Chapter 21
After lunch, Tom and Wade returned to repairs. Piper resumed her cleanup narration. Reagan organized supplies with the intensity of someone planning a military campaign.
Cara disappeared into the storage room.
Gabe heard her rummaging. Then silence. Then a sound that made his chest constrict.
Crying.
Quiet. Trying to hide it.
He found her sitting on the floor amid broken shelves and spilled ingredients, holding something in both hands.
That wooden spoon. The one with the worn handle that she'd mentioned once belonged to her great aunt. Someone had tried to glue it. The pieces were carefully aligned. Still broken, but saved.
"Tom did that." Her voice was thick. "He found the pieces and tried to fix it. Spent time on a broken spoon because he knew it mattered."
Gabe crouched beside her. "It does matter."
"It's stupid." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Crying over a spoon. The bakery's destroyed. Someone wants me dead. Your brother's missing. And I'm sitting here crying about something that can't be fixed."
"Sometimes the small losses hurt more." He knew that truth too well. "Because they're tangible. You can hold them."
She looked at him then. Eyes red. Walls down in a way he'd never seen.
"I'm sorry," he said. The apology covered more than the spoon. He'd dragged her into this investigation. Brought danger to her doorstep. Failed to protect everyone he cared about.
That last thought hit him harder than it should.
Cared about.
When had that happened?
"You're going to find him." Cara's voice steadied. "David. You're going to find him, and this will be over, and you'll go back to Philadelphia knowing you did everything you could."
The words should have been comforting.
They weren't.
Because going back to Philadelphia meant leaving Haven Cove. Leaving the community that had shown up for a stranger. Leaving the bakery that smelled like hope and yeast and second chances.
Leaving her.
"What if I can't?" The admission came out raw. "The only real evidence I have is locked behind a password I can't guess. My career's about to implode. And my brother's either dead or so deep in hiding I'll never find him."
"Hey." Cara shifted. Reached out. Put her hand over his. "Your brother was careful. This wasn't a man preparing to disappear forever. This was someone making sure you'd find him."
"Then why can't I figure out the password?" Frustration sharpened his voice. "He said I'd know. Said it was something obvious. A question he asked, and I gave the worst answer possible. But I've tried everything."
"Then the question matters more than the answer."
He looked at her. "What?"
"David didn't leave you a riddle about content. He left you one about context." She squeezed his hand once, then let go. "What question did your brother keep asking that annoyed you? What did you two argue about?"
Gabe sifted through years of sibling fights. Baseball teams. Music. Movies.
Dad.
Dad was a hero.
No, he was a fool who got himself killed for nothing.
Take that back.
It's true. He chose some investigation over his family. Over us.
The memory hit like a physical blow.
David had been thirteen. Gabe four years older. Standing in their aunt's kitchen after the funeral. Fighting because they didn't know how else to process grief.
David asking over and over: Was Dad a hero or a fool?
And Gabe, angry and hurting saying: Fool.
The worst answer possible.
Because their dad had been a hero.
Gabe pulled out his laptop with shaking hands. Opened the password prompt.
Typed: HERO
Incorrect password
He stared at the screen. Tried variations. HERODAD. DADHERO. HEROIC.
All failed.
Unless.
What if the question wasn't about their dad at all?
What if David was asking about himself?
Gabe typed: FOOL
The drive unlocked.
Files cascaded across the screen. Folders labeled with dates and names and evidence categories. Audio recordings. Photos. Documents.
David had left him everything. And he'd titled it with the worst answer Gabe had ever given.
The one he'd spent twenty years regretting.
His throat closed. Eyes burned. He pressed his palms against them hard enough to see stars.
"Gabe?" Cara's voice was gentle.
"Got it." The words came out rough. "I got in."
He opened the first folder. Found an audio file labeled INTRO. Clicked it.
David's voice filled the bakery:
"Gabe, if you're hearing this, something went wrong. I hope I'm just being paranoid and we're laughing about this over a burger someday. But if not, you need to know what I found."
Gabe clenched his fists, hanging on every word.
"Dad wasn't dirty. He was murdered because he discovered what I've spent months documenting. There’s been a smuggling operation running through Haven Cove for at least twenty years. Same routes. Same corruption. Different players, but the structure's identical."
