Page 69 of Undertow

Elena straightened. “I know the way in. The administrative wing shares a wall with the day rooms in the west unit. There’s a door between them. The door locks from the administrative side but not from the patient side, because fire code.” She paused. “I walked that hallway every morning until they started increasing my doses. I know which offices are which. I know where the server room is.”

“Elena—” Cara began.

But Elena held up a pale hand. “I know what you’re going to say. I’m the victim. I’m a liability.” She leaned forward now, buzzing with renewed energy. “I know the risks. I also know the building. You can guess which hallways connect to which, or I can guide Tom straight to the room.”

“Elena.” Gabe kept his voice gentle. “I’ve done infiltrations. Lots of them. What you’re describing is not⁠—”

“I know where the server room is.” Her head came up. The eyes that had been far away for three days were steady now. “I know which doors lock from which side. I need this.”

She made eye contact with every one of them in turn. “I need to take my power back. You don’t get to make me a victim twice by taking this away from me.”

A really excellent point.

It was Tom who broke the silence. He’d been quiet the whole conversation—unusual for Tom, who liked to think out loud. Now he looked up from his screens and said, “She goes.”

Two words. No argument. No qualification.

Cara let out a breath. “She goes.”

Elena’s shoulders came down half an inch. Just that. But Gabe watched it happen and thought: There she is.

“Okay,” Gabe said. “Elena takes Tom to the server room. That’s the play. Everything else is about getting them to that door and getting them out again.”

They worked the plan for an hour. Who went in, who stayed out. Wade on the perimeter. Cara with Tom and Elena inside—two adults, one of them the most persuasive liar on the team, because if they got stopped, they’d need someone who could sell a cover story fast. Reagan outside with Piper, managing comms and exfil. Ready to run as far and fast as possible to get the teen to safety, if necessary. She and Piper would be the only ones with a rock-solid exit strategy.

Gabe would coordinate with law enforcement.

Which brought them to the other piece.

“We need the FBI there,” he said. “The actual FBI. Not Graham’s FBI friends.”

“You still have a reliable contact?” Reagan asked.

“I do.”

He didn’t elaborate. He’d been a Bureau man for almost two decades. You accumulated people over that long—agents who owed you something, agents you’d done right by, agents who’d seen the work you did and remembered. He had one in the Sacramento field office who’d worked a trafficking case with him eight years ago and had been telling him to call her ever since. This would be the call. Probably the last one his badge-adjacent reputation would buy him.

He didn’t say any of that. He said, “I’ll reach out tonight. If she’s in, we have backup.”

“And if she’s out?” Wade asked.

“Then we go in anyway, and we hope the evidence is loud enough that the FBI shows up on its own.”

Nobody liked that answer. Nobody offered a better one.

They broke up around one in the morning. Tom went to the pullout couch. Reagan got Piper upright and walked her toward the second bedroom without waking her fully—the kid mumbled something and let herself be steered. Wade took a pillow and a blanket to the living room floor. Elena went back to the bedroom with the fire escape, and for the first time in two days, she didn’t close the door completely.

Gabe stayed at the kitchen table.

Cara stayed too.

She was standing at the windows, looking out at the dark Mission. The streetlights turned her reflection into a ghost on the glass—a woman with her arms wrapped around her sore ribs, like she was holding something inside her by physical force.

As if she felt him watching her, she turned from the window. Their eyes met across the room. He didn’t smile. She didn’t either. But neither of them looked away, and for the first time since this crazy trip started, something that wasn’t a wall passed between them.

Then she nodded. Once. Like she’d felt it, too.

She went to the couch.