Page 59 of Undertow

“Who says it’s on your account?”

“Gabe.”

“I’m serious. Who says⁠—”

“I’m not an idiot. I see how you look at Haven Cove. Like it’s something you’re building. And I see how you look at me, and it’s—” She stopped. Regrouped. “I’m not a reason to stay anywhere. I’m a reason to leave. Ask anyone.”

“I’m not asking anyone. I’m asking you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.”

“You really don’t.”

He could hear it—the door closing. The same door that had been closing since the day he met her.

“You don’t get to decide what my reasons are,” he said. Quiet. Not angry. Just true.

For every reason pulling him to accept the position, there was another pushing him away. Not Cara. But the job itself. The restraints and conditions. The rules he had to play by that Cara and the others could ignore. It was becoming a lot.

Cara didn’t answer. She turned toward the window. Somewhere ahead San Francisco was waiting with whatever came next.

Something had shifted, though. He could feel it. Not a resolution—nothing close. But the door hadn’t closed all the way. She’d left a crack.

He’d wait.

The hotel was mid-range Mission District—a narrow building wedged between a taqueria and a laundromat, the kind of place that had been a flophouse in a previous life and was now trying very hard to be boutique. Gabe wedged his truck into a tight spot on the street and killed the engine.

Neither of them moved.

The day hung between them. Corvallis. The drive. That unfinished conversation.

Cara had secrets.

He knew that. He’d known it for months.

It was so frustrating he could barely breathe.

31

The next morning, Cara gripped the dashboard of Reagan’s car. “If you don’t take that spot, I’m going to take it for you.”

“The Tesla has his signal on,” Reagan said.

“The Tesla has been circling for ten minutes. His signal is aspirational.” Cara pointed through the windshield. “Go. Now.”

Reagan cut the wheel and slid into the spot. The Tesla honked. Reagan didn’t look.

Thursday morning, San Francisco. Stores just opening, the Mission District shaking off the fog, and Cara was about to do something she hadn’t done in five years: dress a team for a con.

Not a con. An investigation. But the mechanics were the same—you couldn’t walk into a place and be believed unless you looked like you belonged there, and right now her team looked like they’d been sleeping in truck stops. Which they had.

They walked fast. Cara pulled Reagan into a thrift store on Valencia with good bones and fast turnover, and they talked while they moved through the racks.

“So walk me through it again,” Cara said. “What Tom found. I was too tired last night to retain it all.”

Reagan pulled a men’s blazer off a hanger, checked the shoulders, set it back. “Eighteen months of payments flowing out of the Whitfield Foundation’s West Coast office. Large sums—six figures, some of them—routed through at least three shell companies that don’t appear to do anything. No employees. No offices. No products. Just accounts that receive money and pass it on.”