Page 29 of Crosscurrent

“What are you talking about?” Owen pushed his glasses back up his nose. “This isn’t about me.”

"Ray was killed," Skye told him, but her gaze was on Cara. "Neptune killed him. They will look at everyone connected to him. You are connected to him. Also, he said so."

She shoved the papers toward Owen, close enough that Cara could read the letter, too.

Don't trust the system. Trust Owen. He's the only person I have who's clean, and he can read what no one else can. Don't let him go home. R.

Owen groaned and did a facepalm. "I teach medieval history. No matter what my uncle thought might happen, that's the full extent of my involvement here."

No. It wasn’t. Not as far as the Neptune Brotherhood would believe.

Cara leaned forward slightly. "Owen. The Marshal’s office called you as next of kin. That call is on record somewhere. The people who killed your uncle are going to pull every thread he left — his files, his contacts, his family. Your name is going to be at the top of that list."

"That's —" Owen stopped. Started again. "I have final grades to post, and then, you know, things to do. I’m giving a paper in Norway at the end of the month." He looked at Skye, then at Cara, then at the letter still sitting flat on the table. "I study the fourteenth century. What kind of threat could I be?"

"Ray studied people who come after people," Skye said. "He still chose you to find me."

Owen took his glasses off and set them on the table. Without them he looked younger and more lost and, Cara thought, considerably more like a teenager at a family reunion he hadn't wanted to attend.

He picked them back up, put them back on, and cleared his throat. "This is exactly like the situation of the papal legate's notary at Avignon in 1378. The notary wasn't a party to the Schism. He was just the man who could read the documents. Just present. And then he was in it for the rest of his life."

Cara looked at Skye.

Skye shrugged. “I say we go with this.” She nodded at Owen. "Exactly like that. Probably."

Owen nodded, apparently satisfied. It had clearly resolved something for him that nothing else had. “Okay.”

Skye turned and looked at her. "We need somewhere to keep him."

"We have somewhere," Cara said. What was one more house guest in her tiny place?

Outside, the afternoon light was coming off the water at a low angle. Diane was pretending not to listen from behind the espresso machine, which meant she'd heard every word and would take it to her grave.

Owen Harney sat at the window table with his cold tea and his carefully kept promise, looking like a man who had driven hours for an answer and received instead a whole new set of questions.

Skye’s letting us in.

That was the thought that arrived, quiet and certain. The doorway that had opened at three in the morning when Skye sat on the prep counter eating lemon shortbread — they were all the way through it now.

Whatever came next, they were going to face it from the same side of the door.

Lord, she prayed. I hope we're ready.

10

Owen came down the basement stairs Friday morning to find the team had already made room for him.

Tom had shifted his secondary monitor six inches to the left. Reagan had set two extra mugs on the shelf above the espresso machine. Wade had positioned a folding chair at the near end of the conference table. Nobody had discussed any of it. The basement had simply adjusted through some combination of Reagan's quiet management and the team's collective decision to just get on with things.

Cara had been downstairs since six. She'd watched all of it happen.

Owen came down at quarter to eight, still wearing yesterday's corduroy trousers, looking like a man who had slept adequately in a spare room and made his peace with it. Wade had been on Cara's block since midnight. Nobody had asked him to. He'd come in at seven with two bagel-and-egg sandwiches and an industrial-sized bottle of Zyrtec, which he set on the conference table in front of Owen's folding chair with no explanation.

"Allergies?" Owen asked.

"It’s for you. There’s a cat. You'll want those," Wade said.

Owen’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know––?”