"It's Friday," Emily said. "We need to recover. Physically, mentally, and alcoholically."
Ray turned to her. One eyebrow. "Alcoholically isn't a word."
Jake and Emily answered at the same time.
"Yes it is."
Ray's eyebrow stayed up for another beat. His eyes moved between the two of them, and Emily watched him register it, the unison, the synchronization of two people who'd developed a shared vocabulary without either of them knowing exactly when it happened. His expression shifted. Not surprise. Recognition. And Emily understood what she was seeing on his face, the look of a man watching a thing he'd built perform exactly as he'd designed it to, except this part he hadn't designed. This part had built itself.
"Seven o'clock," Emily said. "The Anchor. All of us."
"I've got calls to make," Ray said.
"Make them by seven."
Ray turned to Jake. Jake shrugged. The shrug that saidI'm not going to help you here because she's right and we both know it.
"Seven," Ray said. He pushed off the hood of his truck and walked toward the driver's side, and Emily could have sworn she saw him smiling, but Ray Crawford was too disciplined to let her catch him at it.
They stood in the yard and watched him drive away. The dust rose and fell again. The cabin sat behind them, weathered andpatient, holding the shape of everything that had happened here without comment.
Jake's hand found the small of her back.
"Take you home?" he asked.
"Take me home," she said. "I need to shower, change, and figure out what you wear to a victory lap at The Anchor on a Friday night."
"You wear whatever you want. It's The Anchor."
"That's not helpful."
"It's the only answer you're getting." But he was smiling, the real one, the one that started in his eyes and took its time reaching his mouth, the one that had been dismantling her since the day they met.
Emily climbed into the Range Rover. Jake started the engine. The shell road unspooled ahead of them, leading back toward the highway, toward Tampa, toward the life they were building one day at a time in a city that had become home so gradually she'd barely noticed until it was.
Behind them, the smokehouse door stood open in the trees, emptied of its secret, and the Florida light poured through the gap how it always did, reclaiming a space that had been borrowed and was now returned.
CHAPTER 25
The Anchor's parking lot was half-full when Jake pulled the Range Rover onto the gravel, the familiar crunch under the tires loosening the tension he hadn't realized he was carrying. Friday night. The case closed. Emily beside him in jeans and a blouse she'd pulled from one of the bags she'd started leaving at his place, her hair still damp from the shower they'd shared an hour ago.
She was looking at the building in the same manner she'd looked at it the first time he brought her here. Taking it in. The weathered wood siding, the string lights on the deck, the neon beer sign in the window that had been flickering for as long as Jake could remember. But something was different in her expression now. That first night, she'd been assessing. Tonight, she was arriving.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yeah." She didn't move to open her door. "Just give me a second."
Jake waited. He'd learned that about her over the past month, how she needed a bit of time to gather herself before walking into spaces that mattered. Not nerves. Processing.Emily Callahan didn't do anything without understanding what it meant first.
"Okay," she said. "Let's go."
They walked in together, his hand finding the small of her back without conscious thought, and the noise hit them like a wave. Laughter from the corner booth. The jukebox pushing a heavy bass line into the room. Glasses clinking. The energy of a Friday night at The Anchor, which had its own rhythm separate from every other night of the week.
Tommy spotted them first.
"Tampa's own, Walsh and Callahan." He was already on his feet, arms spread wide, grinning like Christmas had come early. "Crime Fighters Incorporated. The reason I'm buying rounds tonight instead of working overtime."
"You were never working overtime," Jake said.
