Yeah. He went there. She’d brought it up earlier, after all.
“Dinner?” She twisted her lips around as if exaggerating that she was thinking hard on the question. “You have more questions about this investigation? Or is it something ... else?”
If only it could be something else. He was playing with fire. “I want to hear more about this book you’re writing. You have to eat. I have to eat.”
“I’m tired. Too many thoughts rattling around in my head. Rain check?”
“Tomorrow night, then?” he asked. “I might know more by then, too, that I can share with you.”
“You’re an unconventional detective.” She got out of the vehicle.
He did too, and she stood there, her bright-red curls frizzing around her face in the humid Pacific Northwest. Freckles and striking bright-green eyes. He shouldn’t notice them ... in the way he noticed. This wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought, and he feared that it wouldn’t be the last.
I am losing my mind.
“I’ll have dinner with you, Detective, tomorrow evening. You can take me there on your motorcycle.”
He had no words.
“Meet me here at six,” she said.
She left him to stare after her as she headed into Cedar Trails Lodge. He couldn’t breathe. He rubbed his jaw hard, then his neck. She had so much of her mother in her, and that terrified him, but in just a few short encounters, this woman had him tumbling around on the inside.
Her fathermighthave been murdered.
She could be in danger.
And his niece’s life could also be on the line. He had zero business getting involved with her. Zero. Business.
Braden started the car and drove all the way back to the sheriff’s office at the county seat almost an hour away instead of his apartment so he could look into how her father died. Put some distance between them—that should work. He texted Remi to ask her and her helicopter-tour-guide husband, Hawk, to keep an eye on Cressida for him. They’d gone through a few things together, and he could consider them friends, in the loosest sense. They didn’t eat together. Or talk much.
But weirdly, they had each other’s backs. He could trust them.
Unlike other people.
When Octavia had asked Braden to stay here and wait and work undercover so he would be in place for ... something,that had been in the vaguest of terms. Octavia could have led with the possible murder of her ex-husband because of something he’d learned in Hidden Bay about a derelict boat. She could have led with how she feared her daughter might fall victim to the same fate.
13
Thursday morning, Cressida slept late because her brain hadn’t shut off last night. At some point she’d finally fallen asleep in the early morning hours—right when the dawn brightened her room. Thoughts of the museum visit kept her tossing and turning and thinking about theEndeavor Spirit, akaSpecter’s Bounty.
Then her mind had drifted to Detective Braden Sanders. He wasn’t like any investigator she’d ever known—and that wasn’t saying much since she hadn’t known that many. Still, she’d interacted with them on occasion during her journalistic investigations and usually irritated them. They were matter-of-fact and never forthcoming or talkative. Then again, his investigation was aboutherand not about her attempt to pry information from him, which was a completely different situation. Braden had gone out of his way to stick close to her. Yes, to protect her, but she sensed there was more going on.
After getting dressed, she went downstairs to the lobby and grabbed coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Sitting at oneof the tables, she enjoyed the panoramic view of crashing waves while she waited for the rental car to be delivered.
Journal in hand, she flipped through the pages and reread her notes from yesterday, comparing them to Dad’s notes. One question continued to dig at her—why had Dad cut his trip here short and gone to DC? She hadn’t been on speaking terms with Mom at the time and had only seen Mom at Dad’s funeral. They shared niceties for the public eye—a place Cressida had lived far too long, and she was done with it. Just like Dad had finally been done with it. Mom and Dad had been divorced since Cressida was twelve.
But Mom might know why Dad had come back to see her. Cressida had learned that much. He’d flown directly to DC and taken a cab to talk to her but had been hit by a taxi while walking across the street. Did it really matter why? Still, something that could pull him from his research had to be important, and Cressida found herself growing curious about it. She should have questioned this all along.
I need to call her.
But I don’t want to talk to her.Her heart ached. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mother, but the woman had put her job and her own life ahead of Cressida for the last time, betraying Cressida. Destroying her hard-earned career.
She’d enjoyed writing forThe Pinnaclebecause the editors had considered her an elite investigative reporter and gave her room to explore and expand her horizons. Mom had demanded that Cressida stop digging into a story about environmental damage from sunken vessels without telling herwhy, and she’d refused. The next thing Cressida knew, she was let go fromThe Pinnacle. She hadn’t been told in so many words why, but she knew. Oh, she knew. Mom had pulled strings to get her way like she’d always done.
Cressida was an award-winning journalist and liked to believe she had earned her way into the upper echelon ofjournalistic venues. And it was pure torture to think for even one moment that her mother might have influenced those doors that opened for her long ago. Regardless, after she was let go, with her accolades Cressida could have gone to any other magazine—The New Yorker,The Atlantic,Vanity Fair—so she’d tried, but editors who once sought her now ghosted her.
Those doors had all closed. She didn’t bother confronting her mother. What was the point?
