I don’t answer. I can’t.
He exhales, slow and low, the sound nearly lost in the haze of lo-fi percussion. “What else is different?”
“Everything.” It slips out before I can choose something safer. “Nothing.”
He lets the silence stretch, leaving space between us. He doesn't nudge, doesn't press for more. Just watches me, still and intent, like he's weighing every word I don't say.
“I was afraid of that.”
My breath lodges in my chest, and I force myself to look back out the windshield. To the empty sidewalk and the darkened storefronts and the little pool of light under a flickering streetlamp.
We haven’t really spoken or been this close in years. And yet somehow sitting here in the dark with him feels like muscle memory. Like a song I haven’t heard in forever but still know every beat of.
A man walks down the block, and I mark the time out of pure reflex, even though my brain is barely processing it.
Because Cruz is still watching me. And I can feel it.
My fingertips tingle against the steering wheel, and the hairs on my forearms rise beneath my jacket. Each breath between us seems to crackle with something invisible but unmistakable, like the moment before lightning strikes.
I swallow hard. So much time has passed, and still, I find myself slipping into old gravitational pulls, feeling that unmistakable tug toward the Calloways.
Everything is different now, but somehow it’s all exactly the same. The world shifts around me, the air charged and vibrating with change, but at the core—the very heart of it—it’s untouched, familiar, stubbornly unyielding. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has.
Headlights sweep across the alley two storefronts down.
My spine straightens instantly. Cruz doesn’t move, but I feel him sharpen beside me, all that languid posture tightening beneath the surface the way a cat coils before it pounces.
A white delivery van turns into the alley behind Honeybee Bakery. It’s not the music store, but it’s close enough to be a problem.
“That’s early,” I murmur, leaning forward.
“Or late,” Cruz adds.
We watch as the driver hops out, enters a four-digit code on the keypad by the rear door, and slips inside like he’s done it a thousand times.
I jot down the time. “Not a new guy. He didn’t fumble for the keycode or check a clipboard. So he must be somewhat of a regular.”
“Owner?” Cruz guesses.
“Or someone with keys.” I scan through all the previous recon notes Lola and I made. “Deliveries for Honeybee are normally between four and four-thirty in the morning. We’ve never seen a midnight delivery before.” I tap my pen against the page, my mind turning.
He tilts his head, studying the alley with that quiet precision of his. “So either it’s a monthly late delivery or something went wrong today.”
I nod, sinking my teeth into my cheek. “Right. Or the bakery has an unpredictable schedule.”
“Which is the last thing you want for a job next door.”
A tight exhale escapes me. “Our timeline has to change.”
The job only works if we have the lowest degree of discoverability possible. Beck has some kind of formula he designed that we use, and if our number is above twenty percent, then we reassess the job. This midnight surprise delivery means we need to reassess our timeframe.
Cruz nods, tapping his thumb once against his thigh. “So our window shrinks. We can’t be anywhere near that alley before one.”
“Or after three-thirty,” I finish.
He glances sideways at me, lips curving. “Look at us. A well-oiled machine.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s weak, because he’s not wrong. The deduction happened fast and clean, like we’ve been doing this together for years instead of for the first time in forever.
