Page 40 of Undertow

Neither of them spoke as he crossed the floor and opened it.

Four photographs. Glossy. Shot with a telephoto lens from across streets and through windows, the kind of distance that said professional equipment and patient positioning.

Piper walking to school. Backpack over one shoulder, head tilted down at her phone, the crosswalk on Main Street.

Piper at the harbor. Sitting on the bench where she did her homework when the weather allowed, her face caught mid-laugh at something on her screen.

Piper through the bakery window. Behind the counter, backlit by the display case, handing a bag to a customer. Close enough to count the buttons on her jacket.

Piper from across the street. Walking. Alone. The angle was low, taken from a parked car, and the focus was sharp enough to read the logo on her sneakers.

No note. No demand. No signature.

“It was just here,” Piper said. “I came up from the basement, and it was just…here.”

He met Diane’s eyes over Piper’s head and nodded almost imperceptibly. Whatever it took, Piper would be safe.

He pulled out his cell. “First thing to do is tell your dad.”

20

Cara stood in the kitchen, relearning the geography of her own ribs, when Tom’s phone rang.

“Hey, Chief.” Tom’s voice was easy. Casual. Then he blanched, his jaw dropping.

Cara had seen a lot of people receive bad news—in interrogation rooms, in hospital hallways, in the quiet offices where handlers delivered the kind of information that rearranged your understanding of the world.

Phone still to his ear, Tom jumped up. The chair scraped back hard enough to hit the wall behind him. “What do you mean, photos?”

In the living room, Wade lowered his phone. Reagan’s fingers stopped on the keyboard.

Tom was pacing now—three steps one way, three steps back, the cable from his headphones swinging against his chest. “How many?” Not a question. A demand. “Where were they—at the bakery? On the counter? No stamp, no⁠—”

He pressed his hand flat against the wall. Cara could see his breathing change—shallow, fast, the kind that preceded either a very controlled response or a very uncontrolled one.

“Is she with you right now?”

A pause. Gabe talking.

He pulled the phone away from his ear. “Someone’s threatening Piper. They dropped photos at the bakery. I’m done,” he said. “I’m out.”

Reagan eased her computer shut. “Tom⁠—“

“I’m driving back tonight. I’m getting my daughter, and we’re gone.” His voice was flat, final. The voice of a man who’d already made the decision and was now simply informing the room. “I’ve got cash. I’ve got three IDs that’ll hold up to a traffic stop. Piper and I can be in another state by morning.”

Wade shifted on the couch—carefully, because of the knee—and said nothing. Reagan’s hand moved toward Tom’s arm and then stopped, as if she’d reconsidered.

“Get Gabe on screen,” Cara said. Quiet. Steady. “Meeting. All of us. Now.”

Tom’s hands shook when he opened the laptop and pulled up the call. He didn’t try to hide it.

Gabe’s face filled the screen. He was in the bakery—Cara recognized the back wall, the shelving, the edge of the big mixer. He’d moved to the kitchen, away from Piper. His jaw was set and his eyes did the thing they did when he was already three moves ahead and didn’t like any of them.

He looked at the group, looked longer at Cara—at the way she was holding her left side, at Wade propped on the couch with his leg up and a bruise crawling up the side of his neck.

“You two look like you picked a fight with a brush hog and the brush hog won.”

Under different circumstances it would have been funny. Under these circumstances it landed somewhere between affection and fury—the tone of a man who cared about people he couldn’t protect and was expressing it the only way his emotional vocabulary allowed.