"Important enough."Nadine's mouth pressed flat, the way it did when she was choosing not to say something."Donates to everything.Sits on every board.The kind of man who gets his name on buildings."
"You don't sound impressed."
"I've been pouring drinks for thirty years.I'm not impressed by much anymore."
Harper finished her club soda and left cash on the bar."Thanks for the conversation."
"Anytime, honey.You be careful with that book of yours."
Harper paused."Why do you say that?"
Nadine met her eyes.The professional warmth was gone.What was left underneath looked a lot like a warning.
"Because the last writer who came through here asking questions left in a hurry."She picked up Harper's empty glass."Never did finish that book."
Harper walked backto The Sandbar as the sun dropped toward the water.
Harrison Montgomery.The name echoed in her head, syncing with her footsteps.
She had three names on her list.Three possibilities.She had researched them all from a distance, built profiles from public records, news archives, and the digital breadcrumbs people left without realizing.
Montgomery was one of them.
And now he had looked at her.Held her gaze just a beat too long.Like he was filing her face away for later.
Could be nothing.Could be a wealthy man noticing an unfamiliar woman, the kind of casual appraisal that meant nothing and happened everywhere.
Could be something else entirely.
She reached her bungalow and checked the locks, the windows, and the thread across the closet door.Everything undisturbed.Everything exactly as she had left it.
Four hours until she met Caleb.
She pulled out her laptop and opened her file on Harrison Montgomery.Read through the connections she had mapped, the patterns she had traced.Donations to journalism initiatives.Seats on media boards.A philanthropic empire built on controlling what people knew and how they knew it.
Isak had been close to a name.A name at the top.
Harper stared at the screen until her eyes burned.
Then she closed the laptop, lay back on the bed, and listened to the surf until the sun finished setting and the room went dark around her.
At quarter to nine, she slipped out the back door and walked toward the beach.
Chapter 3
The beach behind Sarge's Sandbar wasn't much to look at.
A narrow strip of sand hemmed in by sea grape bushes and dark water.No lights except the moon.No sound except the waves and the distant thump of bass from the bar.
Caleb found a spot where the shadows were deepest and waited.
He'd spent the afternoon going through Harper's research.Every file, every connection, every thread she'd been pulling for fourteen months.The woman was meticulous.She'd mapped connections Shadow Ops hadn't found, cultivated sources they couldn't reach.
She was also reckless.The risks she'd taken to gather this—any one of them could have gotten her killed.That she was still breathing said more about her instincts than her luck.
His phone vibrated.Ronan.
Update?
