Chapter 5 #2
Need eyes on Lila's house tonight. Her office was searched. She doesn't know how much they know about her. He typed the address and sent it to Caleb before he could second-guess it.
Ronan met Mitch DeMario for the first time that evening at Sarge's Sandbar.
The bar sat on the water, just past the boat slips, a weathered building with a deck that extended over the sand.
Locals gathered there after work, drinking cheap beer and watching the sunset.
It was the kind of place where information flowed as freely as the alcohol, and Ronan had been making a point of showing up every few days to listen.
DeMario was easy to spot. Former military showed in the way he carried himself—alert, balanced, ready to move. He was maybe forty, with close-cropped dark hair going gray at the temples and the kind of quiet confidence that came from knowing exactly what he was capable of.
He was talking to the bartender when Ronan walked in. Ronan ordered a beer and took a seat at the bar, two stools down. Close enough to be friendly, far enough to not be pushy.
DeMario glanced over. Assessed. Filed.
"You're the other security consultant."
"Ronan Cross." He extended his hand. "You must be DeMario."
"Mitch." The handshake was firm, professional. "I've heard good things about your firm. Charleston event a few years back—that was you?"
"My company, yes." The cover story held. Caleb had done good work. "I heard you're handling implementation for the centennial."
"Crowd control. Access management. Coordination with local law enforcement." Mitch took a pull from his beer. "You did the initial assessment?"
"Venue security. Risk analysis. Recommendations for the committee." Ronan kept his tone casual. "Different lanes."
"Works for me. Too many cooks spoil the soup."
"Agreed."
They drank in silence for a moment. The bar was filling up as the sun dropped toward the horizon, casting long golden light across the water.
"Quiet town," Mitch said eventually. "Pretty. Feels almost too perfect, though. You notice that?"
Ronan kept his expression neutral. "I've noticed."
"Everything's very—maintained. Very controlled." Mitch shrugged. "Could just be small-town pride. Could be something else."
"What else would it be?"
"I don't know yet. Just a feeling." He finished his beer and set the empty bottle on the bar. "But I've learned to pay attention to feelings. They're usually right before the evidence catches up."
Ronan studied the other man. DeMario was smart. Perceptive. Exactly the kind of person who might notice things that were supposed to stay hidden.
Which made him useful. And potentially dangerous.
"The event coordinator," Mitch said. "Lila Bennett. You've met with her?"
"A few times. She knows the town. Knows the logistics."
"She seems stressed. More than normal event planning stress." Mitch signaled for another beer. "I met with her this afternoon to go over the parade route. She was distracted. Jumpy."
"Centennial is a big deal. A lot of pressure."
"Maybe." Mitch accepted the fresh beer from the bartender. "Or maybe something else is going on."
Ronan said nothing. Letting the silence sit.
"Not my business," Ronan continued. "I'm here to do a job. Make sure people are safe, the event goes smoothly, and everyone goes home happy." He took a drink. "But if something's wrong in this town—something that might affect the security picture—I'd want to know about it."
"If I hear anything, I'll pass it along."
"I appreciate that." Ronan’s gaze was steady. "We're on the same side here, Mitch. Whatever our different lanes, the end goal is the same. Keep people safe."
"Absolutely."
They clinked bottles in an unspoken agreement. Two professionals acknowledging a shared purpose, even if their methods—and their information—would never fully overlap.
Ronan finished his beer and dropped cash on the bar. "I should head out. Early morning tomorrow."
"Good meeting you." Mitch raised his bottle in a casual salute. "Let's keep the lines of communication open."
"Count on it."
Ronan walked out of Sarge's into the warm evening air. The sun was setting over the water, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. The town’s scrubbed storefronts and painted shutters, giving off the reminder of paintings found in the galleries of small towns.
He pulled out his phone and texted Caleb.
Met DeMario. He's sharp. Already noticing things.
The response came quickly.
Problem?
Not yet. But he asked about Lila. Said she seemed stressed.
Because someone searched her office, and she's trying to act normal while helping a covert federal operation investigate her hometown.
That would do it.
Keep her close, Ronan. If DeMario notices she's off, others will too. She needs to sell the normal act, or this whole thing falls apart.
Keep her close. Easier said than done when keeping her close meant spending more time with her. Talking to her. Learning the small details of her life that had nothing to do with the mission.
He pocketed his phone and walked toward Beach Road. The cottage was dark, waiting for him like it did every night. Empty rooms. Empty bed. The silence of a life built around missions and covers and carefully maintained distance.
Lila's face appeared in his mind. The way she'd looked that afternoon, standing under the oak tree, asking him to tell her she wasn't crazy. The vulnerability beneath the strength. The trust she'd placed in him, a stranger with secrets he couldn't share.
He couldn't let anything happen to her.
The thought had become a refrain, repeating in his head at odd moments. Not a mission parameter. Not an operational priority. Something else. Something that had nothing to do with Shadow Ops and everything to do with the woman who'd handed him her father's files and asked for the truth.
He was in trouble.
And for the first time in twelve years, he wasn't sure he wanted to find his way out.
The back deck at Sarge’s was nearly empty. His eyes caught on the peaceful evening and empty tables with a killer view of the water.
He claimed the last table by the railing, the one with the wobbly leg that nobody wanted.
He’d ordered a beer he wasn’t drinking and a plate of fried shrimp he’d eaten half of before his appetite quit.
The sun was down, but the sky still held light—that long blue hour when Florida couldn’t decide if the day was over.
He heard her before he saw her. The scrape of a chair being pulled back from the table beside his. The thud of a bag dropped on wood.
“You look terrible.”
