Page 77 of Crosscurrent

The walk over had rearranged Gabe's sense of the place. The cold scrubbed his lungs clean and made his back teeth ache. The air tasted of stone and seawater with a faint thread of coal smoke underneath. Everywhere he looked he found the same problem.

Light.

Not sunlight exactly. Presence. The sky glowed from every direction at once, washing shadows out of existence. No concealment under parked snowmobiles. No concealment between buildings. No concealment in alleyways.

His protection brain kept writing the same note. Nobody could approach Owen unseen. Unfortunately, the same applied to them. Getting the drop on their enemies would be equally difficult when the time came.

Inside, the breakfast room smelled of coffee and smoked fish and cardamom pastry and wet wool. Four languages overlapped continuously, agreeing about nothing.

"Radio check," Tom said in his ear.

One by one the team counted off.

Cara came last. "Guesthouse is up."

Three words. Level. Warm. He hadn't realized he was listening for them.

The flight in had been exceedingly cordial, each of them retreating into a tired silence as they soaked in the rarified private jet atmosphere. They still hadn't talked about the truck. Apparently they were handling that by being aggressively professional. Gabe took a sip of coffee and pretended that worked.

The guesthouse channel kept a low argument running beneath the operation.

Not about whether or not they should unlock the witness list. Everybody agreed on that. The question was what happened after. How did they make the list useless for Neptune, but keep the people on it protected?

“We hand it to the US Marshals,” Reagan said. “Immediately.”

Cara disagreed just as fast. “Which Marshals? The ones in Neptune’s pocket?”

The channel went quiet for a beat.

Reagan exhaled. “Okay, that’s fair. Federal Witness Security then.”

“Same deal. We don’t know who’s compromised,” Cara said. “The whole reason we’re here is because Neptune keeps showing up in places they shouldn’t.”

Tom dove in. “We don’t need to release the names to any agency,” he said. “What if we send alerts? Threat assessments? Something anonymous.”

A few seconds of silence followed.

“Never mind,” he said. “That falls apart in at least four different ways.”

Just like all their other ideas. Somewhere on the other side of Owen’s cipher sat a list of people who’d spent years staying alive by remaining invisible. Ray Harney had been protecting them with his life.

If they unlocked it, they’d have to decide who to trust with it. Gabe wasn’t sure that answer existed yet.

Meanwhile, the press unit worked. Sophie appeared beside Gabe carrying coffee and a notebook full of names.

"How many people have you talked to?" he asked.

"Twenty-seven."

Gabe stared. "We’ve only been here half an hour."

“Forty-five minutes,” she corrected, looking genuinely surprised by the question. "I know how to move an interview along."

Across the room David raised his camera to his eye and tripped the shutter.

“Got ‘em,” Tom responded immediately. “Putting them through facial recog now.”

By nine o'clock Tom possessed a face-and-name roster of the Nordhavn Colloquium with highly specific details about every attendee David photographed. Gabe’s only qualm was that his baby bro was enjoying this way too much.