11. Chapter 11
Cole
Patterns matter. I say it to Kara because it is true. I keep thinking it after we leave the marina because it is inconvenient.
Kara walks beside me through the boardwalk crowd, red hair bright in the sun, sunglasses hiding her eyes again. She looks calmer than she did this morning, but calm is not the same as safe. Calm is a temporary state. Safety is a structure, and hers has more cracks than I like.
Somebody sabotaged her in culinary school. Nobody was caught. Now somebody breaks into her home, touches private things, steals her knife, and sends her a photo of it with Miss You written beside it like a lover’s note from hell.
That is a pattern. Maybe not a legal one yet. But I’ve stayed alive by respecting the shape of things before other people were ready to name them.
Kara thinks the therapist is part of the old story. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s nothing more than a man who helped a scared young woman rebuild her footing after someone tried to knock it out from under her.
I still don’t like him. That is not professional. I accept that and keep walking.
“Do you want to head back?” I ask.
She glances toward me. “Do you?”
“No.”
That surprises her. “Really?”
“You’re better out here than you were inside.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
She looks down the boardwalk, considering that. “I feel like I’m waiting for the world to jump out from behind something.”
“That may take a while. The world is large.”
Kara smiles and I love seeing her reaction.
“Was that supposed to be comforting?”
“No.”
“Good. Because it was terrible.”
I almost smile.
We pass Sandbar & Sips on the way back toward the parking lot.
The dockside tiki bar is already open even though it isn’t yet noon, ceiling fans turning lazily beneath a thatched roof while a bartender stacks limes behind the counter.
A chalkboard advertises rum slushies, blackened grouper bites, and something called a Category Four Margarita, which sounds like a liability issue pretending to be a beverage.
“Is that place good?” Kara asks.
“For drinks or information?”
Her sunglasses turn toward me. “That is not usually how restaurants are reviewed.”
“It’s where half the island talks too much.”
“And the other half?”
“Listens.”
“Which half are you?”
“The half that stands near an exit.”
That gets another smile, and I take it because I am learning Kara’s smiles are not casual things. They cost her something right now. Every one of them means fear did not win that particular second. My phone vibrates before we reach the SUV. It’s Sloane. I answer.
“Let me call you right back.”
I open the passenger door for Kara. “Give me one minute.”
She studies my face. “Is it about me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you always answer honestly when it will make a person nervous?”
“If I lie now, you won’t trust me later.”
That resonates with her. I see it in her expression. Kara nods once and gets into the SUV. I close the door, stay where she can see me, and answer the call.
“Navarro.”
“Rafi pulled what he could on Dr. Adrian Vale,” Sloane says. “Clean license. No disciplinary actions. Works with high-performing clients, anxiety, public pressure, trauma response. Expensive, private, boring.”
“Boring is good.”
“Usually.”
I look through the windshield. Kara sits with her head turned toward the marina, but I know she’s aware of me. She is pretending not to watch.
“Sloane.”
“I know. I’m still looking.”
“You need to look into incidents that happened at her culinary school.”
“We’re already on it. Nothing official beyond old academic complaints, mostly sealed behind university policy.
But Rafi found two local food blog mentions from that year.
Kara Stone was apparently the rising-star student everyone was watching.
Then she withdrew from a regional competition after an ingredient contamination issue. Another student placed instead.”
“Name?”
“Vanessa Moreau.”
That perks up my antena.
“Say that again.”
“Vanessa Moreau. Same Vanessa?”
“Likely.”
“It doesn’t prove anything,” Sloane says.
“No.”
But it is a point on the map. Patterns are built from points.
“What else?”
“Kara rebounded later. Vanessa opened her first restaurant several years before Kara’s streaming career exploded. Press coverage compares them occasionally. Not always kindly to Vanessa.”
“How not kindly?”
“Variation on the same theme. Vanessa is talented but traditional. Kara is fresh, magnetic, camera-ready. Kara becomes the face of Orlando’s modern culinary scene. Vanessa remains respected locally but never breaks wide.”
Could this be jealousy? An old, humiliating wound Vanessa carries? I look at Kara again. She is not expecting betrayal from that direction. Not even a little.
“She called Vanessa after the knife photo,” I say.
“I know.”
“She told Vanessa about me this morning.”
“Name?”
“No. Just local security.”
