The man at the bar hadn't moved. But now Tara was leaning across the bar with her chin in her hand, gaze fixed on Doyle like he was the special of the day.
Those two could have each other.
Juniper caught Tara's eye, tipped her head toward the office, and got a wave-off that meantI've got the floor, go.No argument there. Tara would happily run the bar single-handed if it meant more time in front of Doyle.
Juniper crossed behind the bar, down the short hallway past the dry storage and the ice machine and let herself into the office. The fluorescent tube buzzed to life like an angry mosquito. She shut the door, pulled her laptop from the bottom drawer, and unlocked the encrypted client with the long passphrase she'd painfully memorized.
Passcodes were not her strong suit, but a necessary evil she'd built a system around over the years. Her codes never had anything to do with her, or the job. She made up little songs so she could remember them. A trick her first field partner had taught her, something he'd picked up in high school.
Weird, but it worked.
The screen chimed, and the audio window opened. No visual at the office.
"Solstice." It was still strange to be called that. No one here ever used her last name.
"Strickland."
Beatrice "Bea" Strickland had the tone of a woman who'd spent forty years on the federal payroll and never once raised her voice. Dry, directed, a faint clip of New England under the DC polish that surfaced on certain vowels when she was tired or annoyed. The first time Juniper had met her, Bea had been drinking black coffee from a white mug with a middle finger painted on both sides.
"What've you got?" Bea asked.
"Might be something, might be nothing." Juniper dropped into the chair and let it tilt left, the way it always did no matter how many times she'd tried to fix it. She rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows. "Royce Halloran. Owns Halloran Maritime Group, out of Port Manatee. Literally just heard his name five minutes ago and he's sitting in my bar eating lunch, right now." She watched the ceiling tile shaped like Lake Okeechobee while she talked.
"Why are you flagging him and his company?"
"He wants to hire Sterling. But he came in with the condition of firing a part-time employee," Juniper said. "I just want you to get me as much as you can on Halloran and his company."
"I'll pull what's public and run the rest. I should have something by morning," Bea said. "Anything else? Anything new on Sterling?"
Juniper knew if she didn't give Bea a rundown, Bea would keep asking. "He came in three times this week. Tips like he's apologizing for the stool. Talks boats and gators. Goes home at a reasonable hour. There's no one orbiting him who shouldn't be. There's no one orbiting him at all."
"And if there was?"
"He's as solid as they come. He's not the kind of man who'd turn. The government doesn't have to worry about that."
"Don't think that was ever the worry," Bea said. "Which is why you got so suspicious over this Halloran guy. You think he's after something in Sterling's head."
"I don't know about that. He just has the town on edge," she admitted.
"You've got good instincts. Until we know more, keep your head down, and run your bar," Bea said.
Juniper closed the laptop, slid it back into the drawer, and sat a moment in the flickering fluorescent light. Through the door, she could hear Tara laughing at something, and the low murmur of the lunch crowd. Somewhere under it, the hum of a town that had stopped feeling like an assignment a while ago.
She'd think about that later. Or she wouldn't.
Right now, she had a date to get ready for.
Chapter Three
Sterling pulled his truck into Juniper's gravel drive, killed the engine, and tried to fill his lungs with oxygen, but his heart pounded so hard it got in the way. It was ridiculous for a man of his age to have first-date jitters. He squeezed the wheel hard, released it, and wiggled his fingers.
But it didn't ease the tension.
The bouquet he'd picked up last minute sat on the passenger seat, staring at him as if he'd offended it. He had no idea what kind of flowers they were, other than they were white, purple, and pretty.
Two kids had set up shop on the side of the road out by the marina with a sign in red marker that readFLOWERS FOR THE NEW AUDITORIUMand a cardboard box of mason jars sweating in the late sun. Sterling couldn't say no to that. Besides, this was a date. A real date. And flowers should be part of the equation.
He ran a hand over his mouth. It had been a while since he'd taken anyone out.
