“Just be careful,” Caleb said.“With all of it.”
“Always am.”
“No, you’re not.That’s what I’m saying.”
Graham hung up and drove the rest of the way in silence.He wasn’t going to let it go.None of it—the notebook, the pipeline, or the woman who’d built the case he needed and was still walking into that building every night.
Chapter 5
Maren hid the notebook inside a gallon-size freezer bag, sealed it twice, and buried it at the bottom of a terracotta planter on the back porch.
The planter held a bird of paradise she’d bought her first week in Blossom Springs.It was too big to move without effort, too heavy for a casual search, and anyone who lifted it would scatter twenty pounds of soil across the concrete.Not exactly bank-vault security, but better than a locker at the hospital or the glove compartment of her car.
She pressed the soil flat, wiped her hands on her jeans, and went inside to make coffee.
It was just after ten in the morning.She’d gotten off shift at six, driven straight home, and spent the first hour sitting on the edge of her bed with the burner phone in her hands, waiting for a text that didn’t come.Graham had said they’d talk today.He hadn’t said when.The waiting was the part she was worst at.
She filled the coffee maker, set it to brew, and stood at the counter watching the dark liquid fill the carafe in slow, uneven pulses.
The burner buzzed against the counter.
Can I come to you?Easier to talk in person.Need to go over what you sent.
She picked up the phone and stared at the message.Graham Holt asked to come to her house.The house she’d told almost no one about, on the street she drove to and from in the dark.
How do you know where I live?
I know where everyone connected to this case lives.It’s not personal.It’s protocol.
That’s exactly what a stalker would say.
Fair point.I can meet you somewhere public if you’d prefer.
Maren poured her coffee and took a long sip.She thought about the bakery, the library, the park on Main Square where anyone could see them.Two meetings in public places in two days.People would start to notice.In a town this small, people noticed everything.
Come here.Back door.Park on Hospital Road and walk up through the lot behind the houses.Don’t use the front.
Twenty minutes.
She set the phone down and looked around.The house on Golden Acres was small and rented furnished, which meant someone else’s curtains and a dining table sized for a person who ate alone.Dishes in the sink from yesterday.A cereal bowl with a spoon still in it.A pair of scrub pants draped over a chair.In the living room, a stack of medical journals on the coffee table and a blanket wadded at one end of the couch where she’d tried to nap before her shift.
She was not cleaning her house for Graham Holt.
She put the dishes in the sink, moved the scrub pants to the bedroom, and folded the blanket.It wasn’t cleaning.It was straightening.There was a difference.
* * *
He came in through the back porch, which meant he walked past the bird of paradise.
Maren watched through the kitchen window as he crossed the small yard in three long strides.He moved the way he always moved—unhurried, deliberate, like a man who’d mapped every exit before stepping into a room.He wore a gray Henley pushed up to his forearms and dark jeans.A scar ran along his left forearm—surgical, pale against his olive skin.She clocked it the way she clocked every mark on every patient: old, healed, clean edges.Not combat.A scalpel had made that cut.
She opened the door before he knocked.
He stopped, hand still raised.Up close, in the daylight, without a bakery table between them, the details she’d noticed at the bakery landed differently.Dark eyes that moved over her face without lingering anywhere too long.The olive tone of his skin against the gray cotton.Hands that looked like they’d held instruments finer than weapons.
“You parked on Hospital Road?”
“Half a block south.Behind the physical therapy building.”He dropped his hand.“You going to let me in, or are we doing this on the porch?”