Lila dropped into the chair and signaled the bartender without waiting for a menu. She’d changed since he’d seen her at the office—jeans now, a worn sweater with a hole in the cuff that she kept poking her thumb through. Her hair was down, tangled from the wind.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
“I’m not supposed to do a lot of things. Eat carbs after eight. Leave my phone on the charger overnight. Trust mysterious strangers who show up in my town with fake résumés.” She accepted a glass of white wine from the bartender and took a long sip. “And yet.”
“We agreed to keep our distance in public.”
“This isn’t public. This is Sarge’s. Half the people here couldn’t identify their own spouses after three beers.” She tipped her glass toward the corner booth, where a group of fishermen was arguing about something with elaborate hand gestures. “See? Nobody’s paying attention to us.”
She was right. He hated it when she was right, which was becoming a recurring problem.
“How’s the shrimp?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar. For a spy.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“You showed up under a fake identity to investigate my town. That’s a spy.”
“That’s an operative.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Spies wear tuxedos and order martinis. I’m wearing a flannel shirt and drinking a Yuengling.”
She laughed. Not the careful, public laugh she used at town meetings. A real one—sudden and surprised, like it had escaped before she could catch it. The sound did something to his chest that had nothing to do with the beer.
“My dad drank Yuengling,” she said. The laughter was still in her voice, softening the mention of him. “Every Friday night on the back porch. One beer, never two. He’d sit there and watch the sunset and not say a word for an hour.”
“Sounds like a man who knew how to be quiet.”
“He was. My mother used to say he’d used up all his words on survey reports.” She smiled into her wine glass. “She wasn’t wrong. He could write ten pages about a property boundary and then come home and communicate entirely in nods and eyebrow raises.”
“My father was the opposite. Talked constantly. About everything. The news, the weather, whatever book he was reading.” Ronan turned his beer bottle in his hands.
He didn’t talk about his father. Not to anyone.
But the evening air was warm, and she was sitting close enough that he could see the wine stain at the corner of her mouth, and something about this woman made his usual defenses feel like too much work.
“After he died, the quiet was the worst part. I’d come home, and the house would just—be there.
Silent. Like it was waiting for someone to fill it up again. ”
Lila was watching him. Not with the sharp, assessing look she wore at the office. Something gentler. Something that made him want to keep talking, which was a feeling he didn’t recognize.
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen.”
“I was thirty-one when my dad died.” She set her glass down. “You’d think it would be easier when you’re older. That you’d have more tools to deal with it. But it’s not. It’s just a different kind of impossible.”
“The impossible part doesn’t change. Just the shape of it.”
She looked at him for a long moment. The string lights on the deck had come on, casting everything in a warm, uneven glow. The fishermen were getting louder. The tide was going out, pulling at the pilings beneath them.
“You know what I miss most?” she said. “The boring parts. Not the big moments—the birthdays and holidays. The boring parts. Him at the kitchen table, doing a crossword. The sound of his truck in the driveway. The way he’d leave his reading glasses everywhere, and my mother would find them in the refrigerator or the laundry basket or balanced on the dog’s head. ”
“You had a dog?”
“Enormous golden retriever named Captain. My father named him. He said every house needs a Captain.”
“What happened to Captain?”
“He died about a year after Dad. I think he just—gave up.” Her thumb worked at the hole in her sweater cuff. “I haven’t gotten another dog. Haven’t been able to.”
“Why not?”
She was quiet long enough that he thought she wouldn’t answer.
“Because then I’d have to admit that this is my life now.
The empty house. The crossword nobody’s doing.
The driveway that only has my car in it.
” She finished her wine and set the glass down with precision.
“Getting a dog means accepting that the people who used to fill up the space are gone. And I’m not ready to accept that. ”
The fishermen erupted in laughter. The bartender dropped a glass. The ordinary sounds of a bar on a weeknight, carrying on around two people who were sitting very still.
Ronan reached across the gap between their seats and covered her hand with his.
She looked down at his hand. At her hand underneath it. She didn’t pull away.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said.
“Probably.”
“We barely know each other.”
“Also true.”
“And you’re investigating my entire world.”
“That part’s definitely complicated.”
She turned her hand over beneath his. Palm to palm. Her fingers laced through his, slow and deliberate, like she was making a decision one knuckle at a time.
“Buy me another glass of wine,” she said. “And tell me something true. Something that’s got nothing to do with falsified surveys or shell companies.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Your favorite food. The worst movie you’ve ever seen. Whether you’re a morning person.”
He flagged the bartender. Ordered her wine and himself another beer he probably wouldn’t drink.
“Pad Thai,” he said. “From a place in Bangkok I can’t pronounce. The worst movie I’ve ever seen is a tie between three different action films where they got the weapons wrong. And I’m whatever kind of person wakes up at five a.m., whether he wants to or not.”
“Military habit?”
“Insomnia disguised as discipline.”
She laughed again. That surprised, unguarded sound. He was developing an addiction to it.
They sat on the deck while the tide went out, the fishermen staggered home, and the bartender started stacking chairs around them.
They talked about nothing important. Her college years in San Francisco.
His first posting, which he described in the vaguest possible terms, and she didn’t push.
The books they’d read. The places they’d been.
The things they wanted but hadn’t admitted to anyone, because admitting them made them real, and real things could be lost.
When the bartender finally turned off the deck lights, they walked to the parking lot together. Her car was the lone car in the lot.
“Goodnight, Ronan.”
“Goodnight, Lila.”
She opened her car door. Stopped.
“For the record,” she said without turning around, “this is the best night I’ve had in two years.”
She got in and drove away before he could respond.
He stood in the parking lot with his keys in his hand, the taste of beer on his tongue, and the memory of her fingers laced through his, and thought: I am in so much trouble.