Page 78 of Riptide
"Thanks for coming in," he said. "I need your formal statement about last night."
"Of course."
He walked her through the basics. Time of arrival at the cottage. The meeting itself. The car accelerating toward her, the crash, calling 911. She answered each question carefully, her voice wavering only when she described diving out of the way, hearing Blaire scream.
That part, at least, was true. He'd watched it happen from the shadows.
He already knew about the blackmail—had pieced together enough to understand that Blaire was squeezing Cara over the inheritance of the bakery. What he didn't know was why Cara was in this position in the first place. And how much of that had Blaire figured out?
What Cara was hiding that made her vulnerable to someone like Blaire Mitchell?
And that was the question he couldn't ask. Not directly. Not without forcing her to lie to his face, again, or admit to something that might destroy her.
He set down his pen, met her eyes. "I can imagine why you met her at the cottage, you don’t need to give me any details." He kept his voice gentle but firm. "What I need to know is whether any of that—whatever she has on you, whatever she's been threatening—could be connected to someone wanting her dead."
Cara's hands tightened in her lap. He watched her struggle with it—the desire to tell him warring with the fear of what that truth might cost.
"I don't know who cut her brakes," she said finally. "I don't know who would want to kill her. But..." She hesitated. "Blaire has made a lot of enemies. People she's found. People she's... leveraged. I'm not the only one."
"Do you have names?"
"No. Just what she's implied." Cara looked down at her hands. "She's been doing this for a long time, Gabe. To a lot of people. Any one of them might have snapped."
It wasn't much. But it was more than she'd given him before.
"Anything else you want to tell me?" he asked quietly.
The question hung between them. He was giving her an opening. A chance to trust him with whatever secret was eating her alive.
She shook her head. "That's everything I know. I'm sorry it's not more helpful."
Gabe held her gaze for a long moment, then nodded and closed his notebook. "If you think of anything else, you know where to find me."
"I do."
She stood to leave. At the door, she paused, looked back. Something painful moved through her expression.
"Gabe... thank you. For last night. For everything."
Then she was gone, and he was alone with his notes.
His desk phone rang fifteen minutes later.
"Chief? It’s Torres. I've been canvassing like you asked, talking to locals about any unusual activity yesterday. Pearl Henderson flagged me down about an hour ago."
Gabe straightened. Pearl Henderson noticed everything that happened in Haven Cove—and plenty that didn't. If there was something to see, Pearl had seen it.
"What did she have?"
"Unfamiliar car yesterday evening, parked near the turnoff to the coastal road. Rental plates, she's pretty sure. White male driving alone, maybe forties, dark hair. She said he looked 'shifty'—her word. Seemed nervous when she drove past. Wouldn't make eye contact."
"What time?"
"Around six-thirty, she thinks. Maybe closer to seven."
An hour or more before the meeting at the cottage. Plenty of time to cut a brake line and disappear before anyone else arrived.
"Good work. Anything else?"
