Page 8 of Crosscurrent

“It’s been three weeks since the Vancouver job,” Wade said.

“Nope.” Gabe shook his head. “We're not poaching this.”

Cara sighed now. “We're bored, Gabe.”

He drank some of the espresso. “Vega’s smart. She’s just covering her bases by asking the Old Dog to take a look. She doesn’t need our help.”

Wade was sitting on the floor by the stairs with his back to the cinder block. “She's smart,” he said.

Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. “She is. She's also short-handed. Three officers, a desk sergeant, and a coroner who works two days a week. If this body is what I think it is, she's about twenty-four hours from realizing she's under resourced for it.”

“And then she calls you officially,” Cara said.

“That’s my bet,” Wade said.

“Are we really waiting twenty-four hours when we could get a jump on this?” Tom asked, not looking up from the screen.

Tom had asked the question without attitude — just the question — but it carried what Tom-the-Army-cryptographer used to carry into every operational discussion he had ever been in. We should be moving. Why are we not moving?

“Suppose I could get a photo of the body,” Tom said.

Gabe took another sip of the espresso. “No need.”

“The Coast Guard rescue swimmers wear body cams,” Tom continued as if Gabe hadn’t spoken. “Their incident report system isn't hardened to FBI standards. I can pull this morning's footage from the Coast Guard's logs and have a face inside an hour. Twenty minutes after that, missing-persons match. We’ll have a name by dinnertime.”

Gabe glared at him. “And when the Coast Guard logs an access from this basement and shares it with HCPD next week?”

“I route it. No one will know.”

“Tom.”

“I can route it.” Tom turned in his chair. He was not smiling. “I shouldn't. But I can.”

“And what does that buy us?”

“It buys us a name.”

“That we can't do anything with, because we got it the wrong way, and if we move on it, Vega knows inside twenty-four hours. And the second she knows, Ellie is the one she comes for. Not me. Ellie.” No way he’d shove Ellie Torres under the bus. Ellie was young and ambitious, the best detective on the tiny Haven Cove force by a mile. And Vega knew Ellie and Gabe had been close. She’d suspect Ellie of leaking the victim’s image, and there’d be no way for Ellie to prove her wrong. Not happening.

Tom's jaw worked.

Reagan set her pen down. She had been making the same small note in three different colors of ink. “Gabe is right.”

“Why?” Tom asked.

“Because if you and I were Vega, working three weeks into a job where the previous chief of twenty years turned out to be a criminal, and the guy after that lasted a couple months.” She turned to Gabe. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

She smiled and continued. “And we asked our nearest experienced investigator for a fresh set of eyes, and that investigator's basement started identifying our victim before our coroner did — what would you do?”

Tom looked at Reagan.

She rolled her eyes. “Hello? You'd shut us down. And you’d never collaborate with us again. You really want to burn that source over a non-case?”

The room was quiet for a long beat.

“I'd run the face,” Wade said from the floor by the cinder block.