Pause. David's voice thick with emotion.
"I can prove it now. Everything Dad tried to expose before they had him killed is on this drive. But Gabe, it goes deeper than we thought. Law enforcement’s involvement. Money laundering through shell corporations. A distribution network that spans the entire West Coast."
Another pause.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. But I couldn't risk you getting hurt. I hired Ruiz to document everything. And if you're hearing this, either he got the evidence to you safely, or you found my backup plan."
"Finish this, Gabe. Finish what Dad started."
"Be the hero he raised us to be."
The recording ended.
Gabe sat in the destroyed bakery and let himself break. Just for a moment. Just long enough to process hearing his brother's voice after three weeks of silence.
Cara put her hand on his shoulder. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to.
Once David’s voice faded from his head, he tried the other files. He groaned.
“What?” Cara leaned close, staring at the failure message on the screen.
“Encrypted.” Exactly as he suspected. Each file would have to be cracked individually.
Footsteps on the stairs. Tom appeared, wiping his hands on a rag. "Sounds like you got in." He shrugged. "I heard voices."
Gabe straightened. Pulled himself together piece by piece. "Yeah. But there's..." He clicked through folders. Manifests. Audio files. Photos. Financial records. Surveillance logs. "There's months of documentation here. Maybe years. I don't even know where to start."
More footsteps. Wade came down, tool belt still strapped around his waist. Reagan followed, her apron gone but her server's notebook still tucked in her pocket.
"Saw the lights," she said. "Thought you all might need coffee."
Piper appeared last, phone in hand. "What's going on?"
Gabe's instincts screamed at him to shut this down. Send them home. This wasn’t their fight.
Except his counter-intelligence training saw something different.
The way Tom assessed the damaged security system and known exactly what needed fixing. The guy had tech skills beyond what a handyman should have.
No matter how much he tried to hide behind that silent-dude exterior, Wade oozed situational awareness, and probably a lot of other hidden skills Gabe could only guess about.
Reagan might run a diner now, but the woman had a genius for pattern recognition. She’d earned that somewhere.
Even little Piper had special skills. She was sharp and disarming and way more thoughtful than she wanted anybody to realize.
These weren't just helpful neighbors. These were people with skills they weren't advertising.
Just like Cara.
His brother's voice echoed in his head. Finish this, Gabe. Finish what Dad started.
He couldn't do it alone. Not in forty-six hours. Not with unidentified goons tracking his every move. Not when the evidence sprawled across decades and he didn't know the local players or patterns.
His IA instincts said document everything, trust no one, follow protocol. His counter-intelligence training said build a team, leverage assets, adapt to conditions on the ground.
If he was going to have any chance to rescue his brother, he needed all the help he could get.
He looked at Cara.
She stood beside him, still holding that broken spoon. Her face was smudged with flour dust and exhaustion. But her eyes were clear. Steady.
She'd been with him through every step of this investigation. She'd faced down whoever trashed her bakery. She'd trusted him with pieces of herself she didn't show anyone else.
Now he was about to drag more people into danger.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. A question.
Cara glanced at the others. Tom with his quiet competence. Wade with his watchful intensity. Reagan who'd been tracking the same patterns David had died investigating. Piper who'd shown up to help without being asked.
Then back to Gabe.
She nodded once. Certain.
"Actually." Gabe closed the laptop. Looked at each person in turn. "Before anyone goes anywhere, Cara and I need to talk to all of you."
He felt Cara shift beside him. A unified front.
"We've been followed," he continued. "Multiple times. Different vehicles. Whoever killed Ruiz and trashed this bakery knows we're investigating."
The room went still.
"I have forty-six hours before my boss fires me and this whole thing disappears into bureaucracy. David left me everything. Proof of what my father died investigating. But it's massive. Complex. And I can't move without being watched."
He met Tom's eyes. Then Wade's. Reagan's. Piper's.
"I need help. Real help. And I think you all have skills that might make the difference between finding my brother and losing him forever.
" He let that land. "But you need to know what you're getting into.
These people have killed. They will kill again.
If you're not willing to risk that, walk away now. No judgment."
Nobody moved, but Gabe felt them all confer silently, some kind of Haven Cove ESP.
Tom stepped forward. "What do you need?"