Chapter 36
Tom worked in silence for twenty minutes, then forty, then over an hour.
Gabe forced himself not to hover. The man needed concentration, not pressure, but waiting felt like torture.
Wade had spread the satellite images across the table and was annotating them from memory. He marked the main building's position, the tower, the boat house at water level, working with the methodical care of someone who'd done mission planning before.
Reagan assembled sandwiches no one was eating. Piper dozed against her father's shoulder, exhaustion finally catching up with her. Cara sat beside Gabe, close enough that he could feel her warmth yet far enough to give him space to think.
The bakery remained quiet except for Tom's occasional muttered curse and the steady click of keys.
Gabe checked his watch for the hundredth time. Twenty-one hours and thirty-four minutes.
"Got something," Tom said suddenly.
Everyone straightened. Piper jerked awake.
Tom turned the laptop so they could see. Lines of code filled the screen, meaningless to Gabe but apparently significant to Tom.
"Their security system's old. Coast Guard installation from the early nineties, never properly updated." Tom's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Cascade Holdings added cameras and motion sensors, but they kept the original infrastructure. A serious mistake."
Wade leaned closer. "Can you access it?"
"Already in." Tom pulled up a new window. "Six cameras total. Four exteriors covering the approaches and perimeter. Two interiors."
Gabe's heart pounded. "Show us."
Tom clicked through the exterior feeds first. Grainy night-vision footage showed the access road, the parking area with three vehicles, the boat house from above, the steep coastline.
Everything looked empty and quiet, with just two guards visible near the main entrance, shifting occasionally against the cold.
Wade studied the footage. "Guard rotation pattern suggests four-hour shifts."
Tom switched to the interior cameras.
The first showed a hallway—empty, with fluorescent lights casting harsh shadows across institutional tile floors and concrete walls.
The second camera showed a room.
A figure paced back and forth, restless energy in every movement.
Gabe's breath caught.
The image was grainy, black and white, the angle wrong for seeing the face clearly. But the way the person moved, that specific restless pacing, the height and build, the gestures when he ran his hand through his hair—all of it screamed one name.
"That's him." The words barely made it past Gabe's throat. "That's David."
His brother was alive, moving, thinking.
Gabe bowed his head. "Lord, thank you."
Cara's hand found his shoulder. "You're sure?"
"I'd know that walk anywhere." Gabe's voice strengthened even as his eyes stung. "He used to pace like that when we were kids. When he was working through a problem. Drove our mother crazy during homework time."
David paused in his pacing and looked toward the window, like he could feel them watching.
"I'm on this, buddy," Gabe murmured.
Relief flooded through him so fast it made him dizzy. His hands trembled. His chest felt too tight to breathe properly.
David was alive—not just in a photo with today's newspaper, but right now, this minute, moving and thinking and waiting for the cavalry. Waiting for him.
"Can you tell if he's hurt?" Gabe forced himself to look clinically, to assess instead of just feeling.
Tom zoomed in as much as the grainy feed allowed. "Hard to say definitively. He's moving normally, no obvious limp or favoring one side. But the resolution's not good enough to see details."
Reagan moved closer to the screen. "He looks thin."
She was right. David's frame seemed gaunt even through the poor image quality. Three weeks of hiding and living on scraps.
Piper's voice was soft. "When's the last time he ate?"
No one had an answer.
Wade leaned closer to the screen, his attention absorbed. "That room's on the second floor, like I thought. Single door, probably locked from outside. One window, but those are storm-rated Coast Guard installation. Reinforced. Can't break them without serious tools."
Gabe pulled himself back to operational thinking. "Guard patterns?"
Tom toggled through cameras again. "Two outside the building. Changed shifts forty minutes ago, so they're fresh. Next rotation in three hours twenty minutes."
"Interior guards?"
"Can't see inside the building except this hallway and David's room. But standard protocol would put at least one guard inside, probably on the first floor near the stairwell."
Wade was already sketching. "Main entrance here. Single stairwell providing access to second floor. Fire exits north and south, but they'll be alarmed or blocked."
Cara pointed to the satellite image. "The covered walkways connect the buildings. Could we use those to approach without being seen from the tower?"
Wade studied the layout. "Maybe. Depends on their patrol patterns. If they're running regular checks..."
"They're not." Tom pulled up timestamps from the camera feeds. "Guards stay stationary. They're watching for external threats, not expecting anyone to breach the perimeter."
Wade nodded. "Overconfident. They think the isolation protects them."
Reagan refilled her coffee cup. "It has protected them. For thirty years this station's been sitting here. Who would think to look?"
Gabe stared at his brother on the screen, at David pacing his prison with stubborn determination.
I found you. I'm coming. Just hold on.
Wade pulled Gabe's attention back to planning. "We need equipment. Night vision. Communications. Body armor if we can get it. Weapons beyond what you're carrying."
Reagan pulled out her phone. "I might be able to help with that. I have a contact. He’s former Marines. Runs a security consulting firm specializing in equipment for people who need to handle problems quietly."
