Chapter 5
Tom's voice reached Gabe before he hit the bottom step down to the unofficial team's basement headquarters. The scents of flour and spices on the storage racks below melded with the more interesting aroma of take-out pizza. Pepperoni, if he had to guess.
“— fourteen shell companies, three of which were incorporated in Delaware the same week Elena Whitfield entered the facility, and I am telling you, that is not a coincidence, that is architecture —”
Gabe descended the stairs.
The basement hit him like it always did — low ceiling, concrete walls, the long scarred table, the whiteboard Wade installed when they'd insisted on helping Gabe find his brother.
Cara had added a second lamp since the Blaire case.
Piper provided the beanbag chair, and twinkle lights.
Now the space reminded Gabe of a cross between a high tech crime lab and a teenager's bedroom.
The whole team was there. Nobody looked up when he appeared.
Tom had three monitors going and a fourth propped on a stack of old bakery catalogs.
Reagan sat at the far end of the table with a legal pad, pen moving fast. Wade leaned against the wall near the stairs, arms crossed, mapping the room, cataloguing the exits, filing everyone's position.
Piper was cross-legged in the beanbag with a laptop on her knees and a phone in her other hand, operating both simultaneously with the ease of someone who'd never known a world that required choosing.
Cara stood at the whiteboard.
ELENA WHITFIELD in neat capitals at the top. Below it, a timeline taking shape. Arrows. Question marks. Names he didn't recognize yet.
She looked up when he came down — sleeves pushed back, hair in a chaotic bun, eyes sharp with the focus she got when a problem had its teeth in her.
“You're late,” she said.
“I had a rooster situation.”
“Harold Bianchi's rooster clocked in at six forty-seven,” Tom said, without looking up. “Complaint filed at seven-oh-two. Resolved by seven-ten. You had five minutes.”
Gabe looked at him.
“I have the non-emergency dispatch feed,” Tom said, in the tone of someone offering a perfectly reasonable explanation.
“Of course you do.”
“Coffee's hot,” Reagan said, still writing.
“Pizza's going fast,” Piper added. “You might want to claim a slice before Wade finishes it.”
“I said I wasn't that hungry,” Wade said, from the wall.
“There's a difference?”
“Yes.”
Piper looked at Gabe with the expression of someone who had been storing this information for exactly the right audience. “He also reorganized the case files while he was waiting. Chronologically. Alphabetical within each date.”
“It was faster,” Wade said.
Gabe pulled out a chair, poured a coffee, and sat down. He looked at the whiteboard. Looked at Cara. “Tell me where you are.”
Cara told him. Briskly — Derek Voss, client, story about two-thirds complete.
The man claimed his girlfriend, Elena Whitfield, 28, went from Pacific Crest Wellness Center on the Oregon coast, three nights ago in the middle of that last big storm.
Voss says the facility called it a voluntary departure.
Gabe winced.
Cara caught it. “What?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If that’s true, no one will be looking for her.”
Cara smiled faintly. “Exactly why we’re considering the case.”
Tom pushed back from his desk. He caught Cara’s eye and motioned to his screen. “So far, there’s no report in the NCIC database.”
Gabe's instinct was not to know. The answer came anyway. “I have friends,” Tom said.
Gabe set down his mug. “It’s only been three days. It’s certainly possible the reporting agency hasn’t seen the need to involve NCIC yet.”
“Why not?” Piper asked.
“There may be no report filed. All we have so far is this Voss’s word the woman even disappeared.
” He began ticking the reasons off on his fingers.
“Or they figure they can investigate on their own first before they kick the case up to the feds.” He shrugged.
“There are a lot of possible reasons. All I know is, you’re not going to get any answers from this hospital. No way they’ll divulge patient info.”
“Right.” Cara bit her lower lip. “But I can’t help wondering if Elena’s out there somewhere. What if she’s in trouble and no one’s coming?”
She looked so worried and determined. He wanted to hug her, smooth the worry lines from her brow.
Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded slowly.
“It probably wouldn’t hurt to poke around a little.
Figure out if she’s even in trouble. If there’s nothing here, then you can back away. No harm, no foul.”
Reagan pointed at him. “I like your thinking, cowboy.”
