that Cara could read in the specific angle of his shoulders.
"Can I try something?" Owen asked.
Tom swiveled his chair and looked at him.
"The lock," Owen said. "My uncle used the same combination system for everything. I know how he built them."
“Absolutely. Have at it.” Tom pushed the sleeve across the table.
Owen set down his mug. He picked up the sleeve, held it level, and turned the combination dial — left, then right, then left again — with the unhurried concentration of someone doing something from the fingers, not the brain. Three moves. The lock released.
Tom clapped. “Cool.”
"Uncle Ray taught me cryptography through crossword puzzles," Owen said. "Starting when I was about twelve. I thought it was just — I thought it was how he was. He liked puzzles." He set the sleeve down carefully. "I don't think it was a hobby."
Skye stopped chewing. "No. It was not."
Owen opened the notebook.
It was hand-coded — Ray's cramped writing, but the words weren't words. Strings of letters and numbers in groups, occasionally interspersed with what looked like regular text but wasn't. Tom leaned forward and photographed three pages before Owen had finished his first pass.
"It's layered," Owen said. "The outer bit looks like nonsense. The inside piece looks like correspondence. But the actual content is in a third pass." He turned a page. "He used a different anchor key for each section. I'd need some time."
"How much time?" Gabe asked.
"Depends on how clever he decided to get." Owen turned back to the beginning and scanned the opening page. His expression shifted.
"What?" Tom said.
"Give me a minute." Owen set the notebook flat on the table and worked through it quietly, his finger moving along the lines. Nobody talked. Agent sneezed, which Owen ignored.
After a minute, Owen sat back. "The first section is a list. Names, locations, amounts.
I can only read the first few entries right now.
I need to work through the anchor key for the rest." He looked up.
"But the first entry is a grant. The recipient is in Haven Cove.
" He paused. "The date is four years ago. "
Cara looked at Gabe. Gabe looked at Tom.
Tom was already pulling up a window on the rig. "The same year the Coastal Heritage Trust made its largest single grant disbursement to any recipient in their history."
He pointed at the screen. Haven Cove, Oregon. $23 million.
Tom was already pulling more windows. “The list of projects includes some harbor renovation, a trail system extension north of the marina and a local advisory board endowment.”
Wade’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s been touched in that harbor in decades.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “How about that? There’s no new trail, either.” He looked up. “CHT isn’t adjacent to Neptune. It’s a laundry. Criminal proceeds in, cultural grants out. Small towns, legitimate-looking disbursements — nobody looks twice at a preservation foundation.”
Reagan set down her mug. “Haven Cove isn’t neutral ground. It never was.”
“This isn’t something the Brotherhood would have trusted that idiot Hale to handle. He probably didn’t even know about it. Neptune goes a lot deeper here for sure.” Wade said what everyone was thinking.
“Possibly several somebodies. Four years of runway, institutional cover, and legitimate access to local decisions.” Tom set his hands flat on the table.
Gabe said it first. “Then why hasn’t Skye been touched?”
Everyone looked at her.
Skye drifted over toward Owen’s seat and eyed the notebook.
“Two possibilities,” Tom said quietly. “Either Ray was right. The last place Neptune looks for a missing witness is in their own backyard. The cover held.” He paused. “Or they’ve known where she was for some time. And they haven’t made a move because they’re waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Reagan asked.
Tom turned the monitor so the room could see Owen’s notebook, still open on the table. “For whoever Ray sent the cipher to. For the list. For everything in this notebook to surface.”
Reagan caught Skye’s gaze. “They didn’t want to touch you until they could follow you to the cipher.”
“Agreed.” Skye shrugged. “Or be certain I had no idea where it was.”
Owen tapped the notebook, clearly thinking.
“Ray chose Haven Cove deliberately,” Skye said. “He put it in the cipher. He knew. That still doesn’t clue us in to Neptune’s strategy. Whether they knew I was here already or not, they do now. They’ll come for the cipher.”
Cara watched the room process it. Reagan, standing very still with her marker uncapped.
Wade, who had gone expressionless in the way that meant he was already ahead of the rest of them.
Owen, who didn't know yet what Haven Cove meant and was watching the room's reaction with the careful attention of a man trying to understand what he'd just unlocked.
Skye leaned over Owen, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, reading the notebook page he'd left open on the table. She didn't seem to notice the proximity. Owen did, but he didn't move away.
Owen, who had been quiet for most of the past two minutes — running another translation pass under his breath — straightened slightly.
"While we're talking timelines, I need to flag something. I'm scheduled to present a paper at the Nordhavn Colloquium in Svalbard in two weeks. It’s a big deal. I can’t miss it.
As long as whatever we end up doing can wrap before then, I'm available without restriction. "
"What’s your paper about?" Skye asked, without looking away from the notebook.
Owen cleared his throat. "Medieval ecclesiastical transit through the Baltic trade corridor. Eleven eighty-seven to twelve fourteen."
“For real?” Skye gaped at him. "That sounds boring."
For a second, Owen looked like he was going to mount a counter argument, but wisely refrained. "It is."
Reagan nodded in agreement. Wade’s eyes simply glazed over, while Gabe turned away, obviously hiding a grin.
Tom snorted into his coffee. Owen went faintly pink and returned his attention to the page.
Cara gave a mental shrug. Owen, and Skye, should be well on their way long before he had to catch a plane to… wherever Svalbard was.
Across the table, Gabe's phone buzzed again. He didn't check it this time. He was reading the monitor, jaw set, already doing whatever math he did when something landed that he hadn't prepared for.
She knew that look. She'd seen it on the bluff, and in the bakery, and a dozen times in this basement.
He was going to need to deal with David by tonight. They were both going to need to deal with what was on that monitor. The overlap between those two problems was not comfortable.
She poured him a fresh coffee and set it beside him without comment.
He didn't look up, but his hand found the mug. He raised it to his lips, his gaze taking in the team, and their two temporary members. “Sounds like we need a serious plan.”