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"Who else has been on this lot?" I asked.

Renzo stood up slowly. "According to the site log? Nobody." He looked back at the flags, then at the tree line, then back at me. "The permit application for the Planter house goes in Monday."

I stood up. "If someone pulls those plans and the flagged field location doesn't match the submitted septic design⁠—"

"They'll kill the permit," Renzo said. "Or trigger a full review. Which takes⁠—"

"Weeks. Minimum." I looked at the flags again. Twenty-two feet. Wrong angle. Wrong location. Freshly placed. "This isn't a survey error."

Renzo's jaw was set. "No. It's not."

I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures. Methodically. Every flag from every angle, with the rear foundation stake in frame for reference. Renzo did the same on his tablet.

"We need to call Harvey," I said.

Renzo nodded. He was already dialing.

He put the phone to his ear and looked across the lot at the flags—those small, cheerful orange flags that someone had placed in the wrong ground, on purpose, in the dark, while nobody was watching.

It might not seem like a big deal, but a setback like this could be thousands of dollars in permitting, and legitimately twenty to thirty thousand dollars in lost time. It was too methodical to be done by some kid. This was done by someone who knew the business. Someone who was out to get us.

I pulled out my phone and called Code Drakos.

Chapter Nineteen

Four days.

Not that I was counting or anything. That would be pathetic, and I was definitely not pathetic. I was a grown woman who owned her own business, sourced goods from over seventeen different artisans across three counties, and had, on one very memorable occasion, given birth to a baby in a snowstorm.

I was not the kind of woman who counted days.

Except for the fact that it had been four days since Adam Beckett kissed me on my porch and replaced red for blue as my favorite color, and today was the first day he hadn't called.

I shifted my grip on Polly's bags and resisted the urge to check my phone again as I walked out of her restaurant and into her parking lot. Then I resisted checking for missed calls when I was at the stop light on Alder. But at the stop sign on Foxglove, I peeked, and still nothing.

Fine.

Totally fine. Normal even. Who called somebody every single day? That was a lot. Everyday was borderline excessive. I certainly hadn’t asked for daily calls. Hadn’t required them.

No. Stupid me, I had merely, apparently, become accustomed to them without noticing. I was an idiot.

The sensible thing, obviously, was to call him myself.

I was going to do exactly that. Right after I got back to the shop and distributed lunch, because I sure as hell didn’t need Ernie listening in.

I turned onto Main Street and started looking for a parking spot, which in Jasper Creek on a Thursday was either a total non-issue or an extended exercise in patience, depending entirely on whether the garden club was meeting anywhere nearby.

And then.

Right in front of Gathered. Front-row, parallel-park-free, gift-from-the-universe parking.

I didn't even hesitate. You do not pass up a parking space like that. It's a rule. Possibly a law.

I eased in, cut the engine, and climbed out, hooking Polly's bags over both wrists and shouldering my purse.

I started up the sidewalk toward the shop, and I'll admit I got a little distracted, the way I always did when I was coming at the storefront from this angle. The sign over the door caught afternoon light differently depending on the season, and right now, in the particular gold-tinted way April moved through Tennessee, it looked excellent. The logo had clean lines—one connected image that somehow managed to say handmade and curated and you can trust what's inside here all at once, without saying any of those words. I'd gone through six versions with the designer before we landed on this one, and every time I saw it, I felt the same small, satisfied click of yes, that.

Polly's bags were fine. Their logo was cheerful. Mine was better.