“Let’s go through what we’ve got so far then,” Cara said.
Tom filled in the edges. Elena's name in Derek's startup founding documents — seed investor, her personal money. Funding round stalled eight months ago, just after she entered Pacific Crest. “Could be coincidence,” Tom said. “But I wouldn’t be on that.”
“Pacific Crest is private, isolated, restricted access.” Wade hadn't moved from the wall. “I've seen three operations like it. Two were legitimate. One was not. Either way, Gabe’s right. No way we’re getting any info out of them.”
“That they know of,” Tom muttered.
Gabe chose to pretend he didn’t hear that.
“Derek's socials are interesting,” Piper said. “Heavy posting, then it drops off and gets careful. The shift happens three months before Elena entered the facility. Whatever changed, it changed for him first.”
Gabe looked at Cara. She gave him a slight nod.
Reagan set her pen down. “So. Are we doing this?”
The room went briefly, specifically quiet. Not the quiet of people who didn't have opinions — the quiet of people waiting to see who said theirs first.
“According to the story so far, a woman left a medical facility in a January storm,” Cara said.
“She chose hypothermia over staying. Nobody official is looking for her.” She looked around the table.
“We're doing this. The question is what this is, exactly — because we don't work for Derek Voss. We work for the problem.”
“The problem being Elena,” Reagan said.
“That distinction's going to matter,” Gabe warned.
“It's going to matter a lot,” Cara agreed. “Which is also why you're here.”
That was the moment something else happened — fast, and from the direction nobody was watching.
A sound came from the corner near the stairs. Something between a chirp and a professional opinion. Wade turned toward it with an expression Gabe had never seen on him before. Focused. Assessing. Genuinely concerned.
Agent had appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
The cat surveyed the basement with the air of something conducting a formal inspection. Orange, sleek, carrying himself with the confidence of a creature who knew his rank in every room. He walked to the center of the basement and sat down.
Everyone looked at the cat. The cat looked at everyone.
“Is that the cat?” Wade asked.
“Agent,” Piper said. “He lives in the mudroom.”
The big man frowned down at the creature. Agent frowned back. “What's he eating?”
The question landed in a small silence. Wade was studying the animal with the same focus he'd given Pacific Crest.
“Whatever Cara gives him,” Piper said.
“I bought cat food at Pearl’s last night,” Cara said, from the whiteboard, in a tone that indicated this conversation was not on the agenda.
“From a can?” Wade frowned harder. Gabe hadn’t thought that was possible. “Cat food from a can is mostly water and filler. If he's going to be a working animal—”
“He's not a working animal.”
“He's clearly not a stray anymore.”
Tom turned from his monitors with the expression of a man who had identified an adjacent problem and felt professionally obligated to address it.
“Health department regulations on animals in commercial premises are fairly nuanced. If he stays out of the food prep area, the relevant Oregon Health Authority guidelines indicate that the situation is entirely manageable. I can document this.”
“Later,” Cara said.
“Noted.” He turned back. Opened a new tab.
Agent jumped up next to Piper, and settled in. Piper rearranged herself around him without breaking stride.
“He should get salmon,” Wade said, to nobody.
“He's already getting salmon,” Cara said. “That's the problem.”
The basement found its rhythm again. Tom's fingers moved. Reagan's pen moved. The pizza disappeared by increments.
Then Tom stopped.
Both hands off the keys. He stared at his screen.
“Hm,” he said.
Gabe knew that hm. Every analyst he'd worked with at the Bureau had a version of it. It meant this changes things.
Tom turned one monitor toward the table. “Elena Whitfield filed a restraining order against Derek Voss. Eleven months ago.”
Nobody moved.
Gabe leaned forward and read it. Didn't rush — restraining orders were the legal system speaking in its clearest voice. Person A said Person B is a threat.
The hair on the back of his neck rose. “She filed against him eleven months ago, and he didn’t mention it tonight?” He let that land.
“Maybe he thought we wouldn't find it,” Piper said. She didn't sound like she believed that.
“He knew we'd find it,” Tom said. “Unless he’s a complete idiot.” He raised an eyebrow at Cara.
