Beside him, Cara sat angled toward the passenger window, arms folded tight across her ribs. The silence between them felt heavy, charged with too many unasked questions and half-spoken truths.
He shouldn't notice the way tension held her shoulders rigid. Shouldn't care about the shadows under her eyes or the strand of dark hair that had escaped her ponytail to cling to her cheek.
But he did, which only complicated things further.
"Want to tell me what's going through your head?" His voice came out rougher than he intended.
She exhaled slowly. "You mean besides how creepy that felt?"
Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched. "Fair."
The fog thickened as they descended toward the coast road. The smell of brine and wet earth seeped through the cracked window he kept open out of habit. After twelve years in the field, he'd learned to rely on more than just sight—the sounds and smells of the world outside gave him an edge, that extra sense of what was coming before it arrived.
He glanced at Cara again. She'd gone somewhere in her head, her gaze fixed on the mist rolling past but not really seeing it.
She was good at this. Too good for someone who claimed to be nothing but a small-town baker.
"He wasn't out there to hurt us," Gabe said after a moment.
Cara's brows drew together. "He was watching us, Gabe."
"He was watching the location." Gabe worked his jaw. "If these men wanted us dead, they've had plenty of opportunities. Ruiz's motel room while we were both inside. Your bakery this morning. Even at the overlook, they had surprise and terrain advantage."
He paused, letting the pieces click into place. "But they didn't act. They're not hunting us—they're guarding their tracks. Making sure we don't find whatever Ruiz was following, what David hired him to find."
Cara shifted, turning toward him more fully. In the dim light from the dashboard, he could see the exhaustion carved into her features and the fear she was working hard to mask. "So what do we do next?"
The question hung between them, simple and impossible at the same time.
The road curved sharply, hugging the coastline. Through breaks in the fog, Gabe caught glimpses of waves crashing against black rocks below, white froth shattering into spray. The ocean's roar was muffled but constant, like a heartbeat underneath everything else.
He slowed and pulled into a turnout overlooking the slate-colored expanse, put the SUV in park and let the engine idle while he worked through the problem.
David had been tracking something related to their father’s last case. Clearly, someone involved wanted to keep something buried, even after all these decades, badly enough to kill for it.
His chest constricted.Lord, please let David still be alive.
He grabbed Ruiz's notebook from the console. The pages were dog-eared and stained, covered in cramped handwriting and hasty sketches—timestamps, coordinates, tide patterns, shorthand that probably made sense to Ruiz but read like code to everyone else.
He flipped through, scanning for something he'd missed, some detail that would tell him where to look next.
Cara leaned closer. The movement brought her into his space, close enough that he caught the faint scent of vanilla and flour that seemed to cling to her even after everything that had happened.
The cab suddenly felt smaller.
"Here," she murmured, pointing.
His eyes followed her finger to an address circled twice in thick pencil:
136 Harbor Road — H.C. Annex B
Cara frowned. "That’s the church address. There’s an old building in back. Could be the annex." She sat up. “Yes. It must be. Pastor Ben mentioned it a few weeks ago. They keep overflow from the thrift ministry there—extra donation boxes, furniture people drop off."
She stared out the window. "Why would Ruiz go there?"
The question dropped into the silence like a stone into still water, sending ripples outward.
Gabe's breath caught as understanding hit him. "Because the men David and Ruiz were investigating wouldn’t expect them to go there." His pulse kicked up. "The motel, your bakery, the overlook—they searched or watched every place they thought mattered. But a storage room behind a church? No one would think to watch that."
