Chapter 17
Cara walked out through the Grill kitchen and didn't look back.
By the time she keyed the basement door, Tom was already pulling up records. Reagan had texted on Cara's way up the street.
"Give me one more sec," Tom said, not looking up from his monitors.
Wade was at the conference table with a phone to his ear. "— yeah, Stan. Same vehicle, same driver. Anything new since yesterday?"
Gabe clocked her mood immediately. “How bad?”
She pulled a face. “What’s the scale?”
He thought for a second. “Bug bite to nuclear explosion.”
Despite the hard lump in her stomach, that made her laugh.
And it reminded her. Everyone in this room, with the probable exception of Owen, had been through countless traumatic experiences.
And they had each other. She considered his words and thrust out her hand, waving side to side.
“Somewhere between a scary movie and an armed standoff. What’s clear is they want us to panic. ”
Skye scrunched up her nose. “Why would we do that? Everyone knows that’s the dumbest thing ever.”
Wade snorted. “I wish everyone knew that. Would’ve made my life a lot easier.”
Skye tipped her half-eaten energy bar in his direction. “Agreed.”
Cara took the chair next to her. Owen's notebook sat open on the table between them. One hand still wrapped around the energy bar, Skye held a magnifying glass over a section of Ray's spidery handwriting. Owen ran a pencil eraser along the margin.
"Anything?" Cara asked.
"Coordinates, maybe," Owen said. "Three numbers in a row that match a longitude format for the Pacific Northwest. If the next two are the latitude, we have a location."
Gabe’s head snapped up. "Where?"
Owen looked pained. "I'm not far enough along yet to say."
“Got it.” Tom’s hands came up like a conductor finishing a flourish and he swiveled around.
"The dude’s a total fake. This foundation,” he bracketed the term with air quotes, “has no Oregon Secretary of State registration, no 990, and no Charity Navigator entry.
The website was registered four days ago through a privacy-shielded registrar in Panama.
The phone number forwards to a Skype account. "
Cara set the card on the conference table. "They're not even bothering to hide."
Tom winced. “That’s a scary thought.”
Gabe moved from the doorway and put his hand on the back of her neck for a moment. She let herself lean into his warmth for a precious second.
Wade ended his call and set down his pen.
"Stan Petrosian at the marina office. I asked him to keep an eye on the marina’s overflow lot since this started.
He’s clocked the same vehicle rolling up between six and six-thirty.
The driver never gets out. Two passengers walk west toward town and return in approximately forty minutes. "
"Forty minutes covers what?" Cara asked.
"Sugar and Salt and back.” Wade answered immediately. He’d clearly already run the numbers in his head. “The Grill and back. The bookstore — Stan logged one of them ten feet from Beth's front display at six-fifteen yesterday morning."
Beth. Alone at that hour, doing her weekday inventory.
"Stan got a second plate that wasn't on the rental records I already pulled," Tom added. "Different vehicle, same shop. Dark gray sedan. Could be a backup. Could be a second team."
"Three vehicles," Wade said. "Maybe four."
Tom's laptop pinged. He looked at the screen, then looked up. "This is a dark-web channel I've been monitoring. I picked up a message." He read it flat. "The Oregon thing went smooth. No loose ends. Money's home."
Cara picked up the card, tapping the edge on the tabletop. A real foundation wouldn't have registered its website four days ago. "Two probes in one day."
"They're pushing," Gabe said.
Wade grunted. “So we push back.”
Skye’s arm shot up. “You get my vote, large person.”
Owen just looked concerned.
Cara met Gabe’s gaze from across the room. If she had to guess, he was thinking exactly the same thing she was.
The question was who got to control the narrative from here: them, or Neptune.