“No!” Penny said straight away. “That is not Darius’s way. He truly likes Linda.”
"Then why is he meeting Baxter?" Isabel asked.
"I want to believe it’s because Baxter has arrived with a weapon aimed at people Darius has started to care about," Penny said quietly, "and your brother has always dealt with threats by walking toward them."
Isabel held her eyes as a movement at a far table caught her eye. A tall man in jeans and a worn navy t-shirt stood up and put a canvas bag over one shoulder, then folded a newspaper under his arm. Isabel recognized him after a moment. Sheremembered his name as Owen Reed, from the Bay Café. She'd met him briefly at the festival Linda had taken them to when they’d first arrived in Sweet Blossom Bay. She remembered him for how strikingly handsome he was and for the way his eyes brimmed with intelligence. He was a man who, without so much as glancing around, knew exactly what or who surrounded him. His head turned for a brief instant, and their eyes met. He gave her a brief nod of acknowledgment. To Isabel’s mortification, heat crept up her cheeks. She nodded back and quickly looked away, even more embarrassed for being caught staring at him.
But her embarrassment was quickly replaced when Baxter and a tall, poised woman in a designer suit, high heels that cost more than most people made in a month, and eyes that scanned the room and dismissed everyone in it as beneath her.
Isabel sucked in her breath. She knew that type. Had grown up with that type of woman who was a complete snob. Isabel and Penny shrank back in the booth, making themselves as invisible as possible. Before Darius could look around the diner, the server Pete had assigned to Darius and his guests approached them. She’d seen the photos Isabel and Penny had shown her. The server was about to lead them to the designated booth when they heard Baxter tell her that they were still waiting for one more person in their party. The server nodded politely and moved again to take them to their booth.
"Wow," Penny said, very quietly. "That woman is not Baxter’s usual type."
"No," Isabel agreed, studying the woman. "She's more put together than his usual choices." She watched the woman stand haughtily.
Before they could say anything, Owen had finished paying for his meal. He was checking his phone and hadn’t even noticed the couple, stepping into their path.
“Excuse me,” Owen said, lifting his head and freezing. His shoulder stiffened, and his eyes went glacial when they narrowed in on the woman with Baxter.
The woman saw him at the same moment, and her surprise was very different from Owens'. Her eyes widened, and her face fell at the instant recognition. Surprise and shock registered on her previously stony features.
Something crossed her face, too quickly for Isabel to decipher, before a warm sugary smile lifted her lips.
"Owen," she breathed, and her voice was a soft, warm purr, carefully calibrated to sound effortless. "What a wonderful surprise."
Owen didn’t look at all happy to see her and briefly glanced at Baxter, instantly dismissing him before looking back at the woman. His expression gave nothing away.
"Dr. Wineberg," he said, and his voice was empty of warmth or any emotion.
The woman opened her mouth. But before the words came out, Owen turned and waved to Pete before stepping around them and leaving without another word or backward glance.
Baxter and the woman they now knew was Dr. Wineberg turned to watch him go, looking slightly taken aback.
“What was that?” Baxter turned to Dr. Wineberg. “He was very rude.”
“Just an old…” Dr. Wineberg glanced back at the door, and Isabel noticed something shift in the woman’s eyes. “Colleague.”
Isabel looked at Penny with raised brows.
"That wasn't rude," Penny said, very quietly.
"No," Isabel agreed, watching the front door where Owen had been a moment ago. "That was something else entirely and more like disgusted indifference."
A few minutes after Darius and Dr. Wineberg were seated, the diner door opened once again, and this time Darius stepped in. Peter gave a quick glance toward Penny and Isabel, who once again shrank back out of view, before he walked over to Darius, who informed Pete he was meeting people. Pete led him toward the table where Darius and Dr. Wineberg were seated.
“Looks like the show’s about to begin,” Penny stated.
Isabel picked up her iced tea, nodded, and settled in to listen.
OWEN
The fluorescent lighting inside the diner had left a stale, metallic taste in Owen Reed’s mouth, but it was the sudden ghost from his past that made his blood run completely cold. He pushed through the glass door, the heavy Florida heat hitting him like a physical wall the moment he stepped onto the pavement.
It had only been forty-eight hours since Linda discovered the incised Calusa shard by the old swimming pool. Two days. The protocol they established was watertight. They had logged the coordinates, secured the physical fragment in the historical society’s safe, and reached out to the one person who could validate the find without alerting the state bureaucracy or the corporate sharks circling the island.
There was no logical way Dr. Debbi Wineberg could know about the find. Yet, there she was, standing beside a man Owen did not recognize, her sharp, predatory posture unchanged after a decade of silence.
Owen looked down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen as he navigated away from his contact list. He washalfway across the sun-baked asphalt of the parking lot when his shoulder clipped a solid, oncoming frame.
