In the Shadows (Blossom Springs: Shadow Ops #1)

Prologue

The room didn't exist.

That was the first thing you learned when you worked for people like this—some places weren't on any map, weren't in any database, weren't acknowledged by anyone who valued their career or their freedom.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in a flat, institutional glow.

No windows. Recycled air that tasted like it had passed through a thousand other lungs before reaching his.

Ronan Cross had been in rooms like this before. Too many times to count.

He sat at a metal table, a cup of coffee going cold in front of him, and studied the satellite photographs spread across the surface. A small town. Harbor. Tree-lined streets. The kind of place that showed up in tourism brochures with words like charming and historic and escape the ordinary.

Blossom Springs, Florida.

Population: twelve thousand. Founded in 1875. Primary industries: tourism, fishing, artisanal everything. The sort of town where people went to retire, or to hide, or to pretend the rest of the world didn't exist.

"Seventeen flags in six months."

The voice came from across the table. David Mein—no, not Mein, Ronan reminded himself. The man had given a name when they'd first met, years ago, but Ronan had long since stopped believing it was real. Everyone in this world wears masks. Some were just better fitting than others.

"That's a lot for a town this size," Ronan said.

"That's why you're looking at it." David slid another photograph across the table.

An aerial view of the harbor, boats dotting the water like toys in a bathtub.

"Maritime traffic patterns that don't match registered vessels.

Gaps in tracking—forty-seven minutes, regular intervals, always the same window. "

"Could be equipment malfunction."

"Could be. Except the equipment checks out fine, and the gaps started eighteen months ago.

Right around the time this happened." Another photograph.

A property survey, dense with technical notations.

"Land permits. Sixteen of them in the past two years, all with irregularities that got flagged during a routine federal audit. "

Ronan picked up the survey, scanning the details. Boundary lines that didn't quite match county records. Easement modifications that had bypassed normal approval processes. Small changes, the kind that would slip past anyone who wasn't looking closely.

"Someone's moving property lines."

"Someone's been moving them for years. The audit only caught the recent ones. When we dug deeper—" David spread his hands. "The pattern goes back at least fifteen years. Maybe longer."

"To what end?"

"Coastal access. Every modified property is connected to the water in some way. Private coves. Unmarked access points. Places where a boat could come and go without anyone noticing."

Ronan set down the survey. Picked up his coffee, found it cold, drank it anyway. "You think they're running something through the harbor."

"I think the harbor is part of it. But there's more." David pulled out a tablet, swiped through several screens, and turned it to face Ronan. "Emergency response times. Look at the variance."

The data showed what looked like random fluctuation—some nights, ambulances reached their destinations in eight minutes; other nights, the same routes took twice as long. But Ronan had been doing this long enough to know that random was rarely random.

"They're manipulating dispatch."

"That's our theory. The question is why." David leaned back in his chair. "And that's where you come in."

"Embed and investigate."

"The town's planning a centennial celebration.

Big event, lots of outside contractors. Perfect cover for a security consultant who wants to ask questions without raising suspicion.

" David slid a folder across the table. "Your legend.

The company's called Sentinel Security. We've built you a history—Charleston, Savannah, and a few other coastal events. References will check out."

Ronan opened the folder. Scanned the documents inside. Driver's license, business cards, a résumé that described a career he'd never had.

"Timeline?"

"Three weeks until the celebration. We want you on the ground before that, getting a feel for the town. The players. The patterns." David paused. "There's a woman. Works in the permits office."

He slid one more photograph across the table.

Ronan looked at it.

A woman, mid-thirties maybe, walking out of a building with a stack of folders in her arms. Brown hair, sunlight catching the loose strands. She was mid-stride, caught in motion, not posing for anyone.

"Lila Bennett," David said. "Third generation Blossom Springs. Her grandmother was the president of the historical society for forty years. The family's been documenting town records since before anyone alive was born."

"You think she's involved?"

