Chapter 28
The lockbox code was almost always the property address backward.
But it didn’t work.
Cara tried it again. Nothing. She stepped back and studied the house she’d chosen by instinct—three blocks east and one block north of the SUV.
Mail piled on the porch. No tire tracks in the gravel.
No condensation on the windows. January on the coast was full of places like this, empty and waiting for someone to need them.
She moved off the porch and around the side, looking for a window with a bad latch. There. The bathroom. Single-hung, old frame, the kind that swelled in the rain and didn’t seat right. She was reaching for it when Gabe’s hand closed over her wrist.
“Hold on.”
He reached into his back pocket and took out a flat leather case—small, the kind of thing that looked like a wallet if you didn’t look too closely. Unfolded it. Inside, a set of lockpicks that had absolutely no business being in the possession of a small-town police chief.
Cara stared at him. He was already walking back to the front door.
She positioned herself next to him, shielding his hands from view as he worked the lock. It took him all of ten seconds.
The deadbolt turned. She raised an eyebrow.
Gabe pushed the door open and looked back at her.
“I had a misspent youth.”
“You were in the FBI.”
“Not always.”
Inside, the house smelled like dust and lemon cleaner. Cara moved through it fast—checking windows, mapping exits. The garage held a ten-year-old Subaru wagon. The keys were on a hook by the kitchen door, because coastal Oregon.
“So we have a car,” Gabe leaned against the kitchen counter, arms folded, watching her. “We loop around and come in from the north. No connection to the rental house. Then what?”
Cara didn’t answer right away.
“They’ll be armed,” Gabe continued. “And we have to assume they’ll recognize us. They’re surveilling that house for a reason. They’ve got photos, descriptions—maybe both. So what’s our play?”
He was right. Two people driving past a surveillance team in the middle of the night wasn’t a distraction. It was a gift.
She studied the kitchen, her gaze moving past the counter, and the microwave, past the sad little spice rack and the coffee maker with the carafe still inside, to the living room, where a low cabinet sat against the wall with its door slightly ajar.
Bottles. A whole row of them. Bourbon, vodka, something pink that had probably been a mistake at the time and was definitely a mistake now. The kind of collection vacation renters left behind.
She grinned.
“What.” Gabe said in the tone of a man who’d seen that expression before and associated it with things going sideways.
She headed for the bottles. “They won’t recognize us. Not if we play our parts right.”
“Parts.”
“A couple. Local. Rough night. Rougher marriage. Three bars deep and headed for a fourth fight about the same thing they fought about last Tuesday.” She was already moving toward the hallway. “The kind of people nobody looks at twice, because everybody’s seen them before.”
“Cara—”
“While they’re dealing with us, Wade punctures their tires from the brush. Reagan takes everyone out the south end of the street. Simple.”
“Simple,” Gabe repeated, meaning the opposite.
“The best cons are.” She disappeared into the hallway and started opening closets.
Previous tenants had left behind the usual archaeology of poor planning and optimistic packing—a man’s flannel shirt that smelled like a campfire, a denim jacket with a Coos Bay bait shop patch on the shoulder, a baseball cap so sun-bleached it might have once been red.
In the bathroom, she found a half-used tube of styling gel and a rubber band.
She brought it all to the kitchen and dumped it on the counter.
“Arms out,” she ordered.
“Excuse me?”
“Arms. Out.”
He held out his arms, looking like a man submitting to something he didn’t fully understand and wasn’t sure he’d survive.
Cara pulled his jacket off and replaced it with the flannel—unbuttoned, sleeves shoved to the elbows.
Then she untucked his shirt and yanked the hem sideways, so it hung crookedFinally she mussed his hair with both hands, working it forward and sideways until the clean-cut cop was gone and something wilder had taken his place.
She stepped back to study him. “Almost there.” She reached forward and undid one more button.
“Was that necessary?”
“Completely.”
The baseball cap went on backward. She tugged it low.
The transformation was startling—not because the individual pieces were dramatic, but because the sum of them erased everything that made Gabe Sawyer look like a man who enforced the law.
This new guy looked like someone the law had opinions about.
He wrinkled his nose. “I smell like old fish and bad cologne.”
“I’m aware. It’s perfect. Trust me.”
Cara worked on herself next, pulling the denim jacket on over her dark shirt.
She released her hair from its tie, roughing it with her fingers until it hung messy and half in her face.
Swiping a finger over the dust from the closet shelf, she smudged it under her eyes—the faintest shadow, just enough to mimic mascara that had been cried through.
Gabe watched all of this with an expression she couldn’t quite read.“You’ve done this before.”
“Once or twice.”
“You’re terrifyingly good at it.”
“I know.” She picked up the bourbon, splashing it on her jacket, and behind her ears like perfume. Then she held the bottle out to Gabe. “Last touch. Professionals trust their noses.”
