Harper Starling’s bank account was drained of its savings hours after her vehicle had landed at the bottom of the sea.
I squint at my screen. She didn’t post many photos of herself online, and the few she did were either taken from a distance or heavily edited with filters, like this one. But the dark hair and light skin tone seem similar. Was it the bangs that threw me off? The gentle wave to her chocolate strands? Because other details still seem mostly the same. The face shape. The body type, at least what’s visible. It’s all consistent with the next photo too, though the angle and lighting make it even harder to pinpoint any distinctive qualities to her features. But in person, there’s something about Harper that seems so different from a static image—something charming but mysterious that sucked me right in.
I stare at those photos for far too long. I don’t understand how I could have misinterpreted the familiarity I felt when I met her in line at the café. I had hunted for every scrap of information I could find on Harper. And there hadn’t been many. A mention for a gardening competition win in the Cape Carnage Chronicle here. A grainy photograph there. But I consumed those details as though they’d sustain me. And in the darkest hours, they did. When suffering and grief threatened to finally destroy me, hunting Harper Starling was the only thing that kept me alive.
So how the fuck could I have gotten it so wrong when I looked at her?
I slam the laptop closed and toss it on the bed before I stalk to the hotel lobby, every step I take spent trying to wrangle this unease beneath the pleasant, unthreatening mask.
When I stop at the reception desk, Irene’s snore is rumbling from the side room. I sigh and ding the little bell, and a moment later, she comes shuffling toward me. “Mr. Rhodes.”
“Nolan is fine, ma’am.”
She nods once. “Nolan. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to get your recommendation, actually. I was looking for a place for lunch and stopped in at A Shipwrecked Bean. I got to talking to a woman named Harper. Do you know her?”
“Yes, Harper Starling. Got magic in those green thumbs of hers.”
“Gardening?” I ask, pretending that I don’t already know.
“Harper does most of the landscaping around town. Her garden at Lancaster Manor has won the town’s best garden award for the last two years running. You should be here long enough to see it really start blooming. Everyone always oohs and aahs over the main garden of the estate, but the one in front of her cottage on the south side is also truly lovely.”
Bingo. The one detail I hadn’t been able to discover is where she lives.
Irene’s cataract haze seems to lift just a little, her eyes dancing in a way that I do not like. At all. “She’s a sweet girl, that Harper.”
“I’m sure.”
“What would you like to know?” she asks, and the lobby door opens just as I’m about to launch into some fake and meaningless answer now that she’s given me exactly what I’d hoped for with so little difficulty. We both turn our attention to a man who struggles through the door with an oversized roller bag and a backpack. It’s a third bag that’s slung across his body that catches my eye, the Canon logo embroidered across its surface.
“Ah, Mr. Porter,” Irene says as the man wheels his luggage into the inn. He’s about my age, probably early thirties, his short blond hair mostly covered by a baseball hat with a circular logo in silver stitching. Porter Productions, it says, and it summons an alarm deep in the recesses of my darkest thoughts. “How are you making out?”
“Not bad, thank you, Irene,” he says, giving me a polite nod before his attention returns to the Capeside Inn’s elderly proprietor. “Would be a little better if my drone operator had been able to make it. You have no idea how long it took to get all the permits and approvals in place.”
Ideas ignite. “A drone operator?” I ask.
A reserved flicker of wariness passes across the stranger’s face, and he takes a breath as though he’s about to launch into an explanation, but Irene beats him to it. “Mr. Porter is filming a documentary,” she declares. “He’s staying for the next few weeks, and his drone operator took sick so he couldn’t come.” Irene gives a solemn shake of her head and clicks her tongue. “Shame to miss out on such a lovely day. You know what they say, ‘If you don’t like the weather in Carnage, all you have to do is wait an hour or two and it’ll change.’”
I wonder if this guy is thinking the same thing I am, that the reviews for Capeside Inn are pretty on the nose about Irene knowing everything about her patrons. “Bet you didn’t know Carnage has its own retired CIA analyst,” I say, testing him out with an extended hand. “I’m Nolan.”
The man takes my offered greeting, shaking my hand with strength in his grip. “Sam Porter. I may or may not be on the Cape Carnage CIA watch list.”
Though I give him an easygoing grin, I can tell he’s not convinced by me just yet. Maybe it was my overly eager question about the drone. Or perhaps it’s the excitement I battle to keep off my face. It’s a struggle to keep it from bleeding into my voice when I say, “I know a thing or two about flying a drone. Maybe I could lend you a hand if you’re stuck.”
I can almost see the reservation dissolving from Sam’s expression. “Oh, really?”
“I’m in Search and Rescue. We use them frequently on the job.” I shrug, trying to seem undaunted, though I can feel the giddy anticipation climbing beneath my skin. “If you’re looking to do some filming today and want a hand, I’ve got nothin’ but time. Just let me know. I’m in Room one-seventeen.”
I give him a nod and force myself to turn away, my expression a neutral mask. I keep my hands in my pockets. My steps unhurried.
I don’t take more than three before Sam calls after me. “Hey … you know, I’d love to take you up on the offer, if you mean it? If you’re not busy, of course.”
The smile I cast to the shadows of the corridor ahead is not the same as the one I give Sam by the time I’ve turned to face him. “I’d be happy to.”
I wait for Sam in the lobby as he takes his belongings to his room, returning fifteen minutes later with a hard plastic case and a backpack. Just as we reach the door, Irene’s voice pipes up from behind the counter, her tone too cheerful and teasing when she says, “What did you want to ask me, Mr. Rhodes? Something about Harper Starling …?”
“Nothing, ma’am.” I tip my head to her in a grateful nod, keeping my expression warm and reassuring despite the excitement that bubbles beneath my surface. “Thanks for your help.”
With little more than a nod between us, we say goodbye to Irene and set off in the direction of the lighthouse. Though it’s in the opposite direction of the town center and Harper’s probable location, I know it’s still a high point on the topography, and if I’m lucky, I might be able to fly close enough to Lancaster Manor to catch a glimpse of her.
“So, you’re an SAR specialist?” Sam asks as we turn down Beacon Road. I nod. “Don’t meet one of those every day. What brought you to that job?”
As if on cue, the pain in my elbow spikes, reminding me that I can never truly forget the injuries that haunt me, even when I’m able to push them to the back of my consciousness. “I was a firefighter. I had an accident. Just couldn’t do it after I got out of the hospital.” I shrug, laying my palm over the scar where the pins and plates are embedded in bone. “Search and Rescue was a good option. Went to work in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and never looked back. I do a lot of drone work,” I say with a nod to his black case. “Not just the searches, but mapping the trail hazards, incident prevention, that kind of thing.”
Sam gives me a breath of a laugh as he shifts the brim of his cap down farther against the sun. “You’re probably more experienced with this thing than the guy I meant to bring. Serendipity, I guess.”
