Chapter 13
Gabe got maybe three hours of fractured sleep before his brain gave up pretending.
By eight-thirty, sunlight flooded through the apartment’s front windows in bright coastal bands that made everything look deceptively normal.
Down below, the bakery bell kept chiming every few minutes.
Customers. Weekend traffic. The low hum of Saturday morning life continuing as if there wasn’t a hostile surveillance team circling the block.
He sat up slowly from the couch, neck stiff, eyes burning.
The apartment smelled faintly of coffee grounds and cinnamon from downstairs. Familiar. Safe.
Which, increasingly, felt like a lie.
Cara had finally come upstairs around five after the alley sweep. She’d disappeared into her bedroom sometime after six. Owen, Wade, and Skye had stayed downstairs with the monitors and the maps and the ugly little pile of evidence that kept growing by the hour.
Gabe crossed to the kitchen in sock feet and reached for the kettle.
The kitchen window overlooked the alley.
Daylight transformed it. No shadows. No movement. Just dented trash bins, damp asphalt, and the faded brick wall behind the seafood place next door.
An alley pretending not to be the same alley where somebody had run a probe twelve hours earlier.
The kettle had barely started to hiss when Cara rushed into the room barefoot, hair twisted up messily, phone clenched in one hand.
“Diane just texted.”
Something in her voice tightened every nerve in Gabe’s body.
She shoved the phone toward him while still typing with her thumb. “She says there’s a man outside the bakery.”
Diane: Man at the front window just now. He stood in front of the alcove for a minute, then walked away.
Cara: How long?
Diane: A minute maybe more. Customers didn’t notice.
Cara: Stay inside. We’re coming down.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Diane: No need. Wade’s here.
Gabe looked up sharply.
Cara was already moving.
“Front camera?” he asked.
Cara opened the clip and handed him her phone. “Pulled it before I came in.”
Saturday morning sunlight spilled across the bakery entrance hard enough to wash the edges pale. Hanging flower baskets swayed slightly in the harbor wind. A couple walked past laughing, coffee cups in hand.
Then the man entered frame.
Dark fleece zipped to the throat despite the warming morning. Ball cap low. Hands in pockets.
He stopped directly outside Sugar & Salt’s front alcove. And stayed there.
Stillness like that was never accidental.
The man never checked his phone. Never looked at the street. Never shifted weight like a bored tourist. He studied the bakery windows.
Diane appeared inside the doorway carrying a dish towel over one shoulder.
Even through grainy footage, Gabe recognized the exact moment she realized something was wrong.
She opened the door halfway and said something polite.
The man tipped his head once. Not an apology. Acknowledgment.
Then he walked away.
Gabe rewound the footage and watched the head tilt again.
Cold recognition slid through him. “This guy was in the alley last night.”
Cara nodded immediately. “That’s what I think too.”
Gabe handed back the phone. “We need to get downstairs.”
They headed down the outer stairs to the back door. The door released with a soft hydraulic click after Cara pressed her thumb to the scanner.
Wade stood near the monitor wall with one hand braced against the table, broad shoulders tense beneath a dark thermal henley. He looked like he’d come up hard from dead sleep and gone straight into operational mode.
“Same guy from the alley,” Wade said. “I’d bet my next catch on it.”
Tom’s face filled one of the wall monitors from his home setup, expression tight as footage rolled across his screen. “You’re gonna win that bed, big guy. We’ve got the same gait. Same height. Same boots.” Tom enlarged the still frame. “I’m officially calling it.”
Skye occupied the far workbench with her knees drawn up against her chest, a yoga mat propped behind her like she’d tried and failed to convince herself to rest.
Owen sat beside Tom’s empty workstation in yesterday’s cardigan with Agent sprawled across his lap, tablet forgotten in one hand.
Nobody looked rested.
Wade’s jaw tightened slightly as he studied the footage. “He got bolder.”
Footsteps sounded overhead. Then the basement stair door opened, and Diane descended carrying a wet dish towel over one arm as if she’d simply stepped away from the ovens for a moment. “He wore the same shoes,” she said.
Everybody looked at her.
“The man this morning and the one in the alley.” Diane’s voice stayed calm. Steadier than most people’s would’ve been. “I noticed it from the video you showed me this morning. It’s the same tread pattern. Same heavy sole.”
She glanced toward Cara. “I don’t think he expected me to notice.”
The room went quiet.
Then Diane added, with sudden iron underneath the softness, “I will not let these people take my mornings.”
Something about the statement hit Gabe harder than the surveillance footage had.
Not fear. Defiance.
Cara’s expression softened. “I agree. No way that happens.”
Diane nodded once and headed back upstairs toward the sound of customers and espresso steam and Saturday pastries.
Gabe stayed standing, staring at the frozen image on the monitor. The fleece jacket.
The lug-sole boots. The deliberate stillness outside Sugar & Salt.
This was escalation.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Above them, faint through the ceiling, the bakery bell chimed again. Normal life continuing overhead.
Skye finally broke the silence. “They are tightening the perimeter.”
Gabe looked back at the frozen image on the monitor—the man standing motionless outside Sugar & Salt like he already knew the layout inside.
He jerked his head at Wade. “Time to find out where these boys have been.”
Wade pushed off the table immediately. “Oh, yeah.”