Chapter 5
Need to talk. In person. Now.
Caleb read it twice. Harper wouldn't use words like "now" unless something had changed. He grabbed his jacket and was out the door in under a minute.
He found her at Mae's Bakery, tucked into the corner booth with a cup of coffee she wasn't drinking.
The bakery was nearly empty at this hour—Hanna was behind the counter, wiping down the espresso machine, an older couple debating pastries near the display case, soft jazz playing through speakers mounted in the corners.
Harper looked up as he slid into the seat across from her. Her face was composed, but her fingers were tight around the cup.
"What happened?"
"Geri Crane called me." She kept her voice low. "The librarian. She wants to meet. Tomorrow night at eight. Her house on Inlet Drive."
"Alone?"
"That's what she said."
Caleb leaned back, processing. Geri Crane had been at the library when Sattler showed up. She'd given Harper those veiled warnings about people who asked questions. And now, hours later, she was offering information.
"Tell me exactly what she said."
Harper recounted the conversation. The apology for not being more helpful. The mention of things she couldn't say with Sattler there. The invitation to come alone.
"She sounded scared," Harper finished. "Genuinely scared. But that could mean she's ready to talk, or it could mean someone's using her fear against her."
"Or both."
"Or both."
The older couple left, the bell above the door chiming behind them. Hanna started loading the dishwasher, the clatter of ceramic filling the silence.
"I did some digging this morning," Caleb said. "412 Inlet Drive. Small house on the east side of town, near the water. She's owned it for thirty-one years. No mortgage, no liens, no financial irregularities. She inherited it from her mother in 1992 and hasn't left since."
"So she's clean."
"She's invisible. Which is different." He pulled out his phone and showed her an image—a modest single-story house with white siding and green shutters.
"People who've lived somewhere that long, who've seen what she's seen—they either get involved in the machinery, or they learn to look away.
Geri's been looking away for thirty years. "
"Until now."
"Until now." He put the phone away. "The question is why. What changed?"
Harper was quiet for a moment. "Sattler showing up at the library. She saw him test my cover, ask about my background. Maybe that scared her more than my questions did."
"Or maybe it reminded her what happens to people who know things and stay quiet." Caleb watched her face. "She called you after he left. That timing matters."
"You think she's been waiting. Waiting for someone to show up who might actually do something with whatever she knows."
"I think it's possible. I also think it's possible she's bait."
Harper's fingers loosened on the cup. Then tightened again. "I know."
"If Sattler suspects you're more than a travel writer, setting up a meeting with a local who 'wants to help' is exactly how he'd flush you out. You show up alone, they're waiting."
"I know."
"And you're going anyway."
It wasn't a question. He could see it in the set of her shoulders, the steadiness of her gaze. She'd already decided.
"Isak had a source," she said quietly. "Someone who was going to give him the name. The person at the top of the network. They were supposed to meet the day after he called me." She paused. "He never made it to that meeting."
"Harper."
"I'm not saying Geri is that source. I'm saying I've spent fourteen months running from the people who killed Isak.
Hiding. Surviving. And the only thing that's changed is that now I'm hiding somewhere new.
" Her voice didn't waver. "If there's a chance Geri Crane has information that could break this open, I have to take it. "
"Even if it's a trap."
"Even if it's a trap."
He watched her across the table. The lamplight from the pendant above their booth caught the hollows under her cheekbones, the set line of her mouth. She looked like someone who'd already done the math on dying and found the numbers acceptable.
"You're not going alone," he said.
"She said—"
"I heard what she said. And you're still not going alone." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small device—black plastic, no bigger than a button. "Tracker. Subcutaneous adhesive, waterproof, good for seventy-two hours. I'll know where you are within three meters."
Harper took it, turning it over in her fingers. "You just carry these around?"
"I carry a lot of things around." He pulled out another device. "Panic button. Press and hold for three seconds. I'll have people at your location inside five minutes."
"What people?"
"People who owe me favors."
She looked at him for a long moment. He could see the questions forming—who are you really? What is this operation? How deep does it go? Questions he couldn't answer yet. Questions that might get them both killed if he answered wrong.
"Okay," she said finally. "Tracker and panic button. But I go in alone. If she sees backup, she'll spook."
"Agreed. I'll be parked two blocks away. Anything goes wrong, you press that button, I'm there."
"And if nothing goes wrong?"
