Page 63 of Crosscurrent

Tom left the way he always left — a few quiet words, no ceremony attached to any of it. Reagan and Piper went with him, Piper still arguing about the oppressive tyranny of curfews while Reagan pretended not to listen. Owen and Skye disappeared upstairs a few minutes later, still debating whether rayon counted as legitimate cold-weather gear and whether toothpaste tablets were “an elegant minimalist solution” or “a crime against civilization.”

The door at the top of the stairs closed behind them, and the basement dropped one degree quieter.

Not silent. Never silent anymore.

The Rig hummed steadily in the corner. One of the old pipes above the bakery knocked softly as heat cycled through the building. Wade sat in front of the security monitors with his long legs stretched out and his arms folded loosely across his chest, looking almost relaxed if you didn’t know him.

Gabe knew better. Wade at rest was still Wade on overwatch. His eyes tracked constantly: alley camera, Harbor Street, loading dock, marina feed, back again.

Cara stood near the whiteboard end of the table, making notes in the margin of something Tom had printed earlier. Flight windows maybe. Cargo weights. The manifest. Her coffee had gone cold twenty minutes ago and she clearly hadn’t noticed.

He’d been watching her for the last hour. Not obviously. Or maybe obviously. He wasn’t entirely sure anymore.

She’d held the room together all evening without appearing to do it. Piper’s energy. David’s insistence on inserting himself into danger. Owen’s academic panic spiral. Skye pretending she hadn’t nearly gotten herself killed six hours earlier. The Norway decision hanging over all of them like incoming weather.

Cara absorbed the friction of all of it and redistributed the weight so smoothly nobody else seemed fully aware it was happening.

He knew exactly what kind of work that was. He’d been doing versions of it himself for most of his adult life.

The farther this thing went, the harder it became to separate operational thinking from personal instinct. He’d spent the last hour running Norway contingencies through his head while simultaneously tracking whether Skye’s hand was swelling through the bandage, whether Owen would survive Arctic temperatures dressed like a substitute philosophy professor, whether Cara had eaten dinner at all.

Too many moving pieces. Too many people he cared about now in Neptune’s path.

He’d spent years with the Bureau training himself not to think that way. Caring clouded judgment. Attachment created hesitation. Hesitation got people hurt.

Except somewhere along the line Haven Cove had turned into a town full of people he’d apparently burn his life down to protect, and now Neptune wanted to drag all of them onto a glacier at the top of the world.

He looked back at Cara.

Still writing. Still carrying the room. Still pretending the cost of that didn’t exist.

Above them, faintly muted through old bakery beams and several floors, came the sound of Owen objecting passionately to something followed by Skye saying, “Your commitment to avoidable suffering is honestly inspirational.”

Cara smiled despite herself without looking up from the paperwork.

The sight of it hit Gabe unexpectedly hard.

Suddenly, he wanted a piece of that happy Cara for himself. Just a few precious minutes of her undivided attention.

He crossed toward her before he fully decided to do it. “Walk outside with me for a minute.”

She looked up immediately.

He watched her assess the request in real time. Not suspicious exactly. Just careful. Cara evaluated everything before stepping toward it — exits, angles, and emotional terrain.

He expected her to decline. Instead she capped her pen, reached for her jacket, and said, “Okay.”

The alley behind Sugar & Salt ran narrow and quiet. Harbor damp drifted inland off the marina, carrying salt, diesel, cedar pilings, and cold Pacific air. Haven Cove this late at night had layers of silence to it: distant rigging tapping against sailboat masts, the muted pull of tide against the docks, somewhere farther uphill the faint bark of a dog.

No foot traffic. No idling engines. No movement.

They stayed close to the building as they walked. Wade had drilled that into all of them months ago: never silhouette yourself unnecessarily when you already knew hostile surveillance existed.

Neptune absolutely had eyes on the bakery by now.

That was the part Gabe kept circling tonight. Not the flights. Not the cold-weather logistics. Not even the conference itself. Those were solvable problems.

What kept catching in his head was the certainty that Neptune wanted them in Norway. He hated walking into somebody else’s geometry blind.