Cash hadn’t bought a drink for himself, so he had nothing to occupy his hands.

Mia loved hands; they revealed so much. They fidgeted, they stilled, they picked and plucked, they covered mouths and scratched at scabs. So many tells.

Cash’s were lain flat on the table, unnatural in both their position and lack of movement. If he was relaxed, he’d be tapping the wood, his knuckles bent and loose. There was stress in those hands. She wondered if it was just from seeing her again. She wondered if he’d expected her.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Mia took a swig of her drink before looking back at him beneath her lashes. Not trying to flirt but not opposed to getting information, either. “You’ve grown.”

“Me? You’re the big shot now,” Cash said without bite. “Detective and everything. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard you were joining the police force.”

The news must have spread like wildfire. She hadn’t asked Mama what the gossip had been like, and Mama hadn’t talked about it. But the town’s armchair psychiatrists had probably had a field day. “I enjoy it.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for the type, Mia Mackenzie.” His smile was genuine, and she was once again off-balance, back in that lookout tower of the lighthouse, their legs entangled, their hips flush against each other’s. I love you to the moon, Mia Mackenzie.

“What type would you have pegged me for, Cash Montgomery?” she bantered back, because it cost nothing.

He held up his palms. “Don’t get feisty on me,” he said with a laugh. “I knew you’d take over the world. Just didn’t think you’d want to live in blood and guts every day.”

Mia studied him. This time he’d dropped his hands to his lap, hiding them, which was a shame. But there were other ways to tell what a person was thinking. Like the worry that creased the lines of his face, or his careful pauses between words.

“It’s more about people, actually, than blood and guts,” she said, rubbing the rim of her empty glass. She had her own tells. “I tend to work cases that others have given up on.”

“Like cold cases?” he asked. “That must be a challenge.”

“Can be,” she said. “Any hard evidence is gone or useless, usually.”

Cash leaned forward, his biceps pressing against the table. “So . . . it becomes about people then?”

Mia shrugged her agreement. “You talk to friends, neighbors, family. Most don’t remember anything, but every once in a while, they do.”

It took only one moment, one memory, one face in the crowd that shouldn’t have been there, one strange visit that was written off because it was only a tiny piece in a larger puzzle. The answers were there, they were. You just had to find them.

“Sounds like a lot of grunt work.”