He stood a few yards from the sand when I arrived, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.
When he saw me, his posture shifted slightly. The tension in his shoulders eased just enough that I could see how tightly he’d been holding himself together.
I stopped in front of him. “We need to talk.”
His gaze searched my face immediately. “What happened?”
I told him everything. The gallery email. The counseling meeting. The anonymous concerns.
I watched the understanding settle across his expression piece by piece as the pattern revealed itself.
“They’re widening the pressure,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
The wind moved across the water, lifting my hair to dance around me.
Luke stared out toward the horizon, the wind pushing his hair back from his forehead.
“They started with Michigan,” he continued quietly. “Now they’re moving through anything connected to you.”
The conclusion had already formed long before I reached the beach. “The gallery backed off today,” I told him. “Not outright. Just hesitation. Someone important to them suddenly had concerns.”
Luke’s gaze sharpened immediately. “A collector?”
“Most likely.” I watched another wave collapse against the shoreline. “The curator didn’t say it directly, but galleries don’t stall exhibits unless someone with money asks them to.”
Luke exhaled slowly through his nose. “So they’re leaning on the people around us. Not us directly.”
It hit harder now that it had been spoken aloud. Carefully chosen pressure points. “They’re not attacking,” I said. “They’re introducing doubt.”
“Yes.” His voice carried quiet certainty. “They only need a few people to hesitate. A coach. A curator. An administrator. Once that happens, opportunities start disappearing on their own.”
The calm way he laid it out made the strategy feel colder. More deliberate. “They’re dismantling things piece by piece,” I said.
“Exactly.”
The tide pushed another dark ribbon of water across the sand near our feet.
Neither of us spoke, and then Luke’s hand found mine. His fingers closed around it automatically, grounding in a way that steadied something in my chest.
“They think pressure will make us react,” he continued. “Pull back. Make mistakes. Turn on each other.”
“And if we don’t?”
His gaze shifted to me. “Then they escalate.”
The answer came without hesitation. I absorbed that quietly. He was right. This wasn’t the end of it. It was the opening move. “And who do you think it is?” I asked.
Luke’s jaw clenched slightly. “Dunn is the obvious choice.”
“Elise has motive too.”
“Yeah, she does.”
The wind lifted the edge of my jacket again. Luke stepped closer without thinking, his hand falling to my waist as though the movement had always belonged there.
“Either way,” he continued, “whoever started this understands exactly where to push.”
