Page 2 of Crosscurrent

No sense leaving traces of routine behind.

Outside, the rain had settled into a fine drifting mist that softened the outlines of the boats rocking against their slips. The fish-and-chips place next door wouldn’t open for another hour. The kayak rental stood dark. Somewhere down the dock a gull complained bitterly.

She locked the studio door behind her and paused long enough to listen. Old habit.

No footsteps. No engines idling nearby. No voices carrying over the water. Still, the skin between her shoulder blades prickled hard enough to hurt.

The purse rested heavily against her ribs while she headed north along the dock at a measured pace, head slightly down against the mist. She did not run. Running on wet marina planks would make her a target.

Her car waited four blocks away on a side street between a contractor van and an aging delivery truck. She'd moved it there Tuesday morning after rejecting two other parking spots for visibility concerns.

Predictability got people killed.

She slid behind the wheel, locked the doors automatically, and headed north through the rain.

Traffic was sparse but not absent. A logging truck thundered past in the opposite direction. Then nothing but wet pavement stretching ahead of her.

The overlook road appeared on the right about a mile beyond the last cluster of coastal houses, marked by a county sign somebody had shot repeatedly and nobody had ever bothered replacing.

She drove past it.

Another half mile north she turned around in a logging pullout and headed back.

No vehicles followed.

Good.

The gravel road up toward the bluff had washed out twice during the winter storms. The county still hadn’t repaired it properly, though calling the old track a road at all felt generous. Deep ruts collected standing rainwater beneath low cedar branches that scraped softly across the roof of her car as she climbed.

She turned in at the second switchback and let the vehicle roll the rest of the way in low gear. The forest closed around her immediately: dark, wet, and silent except for rainwater dripping steadily through the trees.

She parked near the trailhead and stepped out into cold mist carrying the scent of bark and ocean and distant woodsmoke from somewhere farther inland. The dead drop sat a hundred and forty paces north through the trees behind a hemlock she had marked herself three years earlier. She knew every root crossing the trail and every hollow where water gathered after storms. She knew where the canopy thinned enough for moonlight to break through and where the undergrowth thickened near the bluff edge.

Her boots made almost no sound on the wet ground.

At the hemlock, she crouched, noting the notch she'd carved into the bark. The cache stone beneath the third exposed root looked untouched.

Only the color wasn’t right.

Brown.

Not white.

A cold pressure settled behind her ribs. Brown meant disaster.

She stopped herself from touching the stone directly. Touching contaminated surfaces. Fibers transferred. Prints survived.

Ray used to laugh when she reminded him of that. “You're the only protected witness I've ever met who gives forensic lectures,” he'd told her once.

Using a stick, she found the hidden seam beneath the bark covering and lifted it gently.

The cavity underneath sat empty. Cash gone. Burner phone gone. Backup license gone. The eastern Oregon address that was supposed to become her next life if AVALANCHE ever came — gone too.

Three boot prints marked the loam nearby.

Fresh.

Two approaching. One leaving.