Page 52 of Crosscurrent

Sophie nodded. “There was a man. He had a — I don’t know.” She paused, thinking. “A different quality. The kind you notice and then talk yourself out of noticing.”

“Mid-thirties,” David said. “Dark jacket. Asked for a ground-floor room facing the parking lot.” He frowned. “Who does that?”

“Exactly,” Cara agreed. “Just the fact that he pinged something in you two makes this worth looking into.”

“Agreed.” Gabe tamped down on the spurt of fear twisting his guts. Had he just led his brother back into another threat scenario? He should have cancelled the visit, insisted David and Sophie stay in Seattle.

As if reading Gabe’s mind, David leaned in enough to meet his gaze. “I’m a grown up, dude. I go where I want.”

Skye picked up her mug and stood. “I need chamomile for this. Anybody else?”

When no one took her up on her offer, she climbed the stairs. “Don’t decide on anything dangerous until I get back.”

She trod silently up the stairs.

The team kept talking. Tom walked David through the activation signal’s architecture. Sophie pulled up the account structure on her laptop. Wade noted two timestamps Skye had flagged in the folder.

Gabe kept his eyes on the stairs and said nothing.

After ten minutes, it was Cara who said it. “She’s not coming back.”

Gabe was already on his feet.

He checked the kitchen. Empty. The bakery floor. Empty. His phone showed no perimeter alert — Tom’s exterior alarm was intact, nothing had tripped it. He pushed through to the alley door at the back, the one Skye had bypassed that first day, when she joined them, had carefully re-armed.

The dead bolt was turned. Impossible for most people, but this was Skye they were talking about.

He twisted the lock and pushed the door open into the cool evening air. The alley ran empty in both directions. A faint salt edge off the water. No footsteps. No sound.

She’d known the override. Of course she had.

He stood there a moment. Diego Ortiz. Ground-floor room facing the parking lot.

He went back inside. The team was watching him at the bottom of the stairs.

“She’s gone,” he said.

19

Skye had run — Cara knew it before Gabe came back into the room.

Not because she was psychic, and not because she’d somehow unlocked all the mysteries of Skye Reeves after a couple days of living on top of each other, and one accidental three a.m. conversation about survival strategies neither of them had acknowledged since.

She knew because she recognized the mechanics of the exit: the controlled pace up the stairs, the coffee mug Skye had carried despite barely drinking coffee, the deliberate lack of urgency. No sudden movement. No tension. Nothing that triggered instinctive pursuit.

It was a clean disengagement. Professional-level disappearing. Cara had executed versions of that exact move in bus stations, casinos, airports, church lobbies, and once during a charity gala in Phoenix while wearing six-inch heels and a borrowed diamond bracelet she technically still regretted. You learned certain things when survival depended on leaving before anyone realized you’d made the decision to go.

“She went after him,” Reagan said.

Tom frowned at his monitor. “We don’t know that.”

“Tom.” Reagan looked at him patiently. “She went after him.”

Tom stared at the screen another second before exhaling through his nose. “Okay, yes. She absolutely went after him.”

Cara almost smiled.

David had mentioned Diego Ortiz checking into the Haven Cove Inn ahead of them—ground-floor room facing the parking lot. Not visibly react. Skye didn’t seem wired for dramatic reactions, but she’d gone still after hearing the room number. Attention sharpening. Focus narrowing. Internal calculations beginning at machine speed.