Gabe studied her, really seeing past the diner owner to whoever she'd been before Haven Cove. "What kind of security consulting?"
Reagan met his eyes steadily. "The kind where you don't ask questions and he doesn't keep records. I used him when I left Seattle, when my ex-husband's DEA connections came looking for me."
The admission hung in the air.
Wade's voice stayed carefully neutral. "Your husband is DEA?"
Reagan's expression went hard. "Was. Until I found out he was taking bribes to protect smuggling operations.
He was working a joint task force with Coast Guard.
Turns out, he was sharing intelligence with criminals instead of stopping them.
" Her jaw tightened. "I reported him. It cost me everything.
My marriage. My home. My career. But I couldn't live with knowing and doing nothing. "
Gabe understood that choice, understood the cost of doing the right thing when the system was broken.
"How quickly can your contact get us equipment?"
"If I call in the favor? He'll have it here by dawn." She held his gaze. "But this burns my emergency contact. I won't be able to ask again."
Gabe didn't hesitate. "Do it. I'll owe you big."
Reagan smiled sadly. "I don't run tabs. This is a freebie."
She stepped outside to make the call.
Wade pulled the satellite image closer. "We should hit them at dawn. Before they realize you're not leaving town. That way, they won't have time to move your brother or reinforce security."
Gabe felt his counter-intelligence training engage fully. "Agreed. First light gives us enough visibility to move but enough darkness for cover. What's sunrise?"
"Six-oh-seven," Tom said without looking up. "Nautical twilight starts five-thirty."
"Then we move at oh-five hundred. Get in position during full dark. Breach at first light when their guard rotation changes."
Wade nodded his approval. "Tom, can you map their camera coverage? Show us the blind spots?"
Tom's fingers flew. "Already on it." A new image appeared showing the station layout with colored overlays marking camera sight lines.
"These gaps here and here. The north side of the main building has a twenty-foot section with no coverage.
Probably where the old equipment storage was.
Never bothered installing cameras because the terrain's too rocky for normal approach. "
Wade sketched approach routes, marking positions and calculating angles with the ease of long practice. "Not too rocky for us."
Reagan came back inside. "Equipment's coming in two hours. My contact will drop it at the overlook north of town. No names, no questions."
Wade looked up from his sketching. "What are we getting?"
Reagan ticked off the items on her fingers. "Four sets of night vision goggles. Comms for six, along with full body armor. Two additional sidearms with extra ammunition clips. Breaching tools. He's including medical supplies too—field dressings, tourniquets, pain management."
Gabe nodded, trying not to think about the need for medical supplies. "That'll work."
Tom pulled up the guard rotation schedule he'd built from watching the security tapes. "They change shifts every four hours. Next change is oh-six hundred. That's when they'll be most distracted."
Wade continued marking his sketch. "We'll already be in position by then. Use the distraction to move closer. Breach when the new guards are still getting oriented."
The plan was taking shape—dangerous but possible, risky but necessary.
Gabe straightened. "Let's talk roles. I'm first in on the entry team. David needs to see my face first."
Wade tapped his sketch. "I'll take point, lead you in. I know the layout. I can navigate us through the building."
"I'll monitor from here," Tom said. "Control the cameras, watch for complications, maintain communications."
Cara caught Gabe's eye. "I'm coming with."
Gabe started to object. "No, you're not. You're—"
She cut him off. "You and Wade need someone watching your rears. Tom's got mad skills, but communications can die. Another set of eyes could make the difference."
She was right. He hated that she was right.
"Okay," he said. "But you stay behind Wade and me. Cover our retreat. Don't engage unless necessary."
Cara nodded.
Reagan looked at Piper, then at the group. "We'll stay here with Tom and help him coordinate communications."
Piper added, "And I'll monitor social media. If anyone posts about activity at Cape Mercy, or the cops start mobilizing, I'll know before the scanners do." She held up her phone, waggling it. "Gen Z skills, finally useful for something other than memes."
Wade almost smiled. "That's actually smart."
Piper gave him a mock bow. "Why thank you." She pointed at her notebook. "On a serious note, I've been documenting everything. Timeline, locations, all the evidence. With timestamps."
She shot Tom a look. "Plus I'll handle coffee, snacks, and making sure Dad doesn't hack into something that gets us all arrested before you even leave."
"Valid concern," Tom said without looking up from his laptop.
Concern darkened the girl's expression. "If this goes sideways and you need someone to tell the actual story... I've got it all written down."
Gabe felt something in his chest tighten. "Thank you. If we're not back by oh-seven hundred, call my friend Tyler Price. He's with the State Police and he's aware of the situation." Most of it, anyway, he reminded himself. "Tell them everything. Give him Tom's evidence."
Piper's voice turned fierce. "You'll be back."
On the laptop screen, David continued pacing back and forth, never stopping, never giving up.
They were going to do this, and it was going to work.
It had to work.
They had a location, a plan, equipment incoming.
And they had their Lord's protection, the only thing Gabe had more faith in than the selfless people at his side.