Page 47 of Undertow

“I didn’t ask you to take leave. I didn’t ask you to give up the application. I didn’t ask you to⁠—”

“I know what you didn’t ask, Cara. I’m asking what you want.”

“What I want,” she said carefully, “is to find Elena Whitfield before someone else does. That’s what I want right now.”

The woman from the restaurant waved at them from the doorway. The food was ready.

Gabe got out. Paid. Loaded the bags into the back seat. Cara didn’t move. When he got back behind the wheel, neither of them spoke. The drive back took twelve minutes. It felt longer.

They came through the door with Thai food and a silence the whole room could read. Tom glanced up from his screens. Reagan looked at Cara, then at Gabe, then went to get plates with the diplomatic efficiency of a woman who knew when not to ask questions.

They ate. The mood was flat. Piper was the only one unaffected—she ate her spring rolls with the focused satisfaction of a teenager who’d gotten exactly what she’d ordered and lacked the years to absorb the emotional weather of a room full of frustrated adults.

Gabe ran through what they had. It didn’t take long, because what they had was almost nothing. Elena alive but unfindable. The Western Union a dead end—fake name, overwritten cameras. The Piper photos untraceable—Ellie was still working the official channels, but Tom’s quick headshake when Gabe mentioned it confirmed what he already knew. The trailhead trap leading nowhere. Pirelli’s phone still dark. The burner still silent.

Every thread they pulled had gone cold.

The frustration in the room had weight—Tom’s sharp typing, Cara’s rigid posture by the window, Wade’s too-still presence on the couch. Six people with skills and training and the restlessness of humans built for action with nowhere to aim it.

Wade set down his fork. "The crash site," he said. "Where they found Pirelli's car. After Elena took it."

The room waited.

"We've been chasing her digitally. But she crashed that car and walked away from it, injured or not, in the middle of the night. Wherever she went next, it started there." He shifted his leg off the pillows. Testing it. "I want to walk the ground. See what's within range — on foot, in the dark, for a woman running scared. "

“I’m going with you,” Cara said.

Gabe looked past them, out the kitchen window. Full dark. Oregon coast in January dark, which wasn’t just the absence of light. It was a thing with presence, black, and wet, and deep, and hostile to anyone trying to find anything in it.

“In the morning,” he said.

Cara turned. “We’ve already lost three days. Elena’s out there right now, tonight, with nothing⁠—”

“And you’ve got bruised ribs and Wade’s got a knee held together with dental floss. Going out in the dark on roads you don’t know is how people end up in ditches, not how people get found.”

“Gabe—”

“He’s right.” Reagan. Calm, practical, immovable. “First light gives you visibility, open businesses, people who might actually talk to you. Going out now gives you nothing but risk.”

Cara and Wade exchanged a look—the shared language of two people who ran toward problems and did not enjoy being told to wait. Wade’s jaw was set. Cara’s arms were crossed. The combined stubbornness in the room could have powered a small generator.

From the couch, Piper spoke. She hadn’t looked up from her textbook. “You can’t find someone in the dark. That’s not even a strategy, that’s just driving around being frustrated in a car instead of being frustrated in a house.” She turned a page. “At least here there are leftovers. And I may or may not have hidden the last quart of cookie dough ice cream behind that desiccated salmon in the freezer.”

The room was quiet for a beat. Then Wade made a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been so tired.

Cara looked at Gabe. The argument from the parking lot was still in her eyes—the door that had closed, the word she hadn’t said. But this was different. Tactical, not personal. And she was smart enough to know the difference, even when everything inside her wanted to blur it.

“Fine,” she said. “First light.”

“First light,” Wade agreed.

The house settled. Tom went back to his screens. Reagan cleaned up with quiet purpose. Piper closed her textbook and curled up on the end of the couch, asleep within ten minutes. Wade covered her with the blanket from the back of the couch

Gabe stepped out onto the porch.

Behind him, the house glowed. Tom at his screens. Reagan organizing something. Wade checking routes for the morning. And Cara—somewhere in there, not looking at him. Which said everything.

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