The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(5)

Didn’t anyone in this town sleep in?

“Coming through,” Maureen shouted. The café’s longtime waitress stepped around Jenkins carrying multiple plates of steaming hot food, which was what made getting up this early almost worth it. His stomach growled at the aroma of bacon, sausage, and the Island Café omelets. “You waiting for an invitation, Stretch? You don’t seat yourself, you’ll eat standing.”

Charming as always, and Jenkins had been a regular for almost forty years. Maybe Maureen wasn’t a morning person either. On the way to his booth, Jenkins gave a slight head nod to Jalen Davis, a sign of recognition between the two. He didn’t know Davis well, but only a handful of African American men lived on the island.

Jenkins slid onto the cracked green vinyl of an empty booth and peeked out curtained windows at an awakening sky, orange and red draped behind gray storm clouds. It had rained something fierce the prior evening, a summer storm that no doubt had turned his horse pastures to slop. In the distance, jagged remnants of a wooden pier poked above the Stillaguamish River’s muddy waters that separated Stanwood from Camano Island. The setting was picturesque, calm, and peaceful, in contrast to the bustle inside the café.

Maureen slapped a plastic menu on the table, drawing his attention. “You want coffee in that mug, or should I just pour it in your lap?”

“Mug would be less painful. Hopefully.” Jenkins smiled up at her and turned his porcelain mug over on a paper doily.

“Don’t be so certain. You haven’t tasted it yet.”

She poured. The coffee looked unusually dark. She raised her voice to be heard above the crowd and the bell pinging on the pickup counter. “Bruno thinks he knows what the customers want more than I do.” Bruno was Maureen’s longtime boyfriend and café cook. Most called him her spouse, but not Maureen. “I told him to take his best shot,” she said. “That sludge in your mug is it.”

She set the glass pot on the table and stared at Jenkins over the top of half-lens, bright-red reading glasses that nearly matched the color of her hair. For Maureen to stop moving, even for a moment, was serious. Jenkins sipped from the mug. The coffee was stronger than usual, and he detected the taste and the subtle odor of vanilla.

“Well?” she asked, hand now resting on her hip.

Jenkins made a sour face. “Bruno calls this coffee? Tastes like he scraped the mud off the floor and mixed it with water.”

She nodded, vindicated, and departed. Jenkins never, ever upset the woman delivering his food.

The bells over the door rattled and chimed. Matt Lemore, Jenkins’s CIA handler since his unexpected official return to the agency—and to Russia the previous winter—stepped inside the diner and wiped his boots on the floor mat as he unzipped his raincoat and surveyed the booths. Spotting Jenkins, Lemore smiled and waved like a kid greeting Santa Claus at the mall. Lemore was a kid. Though in his early forties, he looked ten years younger. His blond hair fell over his ears, and he frequently swept the bangs off his forehead. He removed his jacket as he neared the table, revealing an argyle sweater over a collared dress shirt. He tossed the coat on the seat before shaking Jenkins’s hand, then slid into the booth across from him.

Lemore scanned the room and said, “I’ve been looking forward to the Countryman Special all morning.”

“It’s six a.m. What time do you get up?”

Lemore was on East Coast time. “Got in a five-mile run and a thirty-minute workout at the Anytime Fitness in town. They’re open—”

Jenkins raised a hand. “Let me guess. Anytime?”

“You look like you shaved a few more pounds,” Lemore said.

Jenkins had. With a son almost a teenager and a baby girl nearing two and already a handful, not to mention ten acres to care for, Jenkins got enough of a workout at home. He weighed 215 pounds thanks to Alex recently implementing a healthy diet of more vegetables and fruits and fewer chips and cookies. “I call it work,” he said. “Gardening, feeding the horses, digging fence posts, splitting lumber. You want a workout? Come by the farm in the morning. Save you a boatload on fitness centers.”

Jenkins still ran four days a week and lifted weights in his home gym. He had recently added a twice-a-week Krav Maga class—the Israel Defense Forces’ attack-first training.

Lemore looked to the window. “What’s with the rain in September?”

“For an intelligence officer I would have expected better research. It rains in Seattle. The month is irrelevant.”

“Thought you said summers are beautiful here.”

“Yes. As we like to say, ‘God vacations here in the summer, but he gets out come October.’”

Maureen set down a menu and held the pot as if about to pour the coffee in Lemore’s lap. Lemore quickly turned over his mug without being told to do so. He smiled up at her. “I remembered,” he said.

“Well, la-di-da, Dennis the Menace. You’re learning.” She filled his mug.

Lemore raised it to his lips but said, “And I don’t need a menu, Maureen. I’ve been thinking about this breakfast since I got up this morning.”

“Most people do.” She turned to Jenkins. “I can see now why he prefers decaf. I assume you want the special?”

“Extra gravy on the biscuits,” Jenkins said.