Juniper let her shoulders drop and made herself sound tired. That didn’t take much acting. “Hey Bea.”
“You look like shit.”
“It's not easy running a bar and keeping tabs on a guy like Sterling.” She leaned back in the chair, and the old thing tilted to the left like it always did. She'd come to like it, but today, it didn't offer much comfort.
“You sound rattled.”
“I am.” She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the desk. There was a notch in the wood near the corner, probably from the previous owner, maybe from a knife. She’d found it the first time she realized she had feelings for Sterling, which was about two weeks after his arrival in Calusa Cove. It wasn't so much her feelings for him that had made her want to find comfort in the wood on her desk, but more the fact that she had to lie to a friend.
Realizing that Bea most likely had never been her confidant rattled her more than that damn gator had. “Nick Colter showed up in town last night.”
“Randomly?” Bea asked.
“That’s how it looks. He says he’s here for Dove and Trent’s wedding, but it's the first I'm hearing of Dove and Nick knowing each other.”
“Nick and Sterling are close, so if he were to see him, no big deal, but I'll need to look into Dove,” Bea said. "It’s possible. She did run a few JSOC missions, and her uncle was a well-known Marshall."
“Nick does have a reputation for knowing everyone.” Juniper kept her gaze on Pike's name. “Thing is, Nick and Sterling have been talking, and I overheard a few things that made me uncomfortable.”
“About?”
“Shrike.”
“I'm listening," Bea said.
“I've only got pieces,” Juniper said. “Either things we already know, or things that don't make sense.”
"Okay, what doesn't make sense."
"A name," Juniper said. "Pike. Logan Pike. You know, the DEA agent that survived the raid when Mark was killed."
"I remember him."
"What I got from Sterling and Nick was that they believe he was part of the reason the raid failed. That he's involved with Shrike."
"Oh, honey. That's impossible."
Juniper’s fingers tightened around the edge of the desk. Bea had called her honey plenty of times over the years. In hospitals. In conference rooms. Once in a parking garage after Juniper had thrown up behind a government SUV, because a case had gone bad, and the smell of burned plastic had dragged her backward into grief she thought she’d locked down.
“I don't believe so,” Juniper said. “And I need you to look into him.”
“That won't be necessary.”
"The man you sent me to watch over and protect believes this man could be part of an organization that wants what's stored in his mind,” Juniper tossed out there. "Not to mention, Pike could be involved in Mark's death. I think that's a good reason to dig."
“No,” Bea insisted. “Pike’s one of ours.”
Juniper gasped. It wasn't fake. Or for show. It was fucking real. “One of ours? How do you know that?”
“Because he’s under my command.”
Juniper struggled to believe the woman staring back at her from her laptop. The same woman who had held her up at Mark's funeral. And then a few years later, sent her to this location to watch a man tangled up in the same organization that had killed her husband.
“You have Logan Pike under your command,” she said. “And you never thought to mention that?”
“It wasn’t relevant to your assignment.”
“The fuck it wasn't.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
