Page 9 of Undertow

Cara watched through the rain as Tom leaned across to push the passenger door open, saw Piper climb in, heard the muffled sound of her voice already talking at full speed before the door closed.

The truck pulled away, leaving the entire street empty.

Cara exhaled.

She turned off the front display lights, leaving only the kitchen overheads casting a warm glow through the pass-through window. The bakery was quiet — that quiet that settled into old buildings after hours. She started wiping down the counter, moving on autopilot through the closing routine she could do blindfolded.

“Well, Agent,” she said to the mudroom. “It’s just you and me. Try not to judge the state of my love life.”

From somewhere behind the flour sacks, a single dignified purr.

She was halfway through prepping Diane’s station for the morning — measuring flour into labeled containers, setting out the butter to soften overnight — when she heard it.

A knock on the front door. Firm. Three raps.

Cara’s head came up instantly.

Through the rain-streaked glass, she could see a man on the sidewalk. Early thirties. Dark hair, well-cut. Overcoat that looked expensive even in the rain. He stood with his hands visible — not in his pockets, not behind his back. Visible. Like someone who understood that a woman alone in a closed shop needed to see his hands before she’d open the door.

Every instinct Cara had built in a lifetime of reading people — marks, partners, threats — was already running. The knock had been spaced evenly. Deliberate. Not the knock of someone who’d forgotten something, and not the knock of someone testing whether the bakery was still open. He’d been watching. Waiting for the others to leave.

That, and the hands — the careful visibility of them — told her two things: he was either considerate or practiced.

She didn’t unlock the door. She spoke through the glass. “We’re closed.”

“I know.” His voice was clipped, tight, like he was holding something together by force of will. “I’m not here for pastries. I’m looking for — “ He paused, regrouped. “Someone told me the people at the bakery helped with a situation last fall. That you help people.”

Cara studied him through the rain-streaked glass. His jaw was set, but not with aggression — with the effort of keeping it together. His eyes were red-rimmed, though she couldn’t tell if that was exhaustion or something worse. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days and was running on whatever came after adrenaline.

She knew that look. She’d worn it herself. Though she’d worn it for different reasons, and the memory of those reasons kept her hand off the lock.

“Who sent you here?”

He hesitated. “A woman in town. She said her niece had a problem last year — some kind of dispute — and the people at the bakery sorted it out. She didn’t give me names. Just said to come here.” He paused. “My name’s Derek Voss. My girlfriend’s missing.”

Maya Reyes’s aunt. Cara filed that away. Word was getting out — which was both gratifying and dangerous.

She looked at Derek Voss standing in the rain and made a decision. Not about whether to help him — she didn’t have nearly enough information for that. But about where to have this conversation.

Not here. Not in her bakery, alone, after hours, with a stranger whose story she hadn’t verified and whose desperation could mean anything.

“There’s a diner two blocks east. Saltwater Grill. I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”

Something shifted in his expression — relief, maybe, or just the recognition that she was taking him seriously enough to name a place. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

Derek turned and walked east, shoulders hunched against the rain, his stride purposeful. Cara locked the bakery’s back door, checked the mudroom — Agent hadn’t moved — and pulled out her phone.

Cara texted Reagan.

Hey — a man just showed up at the bakery. Could be a potential client. Could be trouble. Okay if I bring him to you at the Grill?

Reagan: He’s probably both. My kind of adventure. Come on over.

A smile tugged at Cara’s mouth. Reagan always could cut to it.

She pulled on her jacket, locked the front door, and walked two blocks through the January rain to the Grill, trying to tamp down the giddy sense of excitement growing in her belly. A new case. Just what she needed to keep her mind off her not-possible-future with one seriously handsome interim chief of police.