Bait and Switch

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)><em>Gabriel Karne is back.</em></strong></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The plan:</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>He's gonna lie low on Heartstone Island and wait for the dumpster fire that is his past life to burn itself out. </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Gabriel has avoided Ranger Man for days made a few important repairs to his sailboat and put a dent in the stack of dime-store mysteries Elton loaned him. Life is at least okay.</span></p><p></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Eight days in and his strategy crumbles like a wet cookie.</em></p><p></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>The Reality:</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>His ex-partner-in-crime returns but this time he is very dead. And wearing a baby blue tracksuit which somehow makes his murder even worse.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Is his body a message from the crime family they mutually pissed off? Did Peter have connections to Heartstone? And if he didn't how the hell did he know he'd find Gabe there?</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>With yet another exceedingly ill-timed murder Gabe's luck is once again not the Good Kind.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Then there's his simmering attraction to Casey which he's actively sweeping underneath his mental throw rug. Lundin is definitely not Gabe's type. He's a walking-talking moral compass that never seems to cease pointing out everything he's sure is wrong about Gabe. But damn that man's uniform fits him like a custom glove.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Adding to it all snow is in the forecast there's a missing brush worker up the valley and Calvin Perkins is still on the loose. Gabe's not even going to think about the spiders.</span></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)><em>Everything will be fine. FINE.</em></strong></p><p></p>