"Not a coincidence," he said.
"What do we do?"
"Nothing yet. Let them follow. See where they're going with this."
"And if they try something?"
"They won't. Not on a highway in broad daylight. Too many witnesses." He reached over and squeezed her hand. "Breathe."
She breathed. He could feel the tension in her fingers, the rapid pulse at her wrist.
"They know," she said. "Caldwell knows something's coming."
"He's known since the FBI started executing warrants this morning. This is just reconnaissance. They're tracking our movements, trying to figure out what we've told the feds."
"So they're scared."
"Terrified. Desperate people do desperate things."
"That's not reassuring."
"It's not supposed to be." He watched the sedan in the mirror. "But desperate people also make mistakes. And by tomorrow morning, it won't matter what they know or don't know. The FBI will have them in custody before they can act on any of it."
They drove in tense silence. The sedan followed them off the highway, through the outskirts of the county, all the way to the Blossom Springs town limits.
Then it turned off onto a side road and disappeared.
Ronan thought about Fielding. The man hadn't needed a tip. He'd read the federal warrant activity the way any twenty-year cop would — agents in his jurisdiction, search warrants on names he recognized. The math wasn't complicated. He'd had all night to decide what to do with the answer. "They were sending a message," Lila said.
"They were trying to scare us."
"Did it work?"
Ronan pulled onto Main Street, where volunteers were stringing lights between the lampposts, and a banner reading BLOSSOM SPRINGS CENTENNIAL stretched across the intersection.
"No," he said. "It just made me angry."
Caleb was waiting at the cottage.
Not a text. Not a video call. The man himself, sitting on the porch with a laptop, watching the Gulf.
"Hey. I’m surprised you’re here.”
"Endgame requires boots on the ground." Caleb closed the laptop and stood. He was thinner than Ronan remembered, pale from too many hours behind screens, but his eyes were sharp. "You were followed from Tampa."
"You saw?"
"I had a drone overhead the whole drive. Gray Nissan, registered to a shell company connected to Coastal Property Services. Driver's name is Stephen Jackson—he's muscle, not management. Caldwell's people are watching, but they're not ready to act."
"Yet."
"Yet." Caleb's expression darkened. "Which is why we need to talk about tomorrow."
"The arrests."
"Six am. FBI and state police are moving simultaneously. Caldwell, Fielding, Webb, two county commissioners, and the medical examiner who signed Daniel Bennett's death certificate." Caleb paused. "The ME's involvement confirms what Lila suspected. Her father died of a heart attack, but it wasn't a natural one. It was likely drug-induced."
Ronan absorbed that. He'd suspected it. They'd all suspected it. But hearing it confirmed, knowing the FBI was treating Daniel Bennett's death as a homicide—that was something else.
