Page 67 of Deep Tide

“I admire your determination.”

She rolled her eyes.

“But ultimately, it’s not up to me. I’m not the one running things.”

“Okay. But I’m just telling you how it is. I’m trying to be clear,” she added. “We are not just going to sit here and wring our hands and hope the feds solve this case for us. I mean, I’m sure one woman’s murder is just a blip on the radar to you people in Washington when you’ve got some massive criminal conspiracy you’re trying to roll up. But to us it’s major. This is a small town, and this young woman was murdered right here.” She gestured to the window. “We’re talking four blocks from here.”

“I know.”

“Which reminds me of why I called you. I need a favor.”

She took the file from his lap and shuffled past the autopsy reports. A slip of paper was clipped to the back of the folder.

“This is a number from Amelia’s phone records.” She tapped it. “We haven’t been able to trace it. We also found this number written—in what looks like Amelia’s handwriting—on a matchbook recovered from the pocket of her work apron. The matchbook is from the Playa del Rey golf resort.”

“Any prints on the matchbook?”

“Just Amelia’s.”

“The number could be from a burner phone.”

“It probably is, and we need your help,” she said. “You can use some of those ‘resources’ you mentioned that we don’t have in our quaint little police station.”

She was chiding him for being condescending toward her. Maybe he deserved it.

But Sean didn’t mind. He was glad to have her input, even if it was limited. Nicole Lawson was sharp, she was energized, and she had local connections. But even more important, she cared about bringing someone to justice for Amelia Albright’s killing. Her read of the situation was right on target—the array of federal agencies involved in this thing were focused on Gagnon and the international network of criminals he was aiding and abetting with his technology. Amelia’s murder wasn’t the focus.

She closed the folder and held it out to him. “That’s for you. Consider it a trade.”

He took the folder. “I’ll see what I can do.”

•••

Leyla created a perfect petal, and then another and another. She finished piping the flower on the square of parchment paper and then examined her work.

Fifty-two down, forty-eight to go. She set the blossom beside the other buttercream flowers on the baking sheet. Then she shook out her sore arm and started again.

She could be at the Nautilus right now, drinking wine and sampling Anton Devereux’s supposedly “innovative” Texas-Creole cuisine. A teeny, tiny part of her regretted her decision not to go. She’d been wanting to try the place for months. Sean had guessed right. Of course she wanted to see what one of the island’s few classically trained chefs was doing.

But it wasn’t a guess. Sean knew she was competitive, and he had no qualms at all about using that knowledge to try to get her to go on a date with him. She was impressed by his tenacity and his ability to read people. Or at least, to read her. He’d been doing it since that first night on the beach.

But maybe she wasn’t hard to read. It wasn’t like she tried to hide the fact that she was competitive. She took pride in it. Growing up with three brothers, it was either compete or get left behind, and she’d carried that attitude into adulthood. It was her competitive nature that had led her to rent out a shuttered ice cream parlor and turn it into one of the island’s most popular cafés. And then she’d aggressively grown the business, expanding to a second location and then starting a catering firm, all in a matter of four short years. None of that would have happened without her competitive streak, and she was proud of how far she’d come. While some of her friends from culinary school were still toiling away as line cooks in Manhattan, Leyla was running her own company, calling her own shots in a place all her own.

Of course, her place wasn’t exactly in a trendy location. Some people might even consider it a backwater. But she’d grown up here, so it was her backwater, and she felt a sense of excitement watching Lost Beach transform from a sleepy shrimping town into something more eclectic. Her hometown was changing every day, gaining restaurants and bars and food trucks. They even had their own microbrewery now.

And then there was the true pull of doing what she did.

She loved it.

She loved the beautiful chaos of a busy kitchen. She loved the smell of fresh bread dough, the clatter of pans, the hiss and groan of the espresso machine. She loved the subversive comradery of cooks and servers bantering back and forth. She loved the pure, simple pleasure of making something good with her hands, something pretty and delicious and—on a good day—maybe even inspiring. Leyla took pride in her work, and she knew that it showed, and that it was the reason people came back to her humble little café again and again.

A blur of motion caught her eye, and she noticed Siena waving from the doorway.

Leyla plucked out her earbuds.

“She had her music in,” Siena said over her shoulder. Then she turned to Leyla. “You have a visitor,” she told her, lifting an eyebrow.

Sean stepped into the kitchen, and Leyla felt a rush of giddiness.

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