Page 73 of Undertow

“I can’t cover this.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Price was quiet for a moment. “For what it’s worth. You’re doing the right thing.”

“It feels right. I’m not sure it’ll end right, though.”

“I’ll add my prayers,” Price said.

“Appreciate it.” Gabe hung up.

As he headed back inside, Tom waved him over. “I’ve been running the metadata on the surveillance photos of Piper,” he said. He eyed the loft above. His daughter was asleep. Or pretending to be. “I finally got the timestamps and the geolocation trace. The photos were commissioned through a corporate security firm based in Minneapolis.”

“Whitfield has people in Minneapolis?”

Tom looked up. “That's the thing. He doesn't. I've been through every contractor on his books—he's got an outfit in Portland he uses for background checks, a couple of local PIs on retainer, and a corporate security guy in Seattle he calls when he needs real heat. That's his pattern. He likes people he knows.” He tapped the screen. “This firm isn't on any of his paperwork. He's never hired them. And they're the kind of shop that works for...” He paused, chose his word carefully. “Clients who want deniability. Tech money. Silicon Valley.”

Gabe felt the small cold thing in his chest that had been there since the Oakland lab grow another inch.

It wasn't that Graham couldn't afford this firm. Graham could buy the firm outright if he wanted. It was that a man like Graham didn't suddenly abandon his own vendors to hire a stranger out of Minneapolis to handle a sixteen-year-old girl in coastal Oregon. That wasn't how Whitfield operated. So far, the man had kept everything in-house. He used his own people.

Somebody else had commissioned these photos.

“Get some sleep,” he told Tom.

“I will when you do.”

He sat on the edge of the cabin’s second mattress—the one in a narrow back room behind a curtain that passed for a door—and put the badge on the nightstand.

The nightstand was a split-log end table. The lamp beside it was a kerosene lantern turned low, and the glass chimney threw a soft ring of orange light across the badge’s tarnished edge.

He thought about the chief application. Unsigned. Deadline passed now.

Becky Hammersmith’s warning: “If this goes sideways, I can’t help you.”

He’d spent years believing the badge was the answer.

He’d been wrong.

The answer was the people standing next to you. Or, as it turned out, the people stuffed into a two-and-a-half-room cabin on a gravel road on a cold Oregon coast, listening to each other breathe and pretending to sleep.

He turned the lantern lower. Pinched his eyes closed.

Lord, he thought, I hope this is the right thing.

Outside, the Pacific churned. The steelhead on its plaque watched him with its amber glass eye and offered no opinion.

He left the badge where it was and lay down.

40

Cara had made the call the night before.

It had been easier than she’d expected. The woman on the other end had gone warm on cue, because of course she did. The Ellison family could be a high-ticket admission. Cara needed another appointment ASAP. She’d be bringing her fiancé and the family’s attorney this time. Things with her brother had gotten worse. They were ready to discuss terms.

She’d hung up and sat on the sagging plaid couch in the cabin and felt Reagan watching her from across the room.

“You sure about this,” Reagan had said.