Page 34 of Crosscurrent

A floorboard creaked in the hall. Wade, up from the basement.

The bed behind her was empty. She hadn’t heard Skye leave. Where was she?

In the spare room, Owen slept on. Cara almost felt grateful on his behalf.

The team comm channel pinged on her phone.

Tom, from his house: I see them. Two. East alley. Moving toward back door. Cameras are tracking. Hold positions and let me watch.

She stepped back from the window an inch so her silhouette wouldn’t draw a glance.

The two men came down the alley, past the dumpster, then the back door of the bookstore, and finally past Diane’s soft-green paint on the alley side of the bakery, the color Diane had insisted on against Cara’s instinct because the alley is somebody’s view too.

They passed the edge of the streetlamp halo and entered the dimmer stretch closer to the bakery. Twenty feet from the back door, they stopped.

One of the men raised a hand to his ear in the small gesture of a person listening to something he hadn’t expected to hear. The other tilted his head a fraction and scanned. Looking for the cameras or the sensors, or whatever it was they had been told to watch for.

The first man pulled out a phone, put it to his ear for ten seconds, and hung up.

Tom: Signal traced to a relay in Portland. Too quick to get the endpoint in real time.

Wade: Either they made one of our cameras or they have a way of reading our alarm field.

Gabe slipped into her room, Skye a beat behind him with a kitchen knife held low against her thigh.

Cara's relief landed first — Skye was here, safe.

Then worry landed. She recognized the knife. It was the boning knife from her own block by the stove. Skye had been in Cara's kitchen at some point in the night, taking the time to grab a weapon.

And Skye had been up before the alarm pinged. Already prowling. Already with a knife.

She didn't get up because of the alert. She was already up.

A chill skittered up the back of Cara's neck.

"Front's clear," Skye said. "I'd have known if a second team came in that way."

Cara wanted to ask how long she’d been awake, but something stopped her.

"Eyes still on them?" Gabe asked her.

She nodded without looking away. The men in the alley conferred for thirty more seconds, then they headed back the way they had come.

Tom: Tracking. They're in the marina parking lot. Black SUV.

Cara let the curtain fall.

Pressed a hand to the small of her back for the length of a breath.

“Basement,” he said. “Now.”

She nodded.

Skye jerked her head toward the other bedroom. “We should let him sleep.”

“Agreed.” Cara eyed the knife.

“This is nice quality,” Skye said, holding up the blade. “I’ll put it back now.”