Page 1 of Crosscurrent

PROLOGUE

The phone in the false bottom of the woman’s bag buzzed for the first time in over three years.

She froze beside the unmanned reception desk, yoga blanket still in her hands, and stared at the satchel next to the class calendar.

For a moment she simply stood there, listening to the rain whisper against the studio’s windows and the soft metallic tap of a halyard somewhere out on the dock. The studio had been empty almost an hour. The last students had drifted out at around four, smelling faintly of eucalyptus lotion, carrying their expensive mats, thanking her for class while gathering water bottles and gossip and car keys. Now the room sat quiet under the dim red glow of the EXIT sign.

The hidden phone buzzed again.

Not possible.

Or technically possible, she corrected automatically. Batteries failed. Towers glitched. Signals crossed. Strange things happened on the coast during storms.

But not to this phone.

She kept it charged because she kept everything charged. Every six months she rotated the battery. Once a year she powered it on long enough to verify the encryption app still functioned properly. Then she sealed it back into its wax-paper sleeve and returned it to the false bottom of her bag where she tried hard not to think about it.

Because any incoming message meant disaster.

She set down the blankets and rounded the desk, shoving her hand into the deep bag until she could grip the edge of the hidden compartment beneath the bag’s satin lining.

The older phone rested exactly where she'd left it.

Buzzing.

Her pulse gave a painful kick against her ribs. She pulled it free and looked at the screen.

BLOCKED NUMBER: AVALANCHE

The word sat in plain white text against black.

No greeting. No punctuation. No explanation.

Not like it was necessary.

The agreed-on word for threat level rising, prepare to move in hours, or days, was TORTOISE.

The agreed-on word for disappear immediately and trust no one was AVALANCHE.

Her handler had set up the system in a cramped attic apartment in Salem while rain hammered the roof hard enough to shake the windows. He'd sat cross-legged on a faded rug with a mug of instant coffee balanced on one knee while patiently explaining emergency protocols. Not that any explanations were necessary. For as long as she could remember, she’d slept with a knife under her pillow, waking instantly at any unfamiliar sound.

“If I send TORTOISE,” he'd told her, “you prep whatever needs prepping.”

Then he'd gone quiet for a second before adding:

“If I send AVALANCHE, you don't go home.”

She read the message again.

AVALANCHE

The studio suddenly felt too open and far too bright. She moved quickly now, though not fast enough to become careless. Carelessness killed people far more reliably than panic ever had.

Bag over her arm now, she switched off the lights, checked the back office, and verified the knife at her boot and the second one inside her jacket pocket.

The small electric kettle her student, Reagan Byrne, had given her last Christmas sat cooling beside the sink. The diner owner believed everybody needed hot tea after exercise. She personally believed most herbal tea tasted like boiled leaves and disappointment, but Reagan’s heart had been in the right place, so the kettle remained.

She emptied the water into the sink anyway.