Chapter 2
The walk back to Sarge's Sandbar took eleven minutes.
Harper counted. She counted everything now. Steps, seconds, the number of people who looked at her versus the number who looked through her. Seven people on Main Street this morning. Four glanced up. Three kept walking. None held her gaze longer than a breath.
Good. Forgettable. Exactly what she needed to be.
The road curved as it neared the water, storefronts giving way to a thrift shop, a furniture store with a hand-painted sign.
She passed the fire department, one bay door open, an engine gleaming red in the shadows.
Her shoulders ached from sleeping wrong, and the protein bar she had choked down before the bakery sat heavily in her stomach.
Sarge's Sandbar sat back from the road, a weathered building with a wide porch and a neon sign that probably glowed green at night. Behind it, tucked between sea grape bushes and wind-bent palms, four small bungalows faced the water.
Hers was the one farthest from the parking lot. Closest to the beach. Hardest to approach without being seen.
She had her key out before she reached the door. Unlocked it, stepped inside, and swept every corner with her eyes before she let herself exhale.
The window over the kitchenette was still latched from the inside. The thread she had placed across the closet door hung undisturbed. Her backup phone, taped beneath the bathroom sink, had not been moved.
Empty. Safe.
She sat on the edge of the bed, and her hands began to shake.
This always happened after.
The adrenaline would carry her through the danger, and then it would abandon her all at once, leaving her wrung out and trembling like she had run a marathon. She pressed her palms flat against her thighs and waited for the shaking to stop.
Caleb Rourke. For two months, he had been tracking her. Two months, and she had not known.
The thought sat in her stomach like ice water. She was supposed to be better than this. She had built her entire survival around being invisible, and someone had been watching her the whole time.
Her other phone buzzed. The burner she used to check on the life she had left behind. She pulled it out and read without unlocking the screen.
Three messages from her mother.
Please call me.
Your father asks about you every day.
I don't understand why you can't just tell me where you are.
Harper closed her eyes. The truth was too dangerous to put in a text. The lie was too cruel to keep repeating.
She shoved the phone back in her bag and opened her laptop instead.
The file she pulled up was not the one she had given Caleb.
His tablet contained the verified research, the evidence she could prove.
This file was different. This file was the map she had been building in her head for fourteen months, the one that connected shell companies, property transfers, and dead sources into something that looked like a spiderweb with a monster at its center.
Isak Thorne had found that monster. He had called her the night before he died, his voice tight with something between excitement and fear.
"I found him. The one at the top. The one who built all of this."
"Who?"
"I can't say on the phone. Tomorrow. I'll bring you everything."
Tomorrow never came. Two bullets in a parking garage, and Isak died with the name locked in his head.
Harper stared at her screen. Three names glowed back at her. Three possibilities. Business owners with the right connections, the right access, the right public face.
One of them had ordered Isak killed. One of them was running an operation that stretched across the Gulf Coast. One of them had probably already noticed she was here, asking questions, poking at wounds that were supposed to stay buried.
The question was which one.
Outside, footsteps crunched on the shell path.
Harper closed the laptop. Moved to the window. Pressed herself against the wall and angled her head just enough to see.
A maintenance worker in a faded blue shirt, pushing a wheelbarrow toward the bungalow next door. He didn't look up. Didn't glance at her window. Just kept walking, slow and steady, until he disappeared around the corner.
She let out a breath. Her pulse thudded in her ears.
Settle down. Not every footstep is a threat.
But shadows were how they came for Isak. Quiet and professional. The kind of death that looked like bad luck if you didn't know what to look for.
Her phone buzzed again. The burner she had given Caleb.
Your research checks out. We should talk.
Harper read it twice. Then typed back.
When?
Tonight. Nine. There's a path behind The Sandbar that leads to the beach. I'll find you.
A private beach. At night. With a man she barely knew.
She typed her response before she could talk herself out of it.
I'll be there.
At half past four, Harper walked into town.
Holly Warren needed to be seen. The freelance writer working on a book about small-town Florida needed to make small talk, order drinks, and ask the kind of harmless questions that would make people forget her face five minutes after she left.
The supper club on Second Street was quiet. A few drinkers at the bar, a couple sharing a basket of fried shrimp by the window. Harper chose a stool near the end and ordered a club soda with lime.
