Page 56 of Undertow

Half a mile south, at the junction with the coast highway, two sets of headlights waited. Reagan flashed hers twice. All clear.

From the back seat of Wade’s truck, a text lit up the group chat.

Piper: For the record, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, and I will be telling this story at every family gathering for the rest of my life.

The caravan pulled onto the highway, accelerating hard.

Behind them, Cara pictured the hired goons. By now, they’d be running toward the rental.

The only thing left would be a cold grilled cheese on a kitchen table and the ghost of coffee.

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Reagan’s window was already cracked two inches when Cara got in.

“You smell like a bar fight,” Reagan said.

“Thank you.” Cara slid into the back seat next to Elena, who leaned away slightly, then leaned back. The denim jacket was stiff with dried rain and someone else’s cologne.

“Sorry,” Cara said to Elena.

The other woman gave her the ghost of a smile. “At least it’s not vodka. Vodka just smells like regret.”

“No joke.” Reagan cracked the window another inch.

They were an hour south now. Three vehicles in a loose convoy on a two-lane highway that hugged the coast like it was afraid to let go. Wade’s truck in front. Reagan’s car in the middle. Gabe’s car behind—alone, headlights steady in the rearview, windows probably down because the man still reeked of bourbon and campfire flannel and whatever had been living in that baseball cap. The Subaru was a memory—wiped of prints, abandoned at the junction with the keys on the front tire.

Cara’s phone buzzed. The group chat.

Piper: UPDATE: Wade won’t let Dad touch the radio. Dad is sulking. I am mediating. Mile 47.

A minute later:

Piper: Mediation failed. Dad now staring out window like a golden retriever who’s been told no. Wade unmoved. Will report further developments.

Cara almost smiled. But Elena was talking, and what she was saying didn’t leave room for smiling.

“I’d already left him.” Elena was looking at her hands, turning them over in her lap like they belonged to someone else. “Derek. I’d broken it off. Filed the restraining order. Pulled my investment from his venture. I was done.” Her voice was steady, but the steadiness had the quality of something being held in place by force. “I was free. Then my uncle called.”

She leaned her head back. “He said I sounded tired. He said—” She paused. Swallowed. “He said, ‘After everything with Derek, you deserve a few weeks somewhere quiet. I know a place. Let me drive you.’ And I⁠—”

She stopped.

“You trusted him,” Cara said quietly. “Because he was family.”

“He drove me there himself.”

“The first week was fine,” she continued. “Quiet rooms. Good food. Someone checking on me every few hours. I thought—I thought maybe my uncle was right. Maybe I did need this.” She turned her hands over again. “Then the injections started.”

Cara didn’t move.

“They said it was vitamins. B12, they said. For the fatigue.” Elena’s voice flattened. “But after the shots, the world went soft. I’d wake up and not know what day it was. I’d have conversations I couldn’t remember an hour later. There was a doctor—Pirelli. He smiled. He always smiled. He’d bring the paperwork and I’d sign it because I could barely hold the pen and I didn’t know what it said and he just kept smiling.”

In the front seat, Reagan’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“Whole weeks,” Elena said. “They’re just gone.”

Cara recognized the shape of the story. Someone you trusted. A door that closed quietly. The slow realization that the life you’d been living wasn’t the life you thought.