“Good.”
“Vanessa asked?”
“Yes.”
Sloane is silent on the other end. Finally, he speaks.
“We don’t accuse best friends based on old articles and bad feelings.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
I drag a hand over the back of my neck. “I know the difference between suspicion and proof.”
“Good. Because Kara is attached to this woman, and if you push before we have something real, she may shut all of us out, especially you.”
That is the part I like least. Not because Sloane is wrong. Because he’s right.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
“Keep Vanessa on the list without making Kara feel like we’re attacking her inner circle.
Rafi is checking the burner activation footage.
I’m contacting Sentinel for a list of anyone who knew the exact timing of Kara’s departure.
We also need to know whether Vanessa has access to Kara’s home, old key codes, emergency contacts, anything like that. ”
“She’ll ask why.”
“Then don’t ask yet unless it comes up naturally in conversation.”
Naturally. Nothing about this situation is natural.
Inside the SUV, Kara looks down at her phone. Her shoulders tighten slightly.
“What?” I say, though Sloane can’t see her.
“What happened?”
“Kara’s reading something.”
A second later, her phone lowers, and she looks through the windshield at me. Not panicked, but upset. That is worse.
“I’ll call you back,” I tell Sloane.
“Cole.”
“Yeah?”
“Careful.”
I end the call and open the driver’s door. “What is it?”
Kara turns her phone toward me. A text from Vanessa.
Did you call Dr. Vale? I’m proud of you if you did. I know that old culinary school nightmare still haunts you sometimes. Maybe all this is stirring up those memories too. You always got through it because you had me. You still do.
My jaw tightens before I can stop it. Kara sees it.
“What?” she asks.
I get in and close the door, giving us a sealed pocket of quiet.
Her expression shifts. “You don’t like that text.”
“I don’t like parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
The answer is easy. All of them. I don’t say that.
“She’s framing what’s happening now as an emotional echo of what happened then.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I think someone sent you a photo of your stolen knife yesterday.”
Her mouth tightens.
“I know that.”
“I think fear can affect memory and judgment. I also think real threats like using that to hide.”
She looks away through the windshield. “Vanessa would never hurt me.”
I keep my voice calm. “I didn’t say she would.”
“But you’re thinking something.”
“I’m thinking everyone who knew your location stays relevant until we know how that knife photo text got to you.”
“She found me the rental. She checked on me because she loves me.”
“I believe she loves you.”
Kara turns toward me then, and the hurt in her face hits me hard.
“You can love someone and still hurt them?” she asks.
I hold her gaze.
“Yes.”
This is too much truth for a parked SUV on a bright street outside a tiki bar.
Her fingers tighten around the phone. “That is a very sad answer.”
“It’s a real one.”
She looks down again, and I can see the part of her that wants to argue with me fighting the part that knows I am not trying to wound her.
I hate that I am the one putting suspicion into a place she has always kept safe. I hate more that the place may not be safe at all.
“Look at me,” I say quietly.
She does.
“I am not accusing Vanessa. I’m not asking you to stop trusting her. I’m asking you to let us keep the circle wide until we can make it smaller.”
Her breath catches slightly.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then I’ll do it for now.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“No.”
It sounds like what I’m built for. But that is not what I say.
“I’m hungry again,” I say instead.
She blinks. “What?”
“You had pancakes. I had eggs. That was hours ago.”
“It was forty minutes ago.”
“Long enough.”
The confusion on her face slowly changes into reluctant amusement. “Are you trying to distract me with food?”
“Yes.”
“That was extremely obvious.”
“I’m not subtle.”
“You are literally paid to notice things quietly.”
“Different skill set.”
She lets out a laugh, small but real, and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. Good. I’ll take the win.
I start the SUV and pull away from the curb, keeping one eye on the mirrors and one on the road ahead. Kara doesn’t text Vanessa back. Not yet. She holds the phone in her lap with the screen dark, staring out at Sunbreak Harbor as if the island has become a puzzle she does not know how to solve.
I don’t have all the pieces either. But I know this much. The threat around Kara Stone is not random. It knows her history. It knows her soft places. And if Vanessa Moreau is standing anywhere near the center of that pattern, Kara is going to break before she believes it.
I grip the wheel a little tighter and head back toward The Sandpiper. If that break comes, I plan to be close enough to catch her.