The bartender was a woman in her fifties with silver rings on every finger and a voice like gravel.
"You're new."
"I'm writing a book. Small coastal towns, local history, that kind of thing."
"Uh-huh." The bartender set down her drink. "I'm Nadine."
"Holly."
They shook hands. Nadine's grip was firm, her eyes sharp.
"Where are you staying?"
"Sarge's. One of the bungalows."
"Good choice. Sarge doesn't ask questions."
Nadine let that sit for a moment, polishing a glass, before adding: "Not everyone around here is so discreet."
"So who should I talk to?" Harper wrapped her hands around her glass. "For the book. Who knows the most about this town?"
"Depends on what you want to know." Nadine leaned against the bar. "History, you go to the library. Gossip, you come here. Business, politics, the way things really work—" She paused. "That's harder."
"Why harder?"
"Because people who know things don't always want to share. And people who share don't always know what they're talking about."
"That's true everywhere."
"It's more true here." Nadine picked up a glass and started polishing. "Blossom Springs looks sweet. Cute downtown, nice beach, friendly folks. But every place has layers. Things that don't show up in the brochures."
Harper kept her face neutral. "What kind of layers?"
Nadine held her gaze for a long moment. Her polishing hand slowed.
"The kind that bite if you dig too deep." She set down the glass. "You want another?"
"I'm fine."
"Mm." Nadine moved down the bar, conversation over.
Harper sipped her club soda and watched the street through the window. A man in paint-spattered jeans walked past—the same man from the bakery this morning. A woman with a stroller paused to check her phone. Normal. Ordinary.
Then the door opened behind her.
She didn't turn. She watched the mirror behind the bar instead, tracking the reflection as a man stepped inside.
Older, maybe sixty, with silver hair and a tan that spoke of golf courses and boat decks.
He wore a pale blue linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and he moved like someone who expected the room to notice him.
He paused at the hostess stand. Scanned the room with the easy confidence of a man who owned things.
His gaze found her. Passed over. Came back.
Two seconds. Maybe three. Long enough to file her face away.
Harper's fingers tightened on her glass. She forced herself to look away first. To pull out her phone as if she had just remembered something. To be boring. Forgettable. Not worth a second glance.
When she looked up again, he was gone. Seated somewhere behind her, out of her line of sight.
"Nadine." Harper kept her voice light. "Who was that?"
Nadine glanced toward the dining room. "Harrison Montgomery. He owns half the light fixtures in Florida. Lives here part of the year."
"Important guy?"
"Important enough." Nadine's mouth pressed flat, the way it did when she was choosing not to say something. "Donates to everything. Sits on every board. The kind of man who gets his name on buildings."
"You don't sound impressed."
"I've been pouring drinks for thirty years. I'm not impressed by much anymore."
Harper finished her club soda and left cash on the bar. "Thanks for the conversation."
"Anytime, honey. You be careful with that book of yours."
Harper paused. "Why do you say that?"
Nadine met her eyes. The professional warmth was gone. What was left underneath looked a lot like a warning.
"Because the last writer who came through here asking questions left in a hurry." She picked up Harper's empty glass. "Never did finish that book."
Harper walked back to The Sandbar as the sun dropped toward the water.
Harrison Montgomery. The name echoed in her head, syncing with her footsteps.
She had three names on her list. Three possibilities. She had researched them all from a distance, built profiles from public records, news archives, and the digital breadcrumbs people left without realizing.
Montgomery was one of them.
And now he had looked at her. Held her gaze just a beat too long. Like he was filing her face away for later.
Could be nothing. Could be a wealthy man noticing an unfamiliar woman, the kind of casual appraisal that meant nothing and happened everywhere.
Could be something else entirely.
She reached her bungalow and checked the locks, the windows, and the thread across the closet door. Everything undisturbed. Everything exactly as she had left it.
Four hours until she met Caleb.
She pulled out her laptop and opened her file on Harrison Montgomery. Read through the connections she had mapped, the patterns she had traced. Donations to journalism initiatives. Seats on media boards. A philanthropic empire built on controlling what people knew and how they knew it.
Isak had been close to a name. A name at the top.
Harper stared at the screen until her eyes burned.
Then she closed the laptop, lay back on the bed, and listened to the surf until the sun finished setting and the room went dark around her.
At quarter to nine, she slipped out the back door and walked toward the beach.