Page 8 of Undertow

He couldn’t make a permanent decision based on a woman who might disappear on him.

Down the block, the bakery windows glowed warm against the wet dark street.

He turned away. “I’ll have an answer for you by the end of the month.”

His friend grunted softly. “That works.”

Only it didn’t. Gabe shoved his phone in his pocket and loped back toward the station. The situation between him and Cara wouldn’t be different two weeks from now.

Or five years on, the way things were going.

3

Cara watched Gabe disappear into the rain.

She stood at the bakery’s front door, hand still on the lock, the warmth of where he’d brushed past her fading from the air between them. Haven Cove’s not a bad place to land. She’d actually said that. Out loud. To a man who could destroy her life with a single database query.

Brilliant, Cara. Really subtle.

She turned the deadbolt and leaned her forehead against the cool glass. Outside, the January dark had swallowed everything except the streetlights and the reflection of her own tired face staring back at her. Somewhere out there, Gabe Sawyer was walking to his truck, probably replaying her words the same way she was replaying them, turning them over for hidden meanings.

The difference was that her hidden meanings were actually hiding something.

“You okay?”

Piper’s voice came from behind the counter, where she was sprawled on the floor with Agent draped across her lap like an orange fur blanket. The cat had been asleep for twenty minutes. Piper had not moved in twenty minutes, because Piper had priorities and a sleeping cat outranked all of them.

“Fine.” Cara pushed off the door. “Just tired.”

“Uh-huh.” Piper scratched behind Agent’s ears, and the cat’s purr ratcheted up to a frequency that probably violated noise ordinances. “You know, for someone who’s ‘just tired,’ you sure spend a lot of time staring out the door after Gabe leaves.”

“I was checking the weather.”

“It’s raining. It’s January. In Oregon. Mystery solved.”

Cara bit back a smile. Piper was sixteen years old, too smart for her own good, and had. She also had the subtlety of a freight train, which meant that every observation about Cara and Gabe came delivered with the delicacy of a sledgehammer.

“Don’t you have homework?”

“Done. Dad’s picking me up in ten.” Piper held up her phone. “He just texted.” She tilted her head, studying Cara with those sharp dark eyes. “You sure you’re okay? You’ve been weird all day. Good weird, but weird.”

“Define good weird.”

“Like... anticipating something. You had that same look before the Blaire thing.” Piper shifted Agent carefully, cradling the cat against her chest as she stood. “Like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

The words landed closer to the truth than Cara liked.

She was waiting. Six months of quiet had made her restless She didn’t fully understand why. She’d built a life here — a bakery, friendships, something that felt almost like belonging — and the normalcy should have been enough. It was what she’d wanted. What she’d dreamed about during twenty-three months in a federal prison cell and the grueling year of undercover work afterwards.

But the team had given her something the bakery couldn’t: purpose that wasn’t just survival. And without a case, without the electric clarity of a problem to solve, the restlessness had nowhere to go except into sourdough that wouldn’t cooperate and conversations with Gabe Sawyer that said too much.

Headlights swept across the front windows. Tom’s truck — a battered gray F-150 that had seen better decades — pulled up to the curb.

“That’s my ride.” Piper deposited Agent onto the flour sack in the mudroom with the tenderness of someone handling a newborn. “Night, Agent. Guard the bakery. No parties.”

Agent yawned, curled into a tighter ball, and dismissed them both.

Piper grabbed her backpack and headed out the door.