"I think she knows things. Whether she realizes what she knows is a different question." David tapped the photograph. "The permits office is ground zero for the property irregularities. She's been working there for eight years. If anyone's noticed something wrong, it's her."

Ronan studied the photograph. The woman—Lila—was smiling at something off-camera, her expression open and unguarded. She looked like someone who trusted the world. Someone who hadn't learned yet that the world didn't always deserve it.

"You want me to use her."

"I want you to find out what she knows. How you do that is up to you.

" David stood, gathering the photographs and documents into a neat stack.

"Caleb Rourke is running intelligence support remotely.

Graham Holt is on standby two hours out in case you need extraction.

You'll have secure channels and regular check-ins. Standard protocols."

"And if the town turns out to be clean?"

"Then you spend three weeks in a charming coastal paradise and come home with a tan." David's expression didn't change. "But we both know that's not going to happen."

Ronan didn't argue. Seventeen flags didn't lie. Patterns didn't emerge from nothing. Somewhere in that town with its polished storefronts and careful smiles, something was very wrong.

He looked at the photograph of Lila Bennett one more time before sliding it into the folder with everything else.

Just a resource. An access point. A means to an end.

That was all she could be.

The drive to Blossom Springs took six hours.

Ronan could have flown, but he preferred the road.

It gave him time to think. Time to inhabit the cover identity, to let it settle into his skin like a second self.

By the time he crossed the county line, he wasn't Ronan Cross, former Army Ranger, current shadow operative.

He was Ronan Cross, security consultant, hired to assess crowd management and emergency protocols for a small-town celebration.

The highway curved along the coast, and the ocean appeared in flashes between hills and trees. Blue and endless, the afternoon sun was scattering diamonds across the surface. Beautiful. He noticed it the way he noticed everything—clinically, cataloging the details without letting them touch him.

The last time he'd let beauty touch him, three men had died.

He pushed the thought away. Focused on the road. On the mission.

The town announced itself gradually. First, the signs: Welcome to Blossom Springs, Est. 1875.

Then the outskirts—a gas station, a grocery store, a church with a white steeple rising above the trees.

The buildings grew older and denser as he drove toward the center, Victorian facades giving way to a downtown that looked like it had been preserved in amber.

He'd seen the photographs. He'd studied the maps. But there was something about being here, in the flesh, that the intelligence couldn't capture.

The town felt like a held breath. Like something waiting.

He parked on a side street near the main square and got out of the car.

The air smelled like salt and something sweeter—flowers, maybe, or the bakery he could see on the corner.

People moved along the sidewalks with the unhurried pace of those who had nowhere urgent to be.

A mother pushed a stroller. An elderly man walked a small white dog.

Two teenagers sat on a bench, sharing earbuds, lost in their own world.

Normal. Ordinary. The kind of scene that belonged on a postcard.

Ronan didn't trust it.

He walked toward the coffee shop/bakery on the corner—Mae's Bakery, according to the hand-painted sign—because coffee shops were where you learned things. Who talked to whom? Who avoided whom? The invisible social geography that maps couldn't show you.

The bell above the door chimed as he entered. The interior was warm and cluttered in a way that suggested decades of accumulated personality. Mismatched chairs. Local art on the walls. A chalkboard menu with handwriting that had been refined over years of daily updates.

He ordered black coffee from a woman behind the counter—forties, brown hair, sharp eyes that assessed him with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd spent a lifetime reading strangers.

"Passing through?" she asked as she poured.

"Working. Security consulting for the centennial."

"Ah." Her expression shifted, warmed slightly. "We've been waiting for someone to show up about that. Lila's been running herself ragged trying to get everything organized."

"Lila?"

"Lila Bennett. She's coordinating the whole thing. Knows everyone in town, knows everything about this place." The woman set the cup on the counter. "She'll take good care of you."

Ronan paid and found a table near the window. The view gave him a clear line of sight to the town square, the harbor beyond it, and the cluster of buildings that comprised downtown Blossom Springs.

His phone buzzed. Caleb.

You there?

Just arrived, he typed back. Getting the lay of the land.

First impressions?