Page 12 of Accidental Bodyguard Summer

“Good news: her footage plus the registration got them a warehouse lead in Port Camden. Network’s supply side is exposed. They’re closer than they’ve been in a year and a half.” Papers shuffle. “Interesting news: the boat in her video turned up scuttled in a marsh channel Sunday. Burned to the waterline first.”

“They’re cleaning house.”

“They’re cleaning house,” Rafi agrees. “Task force chatter says the network’s asking questions about thesourceof the footage. Not asking like journalists, Vance.”

Down the beach, Abby’s got her head tipped sideways under the shower spray, talking to a seagull that’s stalking her gear bag. Broad daylight, forty people in sight, and she’s a bright fixed point in the middle of it, easiest read on the whole beach. Anyone could find her in four seconds. It’s like guarding a lighthouse.

“Anything on the SUV?” I ask.

“Rental out of Jacksonville. Fake name, cash, cameras got a whole lot of hat. Professional enough.” A beat. “How’s the client?”

The client is currently explaining to a seagull that the bag contains data, not sandwiches.

“Cooperative,” I say. “Within parameters.”

“That bad, huh?” Rafi’s grin travels down the line. “Perimeter team says she brought them lemonade Tuesday night. Left it on a fence post with a note that said ’hydrate, gentlemen.’ Compromised the hide site completely.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Delgado framed the note,” Rafi says, and hangs up.

Friday, she declares a resupply run, which means the Salty Bean, which means the gauntlet.

I’ve cleared the coffee shop before we go in. That’s not the problem. The problem is what happens inside it, every time, which is that Abby Marlowe enters a room the way weather enters a county.

“Abby!” The barista—Marnie, mid-forties, going through a divorce whose timeline I could now testify to in court—lights up before the door’s done chiming. “And she brought the wall. Morning, wall.”

“Morning,” I say. The nickname’s been in circulation since day four. Fighting it fed it, so I stopped.

“He’ll have a large drip, black,” Abby says, walking backward toward the counter so she can keep talking to me, a maneuver she’s somehow never once gotten wrong. “And I’ll have?—”

“Don’t do it,” I say.

“Two lavender lattes.”

“One lavender latte.”

“Noah. It’s the seasonal special. Marnie developed the syrup herself, and you drank black coffee at every temperature yesterday like it was a punishment you’d earned. One human beverage. As a data point.”

This is the thing about her. She’ll frame it as science, and she’s kidding, and then her eyes stay on you a half-second past the joke, and you realize she means it—not the latte, the other thing underneath the latte.One human thing. As a data point.

“Small,” I say.

Marnie makes it a large. The two of them exchange a look like handlers who’ve successfully darted something off the endangered list.

We’re waiting at the pickup counter when Abby leans back against it, surveys me, and says, at conversational volume, in a room I have to keep monitoring for threats, “Marnie. Professional opinion. Does Noah strike you as emotionally available?”

The espresso machine screams. Convenient cover; I consider using it to exit the timeline.

“Hmm.” Marnie studies me through the steam with the flat expertise of a woman who’s poured coffee for every marriage in this zip code. “Hard to say. He’s got that lighthouse thing going. Lot of light, long intervals.”

“That’s what I thought,” Abby says, thoughtful, like they’re consulting on a diagnosis.

“I’m standing right here,” I say.

“We know,” they say. Same time. Same tone.

The latte, for the record, tastes like a candle. I drink the whole thing.