Page 45 of Undertow

“And since then?” Cara asked.

“Nothing.” Sara’s voice barely held. “The call just ended. Mid-sentence. She said, ‘I hear a car,’ and the line went dead. I’ve been sick ever since. I don’t sleep. I don’t—“ She stopped. Breathed. Put herself back together with the discipline of a woman who’d been doing this alone. “I don’t know if she’s alive.”

“She’s alive,” Cara said. And meant it.

The people hunting her didn’t send surveillance photos of teenagers as leverage against a dead lead. You only threatened when there was still something to threaten for.

Cara asked the follow-up questions. Which Western Union branch? What time had Elena picked up the money? Had she mentioned any landmarks—a motel, a town, a sound that placed her somewhere specific? Sara gave what she could, which wasn’t much, but it was more than they’d had an hour ago. A town. A timeline.

Cara wrote her cell number on a piece of paper. Folded it. Set it on the table between them.

“If she calls again,” Cara said. “This number. Day or night.”

Sara picked up the paper and held it the way you’d hold something fragile—both hands, close to her chest. A lifeline. For Elena. Maybe for both of them.

Sara pulled her own phone closer. “I should take a photo of you. In case Elena contacts me,” she added quickly. “I could send it to her. Maybe I can convince her to get in touch.”

The offer lifted Cara’s spirits. That was a big leap from almost shutting the door in her face. Cara nodded. “A great plan.”

Sara snapped pictures of both her and Reagan. “If she calls…” she said.

But Cara knew the truth. Elena had called Sara. This was about Sara deciding whether she trusted Cara enough to contact Elena. Only time would tell.

Cara stood. Her ribs caught—a sharp, bright flare along her left side that she turned into smooth motion by sheer force of habit. She’d been hiding pain since before she could name the skill, and the body remembered even when the mind tried to forget. “We’re going to find her.”

She and Reagan were quiet on the drive south. The coast scrolled past—sea stacks, the flat gray expanse of the Pacific, the occasional small town that appeared and vanished like a passing thought.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. A photo from Piper: the pre-calc textbook propped open on the kitchen counter, a pencil balanced dramatically on top like a tiny fallen soldier.

Piper: Studying in protective custody. Dad says I'm not allowed to complain. I say this violates the Geneva Convention.

Cara laughed—actually laughed, a real one startled out of her by a sixteen-year-old’s refusal to let fear win. It felt strange in her chest. Good and strange, like a muscle she’d forgotten she had.

23

The refrigerator had been pillaged.

Gabe stood in front of it with the door open, conducting a forensic assessment of what six people—five adults and one aggressively snacking teenager—could do to a week’s worth of groceries in forty-eight hours.

“Somebody needs to make a food run,” he said to the room.

Cara was already reaching for her jacket. She slipped it on—carefully, left arm first, the ribs dictating the choreography even though her face said nothing about them.

“I’ll drive,” he announced.

She looked at him. He could see the argument forming—the reflex, the independence, the instinct to prove she didn’t need anyone adjusting their behavior around her injuries. But the ribs won. They both knew it.

The nearest town was the kind of place that existed because a highway ran through it. A gas station. A hardware store with a cat in the window. A diner that closed at three. And, improbably, a Thai restaurant wedged between a laundromat and a bait shop, its neon sign buzzing in the wet dark like a small, persistent miracle.

They ordered for six. Pad Thai, green curry, basil fried rice, extra hot sauce for Wade, and two orders of spring rolls because Piper had texted a specific request that included the words, LIFE OR DEATH followed by a parenthetical clarification that she was being "only slightly dramatic."

They waited in the car. Engine off. Rain on the windshield, a fine mist that turned the parking lot lights into soft, blurred halos.

“Elena’s alive,” Cara said. “And she’s somewhere on this coast with two thousand dollars and no one to call, except Sara. Who’s terrified and alone and sleeping with her car keys on the nightstand.” Cara’s voice had something in it—a thread Gabe recognized. Not sympathy. Identification.

He told her about his end. Ellie Torres was pulling security camera footage around Sugar & Salt—every doorbell cam, every traffic angle, anything that might have captured whoever delivered the envelope.

Tom had already forced his way into every relevant feed within an hour of seeing those photos, but found nothing—no clear face, no plate number, no digital fingerprint. Whoever delivered the envelope knew the angles. Professional. Patient. The same signature as the telephoto shots of Piper.