Chapter 4 #3
She paused, halfway out of her chair.
"You handled it well. In the library. Staying calm when he was testing you."
"I was terrified."
"I know." His voice dropped, and the noise of the bakery seemed to thin around them for a moment—just his voice and her pulse and the space between their hands on the table. "That's what made it count."
Harper's breath caught. She covered it by reaching for her bag.
Then she stood, grabbed her bag, and walked out into the Florida sunshine.
The heat hit her like a wall after the air-conditioned bakery.
She paused on the sidewalk, letting her eyes adjust, scanning the street out of habit.
A couple window-shopping at the antique store.
A delivery driver wrestling boxes from a van.
An older man reading a newspaper on a bench near the fountain.
Normal. Everything looked normal.
But normal was just the surface. Normal was what you saw if you didn't know where to look.
She started walking toward The Sandbar, keeping her pace easy, her face neutral. Just a writer heading home after a morning of coffee and conversation. Nothing to see here.
The walk back took eleven minutes. She counted. She always counted.
The afternoon sun beat down on her shoulders as she passed the fire department, the thrift shop, and the furniture store with its hand-painted sign. Normal route. Normal pace. Nothing to suggest she was anything other than a writer heading home after a morning of research.
Her mind kept circling back to Sattler's face. The way he'd smiled when he said, 'bodies buried.' The way his eyes had stayed flat while his mouth made pleasant shapes.
He knew. Maybe not everything. But enough to come find her in person.
Her bungalow looked the same as she'd left it. She checked the locks, the window latches, and the thread across the closet door. Everything undisturbed.
She kicked off her shoes, filled a glass of water from the tap, and stood at the window drinking it while her heartbeat settled.
The afternoon stretched ahead of her, empty and waiting. She should work on her cover—go into town, be seen at the coffee shop, make small talk with strangers. Be Holly Warren, harmless writer, definitely not someone investigating a criminal syndicate.
Instead, she opened her laptop and stared at the photos she'd taken at the library. Sattler's acquisitions, mapped across two decades. Shell companies layered like nesting dolls. Nova Boone's death notice; tucked into a folder like an afterthought.
There was a story here. A story Isak had died for. And she was standing in the middle of it, with the man who probably ordered his death making pleasant conversation in the archive rooms.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
She stared at it for three rings, her heart in her throat. Then she answered.
"Ms. Warren?" A woman's voice. Familiar. Nervous. "This is Geri Crane. From the library."
Harper's grip tightened on the phone. "Yes?"
"I wanted to apologize. For earlier. For—" A pause, the sound of a breath being taken. "For not being more helpful."
"It's fine. I understand."
"No. You don't." Geri's voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "There are things I couldn't say with him there. Things about this town. About the people who really run it. About what they've done."
Harper's heart was pounding now. "What things?"
"Not on the phone. But if you want to know what really happened to the people who asked questions—" Another pause, longer this time. Harper could hear the woman's breathing, quick and shallow. Afraid. "Come to my house tomorrow night. Eight o'clock. 412 Inlet Drive. And Ms. Warren?"
"Yes?"
"Come alone."
The line went dead.
Harper sat in the quiet of her bungalow, the phone warm against her ear, and let Geri's words replay.
Geri Crane was either offering her a lifeline—information that could crack this whole thing open—or leading her into a trap.
The woman had been afraid at the library.
Genuinely afraid, the kind of fear that came from living too close to something dangerous for too long.
But fear cut both ways. It could make people brave enough to finally speak, or desperate enough to betray someone to save themselves.
She should tell Caleb. Should wait for backup, for a plan, for something other than walking alone into a stranger's house at night in a town where people who asked questions disappeared.
But Geri had said come alone. And if Harper showed up with Shadow Ops backup—if Geri even suspected she wasn't who she claimed to be—whatever trust she'd started to build would shatter. Whatever the librarian knew would stay locked away forever.
She thought about Isak. About the call he'd made the night before he died, his voice tight with excitement and fear. He'd had information too. Information he was going to share the next day. Information that someone had killed him to protect.
Tomorrow never came for him.
412 Inlet Drive. Eight o'clock. Come alone.
She pulled out her laptop and opened the file on Douglas Sattler. She had work to do.