He glances at me, fork to his lips.
“What were they here for?” I say. “Us or the miners. And even if it’s the miners, that’s a problem for us.”
I’m on a call. Rory is still crawling around the floor, while Dalton has gone in to work. Yolanda is with me, mostly because she wants to talk to the person I’m calling. Not that you’d know it by their opening exchange.
“Hey, cuz!” Petra says over the line. “I was just thinking of paying you a visit.”
“Please don’t.”
“Oh, now I definitely will. I’m thinking of October, before it gets too cold. Maybe I’ll come to celebrate Halloween. We can dress in matching costumes, just like when we were kids. I’ll bring the candy.”
“No.”
“What’s that? You’d love to have me? Excellent. I’ll talk to Gran and make the arrangements.”
“And I’ll talk to Gran and tell her all the reasons why you shouldn’t visit. You’ve finally started a new life, and we wouldn’t want you to backslide.”
Petra snorts. “That’s why you don’t want me up there? For my own good.”
“No, that’s the excuse that Gran will buy. The reality is that I don’t want you here because I’d spend the next few months hearing how nice you are, how friendly and personable, and are we definitely cousins?”
“Still coming up. I’ll just put on my costume early. I’ll play you.” Her voice goes gruff. “Halloween? What are you, twelve? Who wants candy? I don’t want candy. I hate dressing up. I hate everything.”
“Including you.”
“Youadoreme. Casey? Mark your calendar. I will be there for Halloween with huge boxes of candy.”
“I’ll hold you to that, you know,” I say.
Her grin shines through in her voice. “Good. It’s a plan.”
“And I’ll be away for the week,” Yolanda says.
“No, you won’t. You’ll be there to grumble at me, and tell me I brought the wrong kind of candy, and you’ll love every minute of it.”
Petra had been in Rockton when I arrived. She’d been my first good friend there. Discovering she was one of the founder’s granddaughters, and a spy—both professionally and in Rockton—had been a blow.
I’d watched her take out an enemy and barely blink, and that was so far from the Petra I knew that I’d been shaken, certain the one I saw was a lie. It’s not. There’s the happy-go-lucky Petra, the ice-cold operative Petra, and the other one, forever grieving her young daughter’s death and the aftermath that slammed the blame onto her own shoulders.
I miss her terribly, but I’m glad she’s finding her footing. She’d originally planned to come with us to Haven’s Rock. Then her arrival date kept being pushed back until she admitted she wasn’t joining us. Being back down south for a few months helped her realize it was time to move on with her life.
“We have spy questions,” Yolanda says.
Petra groans.
“Sorry,” I say. “Secret-agent questions.”
“That’s not much better.”
“Highly trained–operative questions? Oh, how about federal-agent questions. That’s boring, but fitting. Unless you didn’t work for the federal government.”
“I’d tell you, but then… Well, you know the rest,” Petra says, far too cheerfully. “Okay, so Gran said you’re dealing with something that seems to involve espionage. Involving either Haven’s Rock or that gold-mining operation.”
“Yes,” I say. “How much did she tell you?”
“Nothing else. She said you’d fill in what you were comfortable sharing.”
It’s Petra, which means I’m comfortable sharing everything, even the speculative bits that make me feel as if I’ve seen too many spy movies. I tell her about meeting Blake and Gretchen, finding Blake dead, and now finding a second body.
