Static crackled in his earpiece.
"Tom?" Gabe kept his voice low.
More static answered him.
Wade's whisper barely carried. "We lost comms. Could be interference. Could be jamming."
Cara's voice was tight. "Could be a trap."
She was right. Every instinct Gabe had screamed that they'd walked into something prepared and planned.
But David was here. Somewhere in this building. Alive. Turning back wasn't an option.
Gabe made the call. "We keep moving. Eyes open. Watch for?—"
Floodlights slammed on.
Blinding white light flooded the space, disorienting, turning the darkness into white-hot exposure. Gabe's hand went to his eyes while his other hand raised his Glock, searching for targets he couldn't see yet.
His vision cleared in fragments. Guards on the balcony above. Three, maybe four. Rifles trained down, and more guards on the ground floor blocking the exits.
A voice echoed from the second floor. "Drop your weapons. Hands where I can see them."
The tenor was unmistakable. Gabe's jaw dropped.
Randy Hale strode up to the railing, belly preceding him.
The lazy, incompetent police chief who'd barely investigated Ruiz's murder. Who'd stood on the beach looking down at the body with all the urgency of a man watching grass grow.
The town police chief. Here.
Beside him, Wade went rigid. "Are you kidding me?"
Cara's breath caught audibly.
He’d fooled them all. The bumbling act had been exactly that—an act. Carefully cultivated incompetence to deflect suspicion.
And Gabe had dismissed him as harmless.
Hale's smile was cold as he looked down at them. Overweight and sweating despite the cold, the belly that spoke of too many free meals strained against his uniform shirt.
His voice carried across the space with absolute confidence. "You should've left town, Sawyer. That's all you had to do."
38
Gabe kepthis weapon aimed on Hale even though he was surrounded and outgunned. "I've never been great at following orders."
The chief shifted his weight with nervous energy that didn't match his words. "Your old man should have walked away from the Haven Cove investigation. Just like your stupid brother should have done. Go with the flow, not against it. See what I'm saying?"
The words slammed straight into Gabe’s gut.
Twenty years of believing his father had died in random gang violence in Portland. A wrong-place-wrong-time tragedy that had destroyed their family.
But Hale knew details about a shooting in Portland, which meant it hadn't been random at all. Exactly like David suspected.
Gabe's voice came out raw. "Shoot me, or don’t. You’re going down for this, Hale.”
Hale shrugged. "I was a kid then. It wasn’t my call. Stuff happens, Sawyer. You should've let it stay buried. Your oldman made his choice. Your brother made his. And now you've made yours."