She was already shaking her head. “No completely truthful. Obliviously. But no. Definitely not an idiot.”
“Which means what he needs from us is worth the risk of us finding this,” Wade said, from the wall.
Cara remained at the whiteboard, arms crossed, staring at the document on Tom's screen. Her expression said she'd already half-expected this complication.
“You can't find Elena for him,” Gabe said. “If you locate her and share that with Derek, we're potentially facilitating a violation of a court order. That's a clear line.”
“Not to mention our ethics.” Cara said it quietly.
Piper stroked the cat. “It sounds like Elena could use some help. We don’t have to tell Mr. Shady anything.”
“Nope.” Cara pushed away from the wall. “Plus we’re not a real agency anyway. Even if we agreed to help him, there’s no money exchanged, no client privilege to protect.”
Wade grunted. “Exactly. We do things our own way.”
Which had come close to giving Gabe a heart attack. Several times.
The monitors glowed. Outside, the January rain persisted.
“Voss is coming back tomorrow,” Cara said. “He doesn't know we found this. We need to decide, before he gets here, what we're asking him.” She looked at Gabe. “And whether we're the right people to be asking. Should we even dive into this?”
“Don't tell him until I check out a few things,” Gabe said.
“I'll run the protection order through official channels, check for related case history.” He looked at Cara. “And I’ll inquire into any official missing persons reports on Elena Whitfield. Tyler will hook me up.” His friend was high enough up in the Oregon State Police to have legit access to anything important.
“If anything changes the picture, you hear it first.”
Cara sent him a small nod of thanks. “And if nothing comes back?”
He looked at the whiteboard. ELENA WHITFIELD. The question marks.
“Then tomorrow we find out what he wasn't going to tell us,” he said. “And we go from there.”
Wade opened the pizza box, immediately snagging the cat’s attention, but the man waved him off. “It’s not good for you.”
Piper snorted. “It’s not good for you, either.”
Wade closed the box, folded the slice in one big hand and chomped off the tip by way of answer, chewing and swallowing with impressive speed. “The way I figure it,” he said. “We’ve got two decisions to make. Do we look for the woman? And do we tell this Voss guy that we’re doing it?”
“Exactly.” Gabe drained his coffee. Stood.
Nodded to the room — Tom, Reagan, Wade, Piper.
“If you want my advice, I think we stay on the case until we’re sure either Ms. Whitfield vanished of her own free will, or we know someone legitimate is searching for her.
As far as Voss goes, you should string him along for a while.
Get him to cooperate until you feel like you’ve gotten all the background he’s willing to offer. Nothing says you have to reciprocate.”
Tom grinned hard. “You’re a devious man. I had no idea.”
Cara walked him to the stairs.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to come tonight.”
“Yeah, I did.” Honesty slipped out before he could stop it.
Cara was trying not to smile. Over the months, he'd noticed she saved her real smiles for the basement—for those moments when everything was a mess and somehow they were all fine with it. She was more herself down here than anywhere else he'd seen her.
“Put Voss off until Thursday,” he suggested. “I’ll need time to dig into this tomorrow. You planning another session tomorrow night?”
“Absolutely. I have a feeling this place’ll be humming until we find Elena Whitfield, or someone convinces us she doesn’t need locating.” She tipped her head back, indicating the team behind her. “I think we all need this, even if it turns out to be a dead end.”
He studied the group. They’d become close quickly. His Bureau years had begun the same way—like-minded people pursuing good. Nothing wrong with that. Unless it killed them. Like it almost had, a time or two.
He climbed the stairs, shifting sideways as the cat streaked past. At the top, the bakery was dark and still, Diane’s station prepped for morning. The mudroom door was ajar—a stripe of warm light across the floor.
Agent was sitting in it.
The cat regarded him with the certainty of something that didn’t require outside validation. Then it looked past him toward the stairs, toward the sound of the team working below, and appeared satisfied with the count.
“Wade’s right. Stay out of the pizza,” Gabe told it. “Whatever the feline equivalent of heartburn is, you don’t need that kind of trouble, dude.”
Agent blinked once. Slowly. In the manner of a creature that did not take operational guidance from law enforcement.
Gabe let himself out and walked to his truck in the rain.