"Then we have new information to work with." He paused. "Either way, you don't leave that house without checking in. Text when you arrive, text when you leave. If I don't hear from you by nine-thirty, I'm coming in."
"That's very thorough for a professional alliance."
She said it lightly, but her eyes stayed on his face, reading him the way she read everything—carefully, looking for what was underneath.
"It is a professional alliance."
"Right." She didn't look away. "That's why you came running the minute I texted. Why you're offering me tracking devices, panic buttons, and backup you won't explain. Because it's professional."
"Harper."
"I'm not asking you to admit anything. I'm just noting the gap between what you say and what you do." She slid the tracker into her pocket. "I've been a journalist long enough to notice inconsistencies."
He didn't have an answer. Or he had too many answers, none of them safe to say out loud in a bakery at eight o'clock at night.
"We should go over the layout of the house," he said, steering back to safer ground. "I pulled the original building plans from the county assessor. Three bedrooms, one bath, single story. The front door faces the street, and the back door opens onto a small yard. No basement."
Harper nodded, accepting the redirect. "Exits?"
"Front door, back door, and a window in each bedroom. The house backs onto a drainage easement—if you need to run, head that direction. It connects to the road about a quarter mile east."
"You memorized the escape routes."
"I memorized the escape routes for every building I've entered in the last three years.
" He pulled up an aerial photo on his phone.
"Here. Inlet Drive runs north-south along the water.
Her house is the third from the corner. The neighbors on either side are seasonal rentals—empty this time of year. "
"So no witnesses."
"So no interference. Could be good, could be bad."
Harper studied the photo, committing details to memory.
He watched her work—the focus, the attention to detail, the way she processed information like someone trained to survive.
Fourteen months on the run had sharpened her instincts.
She wasn't the same person who'd written those fearless articles in Mobile.
She was harder now. Warier. And he understood that transformation better than he wanted to admit.
They spent another hour going over contingencies.
What to do if Geri wasn't alone. What to do if vehicles approached during the meeting. What to do if the panic button failed or the tracker was jammed. Harper absorbed it all with the methodical focus of someone who'd learned that preparation was the difference between survival and statistics.
By the time they finished, Hanna was cleaning tables and pointedly glancing at the clock. Caleb left money on the table and walked Harper to the door.
The night was warm and still. Main Street had emptied out, shop windows dark, and street lamps casting pools of light on bare sidewalks. Their footsteps were the only sound.
"I'll walk you back," he said.
"That's not necessary."
"I know."
She didn't argue. They walked in silence through the dark streets, past the fire department, the thrift shop, and the furniture store with its hand-painted sign. The only sounds were their footsteps and the distant rhythm of waves on the beach.
"Can I ask you something?" Harper said as they approached Sarge's Sandbar.
"You can ask."
"Why are you doing this? Not the operation—I understand operations. But this." She gestured at the space between them. "The contingency plans. The walking me home. It's more than managing an asset."
Caleb stopped walking. The Sandbar was just ahead, lights glowing from the main building, the bungalows dark shapes against the beach.
"Three weeks ago, you were a pattern in my data. A journalist who went missing. I expected to find someone who'd stumbled into things she didn't understand."
"And instead?"
"Instead, I found someone who's been fighting alone for over a year. Someone who lost everything and kept going." He stopped. The rest of the sentence was sitting right there, and he could feel it wanting to come out, but he didn't let it.
Harper was quiet for a long moment. The waves rolled in behind her, patient and endless.
"I recognize you, too," she said. "That's what makes this dangerous."
"Why?"
"Because the last time I trusted someone who understood what I was going through, he ended up dead in a parking garage." Her voice was steady, but he could see the pain underneath. "I don't want that for you."
"I'm not Isak."
"No. You're not." She studied him in the dim light—the line of his jaw, the way he stood with his weight evenly distributed, ready to move in any direction. "You're something else entirely. And I don't know what to do with that."
Neither did he. That was the problem.
"Get some sleep," he said, his voice rougher than he intended. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day."
"Caleb."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For not telling me I'm being stupid. For not trying to talk me out of this."
"Would it have worked if I tried?"
"No."
"Then what would be the point?"
She held his gaze. In the dim light from the Sandbar's porch, her eyes were nearly black. Then she turned and walked toward her bungalow, and he watched until she was inside, until the light came on, until she texted the all-clear.
He walked back toward town, the sound of the waves fading behind him.