"I know."
"Do you have somewhere safe to stay?"
"Yes."
"Not the bungalow."
"Not the bungalow."
He pulled up in front of Mae's Bakery.Harper reached for the door handle.
"Harper."
She turned.
"Whatever you're chasing—you need to decide if it's worth what it's going to cost."
She held his gaze."Someone already paid the price for this story.A colleague of mine.He died for it.So yes.It's worth what it costs."
Mitch watched her for a moment.Whatever he saw seemed to settle something for him.
"I'm on call," he said."Day or night."
"Thank you."
She got out and walked into the bakery.Ordered a coffee she didn't want.Sat by the window where she could watch the street and pulled out her phone.
Her thumb hovered over Caleb's number.She could see him in her mind—the way he'd looked at her last night in the safe house kitchen, his hand stopping just short of hers across the table.The deliberate gap between his fingers and hers said everything he wouldn't.
She typed instead of calling.
Brake lines cut.Professional job.I'm at Mae's.Sid has the car.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Are you hurt?
No.Found it before I drove anywhere.
Stay there.I'm coming.
No.Meet me at the house in one hour.I have the security footage.
A pause.Then:
Harper.
Just her name.No punctuation, no follow-up.She could hear his voice in it—the tight control, the thing underneath he wouldn't let through.
One hour.I'll be careful.
She pocketed the phone before he could argue and opened the security footage on her laptop.The dark sedan.The baseball cap.The four-minute window.She played it three times, looking for anything she'd missed—a logo on the jacket, a visible plate number, a distinguishing mark.
Nothing.They were careful.But everyone made mistakes, and she had forty-five minutes to find theirs.
She pulled up the photos she'd taken of the cut brake lines and zoomed in on the tool marks.The cuts were angled slightly upward, left to right.Right-handed, like Sid said.The spacing between the two cuts was precise—less than an inch.Not rushed.Not improvised.
Harper opened a new document on her laptop and started typing.Time, method, evidence.The security footage.Sid's assessment.The sedan's entry and exit pattern.She'd been building cases from evidence for eleven years, and the mechanics of it steadied her the way nothing else could.
