Page 47 of Whispers in the Night

Silas’s hand found hers on the table, their fingers intertwining in what would look like casual affection to anyone watching. But Harper felt the alertness in his touch, the coiled readiness. “You sure?”

“Look at his posture. He’s not relaxed. He’s scanning.”

They watched for ten minutes. The man sipped his coffee mechanically, his attention moving across the shop in a pattern—counter, door, customers, counter, door. Lingering on the young women. Especially the brunettes.

Then he checked his watch, stood, and left.

Harper’s phone buzzed a few agonizing minutes later. A text from Morris, watching from the surveillance van outside.Followed subject two blocks. Got into car with wife and baby. Definitely not our guy.

“Damn.” Harper pulled her hand from Silas’s, suddenly aware of how natural the touch had felt.

“False alarm,” Silas said. “We keep watching.”

***

By noon, Harper’s back ached from sitting and her nerves were fraying. They’d worked through the morning rush, the mid-morning lull, the lunch crowd. Hundreds of faces, none of them right. She’d drunk so much coffee that her hands trembled slightly when she lifted her cup.

“What about you?” she asked, picking up their earlier conversation, needing to focus on something other than her growing frustration. “Why detective work?”

Silas was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working. “After Afghanistan, I needed structure. Purpose. Something to make sense of things that didn’t make sense.”

“Your team,” Harper said carefully. “You mentioned them before. You don’t have to talk about it if—”

“We were clearing a compound outside Kandahar. I was on point.” His voice went flat, emotionless. The tone of someone who’d told this story too many times to too many people. “There was a suicide vest. I missed it. Boom. Three dead instantly, two more with life-altering injuries, three with permanent disabilities.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” Harper leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “I’ve read enough after-action reports, worked enough cases. Sometimes, there’s no one to blame. Just bad luck and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Is that what you tell yourself about Michael Ward?”

The name hit like a fist to the chest. Harper sat back, her hands clenching on the table. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“Because I gave the order. I told him to wait for backup and then I went in anyway. He followed me because that’s what partners do, and he died because of my choice. That’s on me.”

“And you think I don’t feel the same way?” Silas’s voice was gentle now, understanding in a way that made Harper’s throattight. “Harper, we can’t carry every death. We’ll drown under the weight of them.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We keep going. We solve the cases we can solve. We save the people we can save.” His eyes held hers, steady and certain. “We don’t give up.”

Harper swallowed hard, fighting the emotion rising in her chest. When had Silas become the person who could see through all her defenses? Who could name the guilt she carried and not flinch away from it?

“Customer,” she said, breaking eye contact. “White male, late thirties, baseball cap.”

They watched as the man ordered, sat down with a laptop. But his posture was wrong—too relaxed, too absorbed in his screen. When a young brunette sat at the next table, he didn’t even glance her direction.

Not their guy.

“He’s not coming,” Harper said quietly. It was two-thirty. Seven and a half hours of surveillance, and nothing.

“Maybe he’s waiting for evening.”

“Or maybe he saw the surveillance and stayed away.” Harper rubbed her temples where a headache was building. “Maybe this whole thing was a waste.”