Lips pursed in a grimace, he doused his collar and sleeves. Cara backed away. The smell was immediate and overwhelming—the olfactory signature of a bad decision.
And then he did something with his posture.
The cop vanished.
Not just the look—she’d already handled the look. The man underneath. His shoulders loosened. His center of gravity shifted. His eyes went from sharp to soft.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Her voice came out differently than she’d intended.
“Undercover.” The smile sharpened—just a flash of the real Gabe underneath.
Cara snatched the half-empty bottle from the counter and tossed Gabe the keys. “No way a guy like you would let a woman drive.”
He didn’t argue, just folded himself into the driver’s seat of the small Subaru and reversed it out of the garage with the lights off. Then he turned north and began to weave.
The SUV was exactly where it should be. Dark. Parked. Patient.
They drove past. Slowly. Weaving. The liquid in the bottle in Cara’s lap sloshed from side to side. He let the Subaru drift wide, corrected too late, drifted again. The headlights swept the SUV’s bumper. She could feel the attention from inside.
“Right up there,” she pointed to a spot just before the next turn.
He pulled the car to a lurching stop, front tire against the curb, and killed the engine.
“Follow my lead, undercover boy.” Bottle in one hand, she jerked the doorhandle open and flew out of the car.
She’d been someone else before—had walked into Haven Cove and built a bakery and a whole human being out of nothing but a fake name and a prayer.
Being someone else for fifteen minutes was nothing.
Tonight’s person was a woman who’d been at a bar far too long and was standing in the rain trying to remember why she’d gotten in the car with her boyfriend in the first place.
Hands on her hips, she weaved into the middle of the road between the SUV and their stolen vehicle.
Then she whirled around to face Gabe, pretending to stumble.
“You know what your problem is?” she yelled.
Too loud for midnight on a quiet street.
“Your problem is you don’t listen. You never listen. ”
Gabe lurched out of the driver’s side of the vehicle. “I’m listening RIGHT NOW.” He spread his arms, voice thick as if his tongue wasn’t working right. “See? This is me. Listening.”
She blinked hard, face slack. “You’re not listening, you’re—you’re standing there with that FACE—“
“What face? This is my face. I can’t help my face.”
“Idiot,” she yelled, and raised the bottle to her lips, tilting her head back and letting the foul liquid run down her neck.
They converged in the road, both staggering. Voices rising in the rain, filling the silent street with the unmistakable soundtrack of a relationship reaching its operational limits. Two drunks screaming at each other were not a threat. They were a nuisance. The kind of thing you waited out.
Which was why she had to make them engage.
Clutching the neck of the bottle, she raised it.
"Babe." Gabe raised his hands, palms out, the universal posture of a boyfriend who knew what was coming and couldn't stop it. "Okay. Okay. Let's not—"
He sidled sideways, gaze never leaving her face, hands still raised, turning as they circled each other, until his back was to the SUV.
Smart man.
“You’re so...stupid!” She launched the bottle at Gabe’s head.
It arced past his left ear—three feet wide, exactly where she’d aimed, because Cara could put a thrown object within a six-inch window at twenty feet—and over his shoulder, straight at the SUV.
The bottle exploded against the passenger door.
The sound was spectacular. Glass on glass, bourbon splattering in a wide amber fan, cracks radiating from the point of impact.
The SUV’s doors opened disgorging two men with identical crew cuts and the physical confidence of large, strong men paid to handle situations. One reached for a phone. The other headed toward her with controlled aggression.
“Oh, no,” Cara wailed. Full volume. She wobbled over to him, closing the gap, and clutched his arm. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—I was throwing it at HIM—”
Gabe played his part. Apologetic boyfriend. Hands up, stumbling contrition. “I’m sorry, man, I’ll pay for that—she gets like this—”
Along the SUV’s far side, invisible, Wade would be moving. Low. Fast. A knife pressed into rubber and twisted, starting slow leaks that would have the sedan riding on rims in under ten minutes.
Cara kept the tears rolling—big, messy, drunk tears, the kind that made men uncomfortable and desperate to disengage. The first man peeled her off his side, leaping out of range.
Hands covering her face, Cara staggered to Gabe. “I just want to go HOME,” she sobbed.
“Get lost,” The first operative waved them off.
Cara and Gabe stumbled back to the Subaru.
Half a mile south, at the junction with the coast highway, two sets of headlights waited. Reagan flashed hers twice. All clear.
From the back seat of Wade’s truck, a text lit up the group chat.
Piper: For the record, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, and I will be telling this story at every family gathering for the rest of my life.
The caravan pulled onto the highway, accelerating hard.
Behind them, Cara pictured the hired goons. By now, they’d be running toward the rental.
The only thing left would be a cold grilled cheese on a kitchen table and the ghost of coffee.