Page 27 of Crosscurrent

Genuinely lost. Not a threat.

"You're Skye?" he asked, eyes wide, clearly already intimidated.

When Skye didn’t respond, Cara stepped smoothly into the gap. "Exactly right. And I’m Cara. This is my bakery."

"I'm Owen." He automatically pulled out the chair across from his own. "Owen Harney. Ray was my uncle."

Skye pulled out her own chair and sat. Cara took the chair Owen offered.

Owen wrapped both hands around his cold tea mug. "I wasn't sure you'd actually be in Haven Cove," he admitted to Skye. "I almost turned around twice coming down the coast."

Cara leaned back slightly in her chair. Easy posture. Non-threatening. The same posture she used on nervous customers and grieving widowers and teenagers trying to buy birthday cupcakes with crumpled dollar bills. "What stopped you?"

Owen blinked at her, like he'd expected interrogation instead of conversation.

"My uncle didn't really..." He adjusted his glasses. "He wasn't dramatic. If he said something mattered, it mattered."

Skye said nothing. The silence stretched half a beat too long.

Cara smiled lightly. "From what I’m piecing together, your uncle doesn't strike me as a man who used exclamation points."

To Cara's surprise, the man gave a short laugh. "Definitely not. He once mailed back an order of Christmas cards because they had too much glitter."

Skye nodded seriously. "Totally reasonable."

Cara bit the inside of her cheek.

Owen stared at Skye for a second, trying to determine if she'd made a joke. Apparently deciding not to risk it, he pushed on. "I got the call yesterday morning. From the Marshal's office." His fingers tightened around the mug. "They said there'd been an accident."

Still no response from Skye, visual or verbal.

"And then?" Cara prompted gently.

Owen nodded once, clearly grateful for the help. "I flew to Portland. They released his personal effects this morning." He swallowed. "I honestly thought there'd been some mistake. My uncle was..." He stopped. Recalibrated. "He was the most careful person I've ever known."

Skye's expression didn't move, but Cara saw the tiny shift in her shoulders.

"What did they tell you?" Skye asked.

"Almost nothing." He gave a helpless little shrug. "That he fell. That the investigation was ongoing. That someone from the local office would contact me eventually."

"But your uncle already had instructions waiting," Cara said.

"Yeah." Owen looked down at the envelope immediately, like he'd been trying not to. "He told me about it on a visit maybe four years ago? He said if anything ever happened to him, there was an envelope in his filing cabinet with your name on it."

His eyes lifted to Skye again. "He made me repeat the instructions back to him."

"What instructions?" Skye asked. She sounded more like a robot than a woman.

People handled grief different ways, Cara reminded herself. Only she had a hunch this was pure Skye, even on a good day.

"'Don't trust phones. Don't trust email. Put it in her hand and walk away.'" Owen gave an awkward little laugh. "At the time I thought he was being paranoid."

Skye's face went still in a different way.

Cara saw it immediately.

Not paranoia. Protocol.