Page 5 of Undertow

"Cara." Piper looked at her with the patience of someone much older and considerably more entertained. "He's running."

Cara untied her apron, retied it, and went to unlock the front door before her not-boyfriend, their seriously hunky police chief had to knock.

2

Cara was already in the doorway when Gabe hit the top step — warm light at her back, cold rain at his, the awning between them doing nothing useful.

She had dark hair and a face that gave little away — except when she laughed, and then you wondered how you’d ever missed it. She looked like a woman who baked things and knew her neighbors’ names. She also moved through a room like someone who’d spent a long time making sure she knew where all the exits were.

Those two things did not add up.

Gabe had trained himself to read people. the scan, the catalog, the assessment. He did it to everyone.

The problem with Cara was that he’d stopped being clinical about it.

The woman who remembered how everybody took their coffee and stayed late to frost a hundred cupcakes for the Hendersons’ anniversary, or the woman whose eyes swept a room— quick, quiet.

He was beginning to think it might be both. He was beginning to think the not-knowing was the whole problem.

“You’re going to let all the warm air out,” he said.

Something shifted in her expression — barely — the faint edge of a smile she was deciding not to give him.

She stepped back to let him in.

The bakery was warm the way only a working kitchen managed: yeast and butter and something with cinnamon that hit him the moment he crossed the threshold. Gabe’s back had been complaining since the harbor call, his jacket was damp through the shoulders, and he had four unread texts from Tyler Price he was actively ignoring. He was also, by any reasonable measure, off duty.

He was here anyway.

The official log for Tuesday read as follows: one noise complaint, Harold Bianchi’s rooster again, resolved by the time Gabe arrived because the rooster had apparently made its feelings known and retreated. One welfare check on Mrs. Sanderson, who had called to report that her neighbor’s new wind chimes were, in her words, a form of psychological warfare. One parking dispute near the harbor that resolved itself before he finished his coffee. Three hours of paperwork on the permanent chief position posting, which he’d opened, read, and minimized on his screen four times without filling out a single field.

The permanent position. He’d been interim chief for months now, and the city council was being politely persistent. Tyler Price had called twice. The paperwork just sat there, cursor blinking. Cement his future.

The last case he’d worked in Philadelphia had been a mole inside the Bureau — three months of surveillance, dead drops, encrypted communications, a man led out in handcuffs in front of his entire team. High stakes. Clear mission. Soul-crushing reminders that even in an institution dedicated to fighting crime, criminals hid.

Haven Cove had a rooster problem.

Cara turned her back. “I’ve got one blueberry scone left. You want it warmed up?”

“Please.” His stomach growled, which answered that. If he was honest, he’d come for the company, but warm scones came in a close second.

From behind the counter came Piper’s voice, mid-conversation. “— and I’m just saying, you could meet them halfway. That’s all I’m asking.”

Gabe looked at Cara. Cara’s expression suggested this had been going on for some time.

Piper stood up from behind the counter holding a cat — damp around the edges, deeply self-satisfied, draped over her forearm like it had lived there for years.

“Chief Sawyer,” Piper said, with the tone of someone who had been hoping for exactly this. “Perfect timing.”

Gabe looked at the cat. The cat looked back with the focused indifference of an animal that had already assessed the situation and found everyone present beneath it.

“Is it,” he said.

“We’re having a debate.” Piper shifted the cat to her other arm. “You can be the tiebreaker.”

Cara shoved a plate in the microwave. “There is no debate,” she said to the espresso machine.

“I’m pro. Cara is —“