Page 83 of Crosscurrent

Owen shook his head numbly. Gabe could see the man doing the arithmetic behind his glasses, getting to the place where he understood that the plan didn't just require a body. They’d have to sell this. Hard.

And Owen Harney, Medieval Studies Chair at St. Alwyn University, wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. There’d be an obituary. A colleague at work appointed to his job. Every door he'd ever walked through quietly bricked over. For a rising scholar, it would be a particular cruelty.

He was taking this better than Gabe would have.

Nobody had to draw the map. They'd all read the same briefing flying in — water cold enough to stop a heart in seconds, a coast where the current took what it wanted and gave nothing back, and a village surrounded by massive apex predators. A man who went into that sea in the wrong hour wasn't a mystery anyone would work.

No body. No contradiction. The same geography that had them trapped would do the lying for them.

"It has to read as Owen," Skye said. "His build, his coat, at distance, in this light.

“And they need to survive underwater long enough for a secret rescue,” Wade added. “We’re selling this to people who watch men die for a living."

Skye’s eyes fluttered open. "Only one of us can do all three."

Gabe knew the answer before she finished. He'd known it, he understood now, since the word disappear left Cara's mouth. He just needed it to not be true for one more second.

"Me," Cara said.

"No." It was out of him before he'd decided to let it be.

She turned to face him. There was no fight in her face, which was worse than if there had been. "Who else, Gabe? Owen doesn’t have the skills. Skye's bleeding. Wade couldn't pass for Owen in a blizzard."

She smiled gently. "Being someone else long enough to walk away clean is the one thing I'm better at than anyone alive."

That, he truly hated. He had no badge now, no jurisdiction, no warrant, and no better idea. Every argument he reached for, she'd already shut the door behind.

I have spent this entire year keeping you breathing, he didn't say. Don't ask me to be the one who hands you to the cold.

"We build in every margin," he said instead. "Every single one."

"Every one," she agreed.

That was as close to winning as he was going to get.

They worked it for an hour. Once she had Skye’s wound cleaned and bandaged, Reagan walked them through the cold-water timing, how long a person could be submerged and make it out alive. Skye laid out the rest from the table: the staging, the timing, the extraction, Owen stashed and breathing somewhere far from all of it. And the things that lived past the last streetlight. Flare first, she said. Always the signal pistol first; the rifle was a last resort.

Later, after Skye had finally fallen asleep, Owen folded into a chair while Tom and Reagan and Wade explained exactly what erasing his past existence actually meant.

Cara slipped out into the cold. Gabe followed.

The perpetual golden twilight bathed the hard-looking cabins, spreading across the snow fields without softening a thing.

She stood in it with her arms crossed and didn't look at him. "I texted my handler. Days ago. Before any of this."

He waited. With Cara you waited.

"I asked him if there might be a version of me that comes out the other side of all this. A version that doesn’t have to hide anymore." She breathed out. "I haven't heard back. Might not. I have no idea when, or whether⁠—"

"You texted him," Gabe repeated.

She looked over.

Something warm and foolish climbed up through his chest. He let it come. "You spent the last year, at least, making sure nobody on earth could find one true thing about you. And then you reached out. On purpose." He couldn't keep the smile off his face. "You opened the door. I don't care that nobody's walked through yet. You opened it."

She blew out a breath and slapped her hands against her thighs. "It's one text."

"It's the first one." He didn't push past that. She'd open it when she was ready, or she wouldn't. Pushing only set her back.