Page 98 of Crosscurrent

"Diane and Piper stay here." Gabe said it to the room, but he was watching Piper, whose mouth had already opened. "Haven Cove is the one place this isn't happening. That only stays true if you two are boringly, visibly home. Whitfield's perimeter, normal lights, normal hours, no solo errands."

Piper closed her mouth. Then: "So I'm benched."

"You're the reason there's a safe place to come back to," Diane said — and that, somehow, landed where an order wouldn't have.

On the windowsill, Agent opened one eye, judged the entire operation, and went back to sleep. He had never been benched in his life and did not intend to start.

They flew out of Hillsboro as the sun cleared the Cascades. Nomad met them on the apron, engines already turning, a thermos under one arm and no questions on his face. He watched the seven of them file up the stairs and said, "Somebody owes me a gator by Friday, or this trip's a loss."

"Working on it," Wade said.

In the air, the plan took its last coats of paint. Cara walked through Ray’s code sequence with Skye several more times. Tom built the comms tree for the camp. Reagan inventoried the orange bag against whatever a forgotten woman might need.

Nomad flew. "That cabin you rented," he offered, somewhere over Texas. "Stilts, water on three sides, one dock, right? Good ground if you're holding it. Bad ground if you're caught in it."

"We're not getting caught in it," Gabe said.

Nomad nodded. "I'll keep the bird hot the whole time. Anybody needs out of that swamp in a hurry, I'm the ride."

They came down on a crop strip an hour past nowhere, picked up the private rental SUV a quarter mile down the road and drove the rest of the way into the heart of the Bayou. The cabin was exactly what Nomad had called it, a stilted box over black water, herons stalking the shallows, and air thick enough to drink. Tom had comms live in twenty minutes. Owen claimed a wobbly card table and Ray’s files and disappeared into the sequencing. Still moving slowly, Skye walked the dock and the sightlines with Wade.

By the time the truck was loaded for Bennion's, the witness board read fifty-two. All confirmed moved or moving. One flag left. Suzette Bennion, ten miles down the only road, with the second-worst people in the world on their way and the worst not far behind.

"Hourly checks," Skye said from the dock. "Both directions."

"Both directions," Gabe said, and started the SUV.

42

The cabin stood on its stilts over black water, cypress close on every side, the dock below ticking in the late afternoon heat. Herons worked the shallows. The light was already fading.

So now, it was a plan. Cara, Gabe, Wade, and Reagan would make the run to Bennion's door.

"Then I'm the one Bennion needs to see," Skye started.

"You're not, actually." Cara didn't soften it. "You're a couple days off a bullet and nowhere near as recovered as you're playing it. Besides, Tom’s amazing at what he does, but Owen needs a shield who shoots like you. That's not the small job, Skye. It's the one that matters."

Skye held her eyes a moment, then set the rifle down. "I hate that you’re making sense." She swiped a lock of thick blonde hair out of her eyes and turned her attention to Gabe. “So who’s this contact of yours again? You’re sure Neptune hasn’t turned him? I’d hate to have to disappear a federal agent. Way too much trouble.”

"Cole Thibodeaux," Gabe said. “He’s not Bureau. Not anymore. And yes, I trust him. He and I made it through four years and one very bad night in the Bureau together. Cole’s a lot smarter than me. He left way before I did. Went home to a parish in Northern Louisiana. He’s a sheriff now. I trust him with my life. More importantly, I trust him with all of yours.”

That short speech seemed to mollify Skye. It certainly made Cara feel better.

Gabe checked his watch. "He and his people should be in position in the next ten minutes or so. We can roll any time.”

"Not the Bureau," Skye persisted. "Not Barrett's people."

"We don't know what Barrett is yet, and Neptune's got plants in the Bureau and the Marshals both." Cara answered this time. "Cole's out of all of it. Not a channel. A man Gabe trusts."

Cole had answered Gabe’s text inside a minute. Tell me where and when, brother.

After one final handgun check, Wade rose. “How about we get this party started?”

After one last check of the comms, they rolled out as the light went copper over the marsh.

The road was a raised ribbon of crushed oyster shell, water on both sides and water everywhere beyond it, black and dead still, the color of steeped tea, broken only by the knees of cypress and the slow V-wake of something Cara decided not to look at. Spanish moss hung off the live oaks in gray rags. The air came through the windows thick enough to chew, brine and mud and diesel and green rot, and under all of it the drone of insects that never once stopped, a sound so constant it passed for silence.

Petit Marais came up two miles on, low and half-drowned. A shuttered bait shop on pilings. A clapboard church with the paint blistered off its boards and a hand-lettered sign promising boudin and live bait. Shrimp boats rusting at a dock the Gulf was reclaiming an inch at a time, nets hung up to dry and never taken down. A town the water was politely, patiently taking back, everyone in it pretending otherwise.