Page 65 of Undertow

Tom looked at Cara. Cara nodded. The truth was better than another secret.

"There's a payment," Tom said. Quieter now. Careful. "One million dollars, routed through one of the shell companies. Dated two weeks before your father died."

Elena didn't move. Didn't blink.

"Routed to an entity that doesn't appear to do anything," Tom continued. "It received one payment. Then it dissolved. No employees. No address. No purpose except to be a place where money went and never came back."

Wade, very quietly: "That's a hit."

The room absorbed it. Julian Whitfield. The patriarch who'd built the Foundation and run it with a conscience, then died of a stroke in his sleep. Everyone said grief. But the timing was ideal. Julian dies. The already grieving Elena inherits a controlling interest, but her uncle's got a huge stake, too. And the other board members tap him for Chairman.

Elena's breathing had gone shallow. Her jaw was working — the small, involuntary motion of a woman clenching her teeth against something that wanted to come out. Piper shifted closer on the couch. Not saying anything. Just there.

"Elena," Cara said. "We can stop."

"No." One word. Hard as glass. "Who made the payment?"

Tom shook his head. "Same walls. Same dead end. I can't see who moved the money. Yet."

He pulled up one of her scans — an invoice she'd photographed that afternoon, shipping records that had looked like background noise at the time. "Not Pacific Crest. A lab space in Oakland, leased by one of the shell entities. Materials moving from Oakland to Pacific Crest every two weeks for the last eighteen months. Chemical supplies going in. Packaged product coming out."

He turned the laptop so they could all see the address. An industrial district in East Oakland. A number on a street nobody in this room had ever driven down.

"That's where they made it," Reagan said. Not a question.

"The digital trail dead-ends at Graham. But a physical lab? Hard drives. Equipment logs. Maybe a paper trail that wasn't built to be invisible."

"First thing tomorrow," Gabe said.

"Roger that," Wade echoed. He straightened the blazer he claimed to hate.

Piper looked at Elena. Elena looked at Piper. Something passed between them — not words, just the silent agreement of two people who'd been underestimated by the same kind of men and were done with it.

Reagan’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it. Went still.

"Reagan?" Tom prompted.

She read from her screen. “It’s a text from Dr. Lafferty. Quote: Analysis complete. This compound is not a medication. It's a chemical gag. Whoever made this wasn't trying to help anyone.”

The room was very quiet.

"Tomorrow," Cara repeated. The word came out harder than she meant it. She picked up one of the cold coffees from the counter. Took a sip. Made a face.

Below the window, the trumpet player launched into something bright and jazzy. The cable car bells rang. The city kept moving, indifferent and gorgeous, and for the first time since Cara had walked through the door, the room didn't feel like a place where the ground had given out.

It felt like a place where seven people were deciding, together, to stop running and start hunting.

34

The address Tom had pulled from Cara's photos led to an industrial strip at the dead end of a street in East Oakland that time had forgotten and the city had stopped servicing. Six beige storage units squatted behind a truck depot, separated from the road by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire and a dumpster so old it had developed its own ecosystem. No signage on any of the units. No security cameras that Gabe could see — which told him more than cameras would have. Someone had chosen this place specifically because nobody was watching.

He killed the engine fifty yards out and let the car idle.

Beside him, Wade scanned the lot. He jabbed a thick finger at a middle unit. "14B. Second from the end, facing the canal."

Gabe followed Wade’s gaze, eying the steel roll-up door. It was padlocked, and there were no windows.

“One car in the lot,” Wade added. “Blue Honda. Three spots from the unit.”