Page 126 of Riptide
"Thank you for coming so fast."
He glanced at the chair in the middle of the kitchen. The severed zip ties on the floor beside it. His jaw tightened, but he kept his expression neutral. "Tell me what happened."
She told him.
About the woman who'd been painting cliff views all over town. About the canvas bag and the gun and the chair. About six months of Jessica Forsythe embedded inside Blaire's operation, waiting, watching, gathering evidence that would never see a courtroom. About the anonymous tip to Thorne. About the night on the cliffs — the lure, the overlook, Blaire gloating about destroying Cara's life right up until the moment she went over the edge.
"She said Blaire didn't even scream," Cara said quietly. "Just... gone."
Gabe listened without interrupting, his jaw tight. His mind was already connecting dots he should have connected days ago. The tourist with the curly dark hair and the canvas bag. He'dwalked past her himself, outside the coffee shop, near the pier. Never looked twice.
Jessica Forsythe had played them all.
Part of him admired the audacity of it. The rest of him felt sick.
"And then she just left," he said. Not quite a question.
"She said she was disappearing." Cara's voice was hollow. "I believe her."
Tyler would move fast, but they both knew what a head start looked like on a case like this. Jessica had planned this for months. She wasn't going to make a mistake now.
"Tyler will update the search," he said. "But honestly? If she's as smart as she seems..."
"She's gone." Cara finished the sentence for him. "I know."
Silence settled between them. The afternoon light had shifted, shadows lengthening across the floor. Somewhere outside, a seagull cried.
Gabe studied Cara's face. The exhaustion. The relief. The pull of something she wasn't saying.
Because there was something. He could feel it. Some piece of this story she was holding back.
"Jessica probably had access to all of Blaire's files," he said slowly. "Everything she used to blackmail people. Dozens of victims."
The implications landed cold. Jessica Forsythe had just walked away from a murder. She'd spent months inside Blaire's operation, learning every secret, every vulnerability, every pressure point. If she wanted to pick up where Blaire left off?—
"Is she going to be a problem?" he asked. "The files. The leverage Blaire had on people." He paused. "The leverage she had on you."
Cara shook her head. "She said she destroyed everything. All the backups she could find."
"You believe her?"
"I do." Cara's voice was steady. "She wasn't doing this for money, Gabe. She was doing it for her brother. For all the people Blaire destroyed." A tiny, weary shrug. "But that's just my read. I don't have any solid proof."
Gabe turned this over. It tracked with everything he knew about human nature. The grief. The obsession. The methodical patience. She wasn't a blackmailer — she was an executioner. And executioners didn't usually stick around to run the business.
But still. Something flickered behind Cara's eyes when he'd asked about the files.
"Did she—" He stopped himself.
Did she show you anything? Did you see what Blaire had on you?
The questions hovered in the air, unasked.
If Cara had seen those files — if Jessica had given her any glimpse of what Blaire had found — she'd have her reasons for not mentioning it. Protecting herself. Protecting him from having to make choices about what to do with the information.
He thought about fifteen years with the Bureau. The cases that still haunted him. The times justice and law had pointed in opposite directions and he'd had to choose. The guilty who walked on technicalities. The innocents crushed by a system that couldn't see nuance. The victims who suffered twice — once from the crime, and again from the investigation meant to help them.
He'd spent his whole career believing in the system.
