Page 17 of Crosscurrent

She let out the breath she had not been holding so much as carrying and lifted a prayer for his safety. Because Gabe would insist on going in alone.

He cut the engine before the truck reached the kitchen door, exited the vehicle and slipped around the corner on foot, handgun down at his thigh.

She unlocked her apartment door and tiptoed down the back stairs to meet him outside the entrance to the bakery kitchen.

He opened his mouth to warn her off, but then his eyes went to the knife. He sighed. “Get behind me,” he whispered.

The kitchen door of Sugar & Salt was closed. Gabe moved it open with the toe of his boot.

Through the narrow slit Cara could see that the deadbolt was not engaged.

She did not say anything. Gabe had seen it before she had.

The kitchen was dark, but it smelled entirely normal — yeast and sugar and cinnamon. No strange body odors or anything else to indicate a strange presence.

Cara, who had spent eight years learning to read a room by what was missing from it as much as by what was in it, noted the absence. No cologne. No nicotine. No wet-coat-from-outside damp. Whoever was in here had been here long enough that the air had absorbed them.

That, by itself, was not a small thing.

Gabe stepped in low. Weapon up, the small barrel light tracking the room ahead of him in a slow tactical arc. Cara stayed half a pace behind his shoulder, the boning knife at her side, eyes on the corners his beam wasn't reaching yet.

The beam crossed the prep counter — and stopped.

A woman sat cross-legged on the polished marble, eating a lemon shortbread.

Cara's stomach did the elevator drop.

The woman didn’t flinch when the beam landed on her face. "Don't shoot me," she said, as if she were ordering tea, not facing down two armed people.

Gabe held the beam, and his weapon, steady. Cara, reading the angle of his shoulders, edged left along the wall to the switch by the prep sink and flipped the under-counter light.

The soft lights rose, warm wattage, recessed under the maple ledge.

Cara recognized this woman. The town’s yoga instructor. Sally? Suzette? No. Skye.

The woman chewed, watching them silently, her feet clad only in thick, white socks.

Socks. It made the break in both less impressive and more, somehow. The detail registered in Cara's brain in the half-second before the rest of the picture — that was either incompetent or its opposite.

She hadn’t flinched when the flashlight beam hit her. Most people would flinch. Or duck. Or scream.

Cara recalibrated.

A USB drive sat on the pastry counter, set carefully in the middle of the marble slab.

“I’m not here to steal stuff. I need to warn you,” the woman said. Her eyes went to Cara, then to Gabe, then back. “Some men are going to show up in the morning. They’re not nice. They’re going to ask you questions about a man who’s been helping me.”

“Marshal Ray Harney,” Gabe finished for her.

The woman went still.

The hand holding the half-eaten shortbread didn’t droop or tremble. It just…froze.

She looked away, blinking hard. “So it was him, below the cliff.”

Cara knew that look. Loss. Sharp and hurtful.

The intruder drew in a shuddering breath. “I knew, but I didn’t know, if you know what I mean.”