Page 15 of Undertow

Which had come close to giving Gabe a heart attack. Several times.

The monitors glowed. Outside, the January rain persisted.

“Voss is coming back tomorrow,” Cara said. “He doesn't know we found this. We need to decide, before he gets here, what we're asking him.” She looked at Gabe. “And whether we're the right people to be asking. Should we even dive into this?”

“Don't tell him until I check out a few things,” Gabe said. “I'll run the protection order through official channels, check for related case history.” He looked at Cara. “And I’ll inquire into any official missing persons reports on Elena Whitfield. Tyler will hook me up.” His friend was high enough up in the Oregon State Police to have legit access to anything important. “If anything changes the picture, you hear it first.”

Cara sent him a small nod of thanks. “And if nothing comes back?”

He looked at the whiteboard. ELENA WHITFIELD. The question marks.

“Then tomorrow we find out what he wasn't going to tell us,” he said. “And we go from there.”

Wade opened the pizza box, immediately snagging the cat’s attention, but the man waved him off. “It’s not good for you.”

Piper snorted. “It’s not good for you, either.”

Wade closed the box, folded the slice in one big hand and chomped off the tip by way of answer, chewing and swallowing with impressive speed. “The way I figure it,” he said. “We’ve got two decisions to make. Do we look for the woman? And do we tell this Voss guy that we’re doing it?”

“Exactly.” Gabe drained his coffee. Stood. Nodded to the room — Tom, Reagan, Wade, Piper. “If you want my advice, I think we stay on the case until we’re sure either Ms. Whitfield vanished of her own free will, or we know someone legitimate is searching for her. As far as Voss goes, you should string him along for a while. Get him to cooperate until you feel like you’ve gotten all the background he’s willing to offer. Nothing says you have to reciprocate.”

Tom grinned hard. “You’re a devious man. I had no idea.”

Cara walked him to the stairs.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to come tonight.”

“Yeah, I did.” Honesty slipped out before he could stop it.

Cara was trying not to smile. Over the months, he'd noticed she saved her real smiles for the basement—for those moments when everything was a mess and somehow they were all fine with it. She was more herself down here than anywhere else he'd seen her.

“Put Voss off until Thursday,” he suggested. “I’ll need time to dig into this tomorrow. You planning another session tomorrow night?”

“Absolutely. I have a feeling this place’ll be humming until we find Elena Whitfield, or someone convinces us she doesn’t need locating.” She tipped her head back, indicating the team behind her. “I think we all need this, even if it turns out to be a dead end.”

He studied the group. They’d become close quickly. His Bureau years had begun the same way—like-minded people pursuing good. Nothing wrong with that. Unless it killed them. Like it almost had, a time or two.

He climbed the stairs, shifting sideways as the cat streaked past. At the top, the bakery was dark and still, Diane’s station prepped for morning. The mudroom door was ajar—a stripe of warm light across the floor.

Agent was sitting in it.

The cat regarded him with the certainty of something that didn’t require outside validation. Then it looked past him toward the stairs, toward the sound of the team working below, and appeared satisfied with the count.

“Wade’s right. Stay out of the pizza,” Gabe told it. “Whatever the feline equivalent of heartburn is, you don’t need that kind of trouble, dude.”

Agent blinked once. Slowly. In the manner of a creature that did not take operational guidance from law enforcement.

Gabe let himself out and walked to his truck in the rain.

6

The wind off the harbor hit like a personal grudge. Cara pulled her jacket tighter and checked her watch—eight-fifteen, Thursday morning—and reminded herself that she’d chosen this spot on purpose. The overlook at the top of the bluff trail was open on three sides, which meant the January gusts came through sideways. Below, the fishing fleet pitched at its moorings in the chop, halyards clanging, and the whole Oregon coast looked like it was trying to rinse itself into the sea.

Cara had chosen this spot to meet Derek, and she’d arrived twenty minutes early because she always arrived twenty minutes early. A habit from a previous life—one of the useful ones, like checking exits and never sitting with her back to a door. You got there first. You chose the ground. You watched the other person walk in and read their body language before they’d had a chance to arrange it.

Public enough to be safe. Isolated enough that Voss wouldn’t perform for an audience. And uncomfortable enough that he wouldn’t want to linger.

Forty yards down the trail, Wade leaned against the junction signpost. She hadn’t asked him to come. He’d told her he was coming, in the tone he used when a subject wasn’t open for discussion. “You’re not meeting this guy alone.” That had been the whole conversation.