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Cole lifted one eyebrow, daring her to call him out in front of everyone.

Instead, she smiled.

Then her hand disappeared beneath the table and covered his.

Cole expected her to push him away.

She slid his hand higher.

Not far. Just enough to make her point.

His fingers tightened instinctively against her thigh.

Emily turned back toward the conversation as though she hadn’t done anything at all, reaching for her drink with maddening composure.

Cole leaned closer, his mouth near her ear. “Careful, Whitaker.”

Her knee nudged his beneath the table. “You started it.”

“Tyler,” Cassidy said, drawing Cole’s attention, “back me up.”

“I’m staying out of this,” Tyler said.

“Smart man.” Liam lifted his beer in a toast.

Cole was in the middle of the table. It took him a bit to register that. Just like it took until the second round to realize he was being treated like a friend and not a guest.

Cole sat with his drink and let it settle into him quietly. This. This was what he’d been circling without letting himself name it. Not the fire station, not the relief effort, not even Emily—though Emily was its own category entirely. Just this. A table of people on a Monday evening in a bar in Maple Falls, and him in the middle of it, and nobody thinking that was unusual.

He thought about New York. About his old station, his old crew, the city that had given him years of noise and anonymity and the relief of being somewhere nobody knew the Alders name. He’d loved it. He’d been good there.

But this? This was something he’d been missing, and he hadn’t even realized it. Something that he’d wanted since fourth grade, maybe even before that.

Jackson leaned forward. “So how’s the investigation going? Any closer?”

Cole looked at Emily. Emily looked at him.

“We eliminated Douglas Merritt today,” Emily said. “Definitively.”

“The mayor’s brother?” Madison asked.

“Half-brother. He was in the hospital that afternoon. Emergency appendix surgery.”

“So back to square one?” Zach asked.

“Not exactly.” Cole turned his glass on the table. “We’ve narrowed the window significantly. We know the cookies were there at two o’clock and gone by two-fifteen, two-twenty. We know the alley door was unlocked. We know the front counter was overwhelmed with the Girl Scout situation.”

“But no suspect,” Jackson said.

“No suspect,” Emily confirmed.

The conversation shifted again, flowing around the crowded table as easily as the cider and mulled wine. Zoe, glowing in a deep green dress that stretched over the round curve of her stomach, was talking to Madison about her baby shower next Sunday. Madison leaned closer to hear her over the Christmas music playing from the speaker. Zach talked about having a New Year’s Eve party, as they’d yet to have a big bash since finishing the renovations at the farmhouse.

Cole tuned in to Emily and Robyn’s conversation after that.

“The honest truth,” she said, not quite to the table, “is that I keep coming back to the same place.” She paused. “I know how it sounds. But Gary Alders had access, he had the rivalry, and we still don’t have actual proof that he didn’t do it.” She shook her head. “I can’t fully close the door on it.”

Cole froze.