Chapter 13
A couple hours later, Gabe had just gotten himself settled behind Tom’s desk beneath Sugar and Salt when Piper rushed down the stairs. She flopped down, cross-legged on the couch with Agent draped across her lap like a furry act of territorial sovereignty.
“Homework done?” he asked, without looking up from the screen.
“Mostly.”
He eyed her silently.
“The parts that matter are done. Pre-calc can wait. Pre-calc can always wait.” She scratched Agent behind the ears. “Besides, I’m the morale officer. And Agent’s head of security. We’re essential personnel.”
Before he could comment, the house appeared on screen—Cara, Reagan, Wade, and Tom crowded around a kitchen table with laptops, coffee mugs, and what appeared to be the remains of a cherry pie.
“Is that pie?” Piper said behind him.
“Focus.”
“I’m focused. I’m focused and observing that Wade got cherry pie and we got nothing. And we’re in a bakery. That doesn’t seem right.”
Cara grinned at the teen through the screen. “I froze a container of extra cookie dough. It’s on the bottom right in the extra freezer. Help yourself.”
Piper beamed. “That is so why I love you. Not the only reason, for sure, but high on the list.” She eyed the cat in her lap and sighed. “As soon as His Highness makes a move, I’m all over that suggestion.”
Cara went first. She walked him through the facility visit—the Ellison sisters cover, reception, the raised voices behind a closed door, then seeing Whitfield leave later and connecting the two
“And the liaison appeared within thirty seconds,” Reagan added. “Swept us outside for a tour like she’d been waiting for the signal.”
She told him about the tour—the guide’s rehearsed answers, the “guests” correction, the too-quick assurance that people could leave anytime. Then Pirelli—the bruise at his temple, the squash racket excuse, the way his eyes tightened when Cara pushed on information security.
“The bruise,” Gabe said. “How old?”
“Three, four days. Yellowish green at the edges.”
“And he said squash racket.”
Reagan made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a diagnosis. “The bruise was on his right temple. And the man is clearly right-handed. Unless he plays squash upside down, that’s not a backhand injury. That’s a fist.”
Gabe filed that. A doctor with a bruise he was lying about, arguing with Elena’s uncle. The math wasn’t hard.
“That’s not the worst part,” Reagan said.
“It’s not,” Cara confirmed. “He found us afterward.”
She told him about the café. Graham knowing their names—their Haven Cove names, not the Ellison covers.
The implications sat between them across two hundred miles of video feed.
She told him about Graham’s disclosure on Voss—the reluctance, the obvious discomfort of a private man airing family business. The cheating. The money. The way Graham’s composure had cracked just enough to show something underneath that looked like genuine grief for his niece.
“He was protecting her,” Reagan said. “Or that’s how he framed it. And honestly? Some of it read as real. The pain when he talked about what Voss did to Elena—that wasn’t performed.”
“Which makes him harder to read,” Gabe said. “Not easier.”
“Absolutely,” Cara admitted.
Tom reported next.
“Julian Whitfield was the architect,” he said.
“Biotech patents. Strategic investments. The man clearly thought in spreadsheets—brilliant, reclusive, almost zero public footprint for someone worth as much as he was. Graham is the front end. Boards, philanthropy, the Foundation, public-facing everything. Julian built the empire. Graham runs it now.”
“How big is the Foundation?” Gabe asked.
Tom paused—the kind of pause that meant the number would land hard. “Low ten figures.”
Reagan whistled softly.
“Elena sits on the board. Or sat, before Pacific Crest. And her personal trust fund is separate from the Foundation.” Another pause. “Nine figures. At least.”
Tom’s expression was grim. “Which brings us to our almost-client.” He said the word client the way you’d say cockroach.
“Graham was right about Voss. All of it checks out. Hotel charges under a second card. Dating app subscription active for the entire relationship. Late-night charges at restaurants and bars in cities Elena wasn’t in.
The cheating was real. Documented. Prolific.
” He glanced at Cara. “And his startup was hemorrhaging cash. Elena was the primary investor. Until she dumped him.”
“So Voss planned to hire us to find the woman whose money he was burning through while he cheated on her,” Wade said flatly.
“That’s the shape of it,” Tom said.
Cara’s voice was quiet. “Graham told us Voss was a snake. I didn’t want to believe him, because believing Graham about anything feels dangerous. But Tom just confirmed every word.”
“Doesn’t make Graham a good guy,” Reagan said. “Just makes him an accurate one.”
“Which is worse,” Cara said. “Accurate people are harder to dismiss.”
Tom’s voice changed—quieter, the way it got when he’d found something that bothered him more than bad boyfriends and burned cash.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “She hasn’t touched her money since entering Pacific Crest. Not one transaction.
No ATM withdrawals. No credit card charges. No transfers. Nothing.”
“She knows the accounts are being watched,” Cara said.
“That’s my read.” Tom agreed. “She’s hiding from people with the resources to track her through her own money.”
Cara and Reagan went next. They’d tried to glean intel from the locals, but hit a dead end. Pacific Crest paid well and the townspeople who worked there knew enough to keep their mouths shut.
“We tried everything short of bribery,” Reagan said.
“I considered bribery,” Cara admitted.
“The bartender at the inn warmed up for about thirty seconds,” Reagan said. “Then his manager appeared and he clammed up like someone had pulled a string.”
“Same pattern as the facility,” Cara said. “The silence in town matches the silence in the system. Somebody trained these people.”
Then Wade. He’d been sitting with his arms crossed, waiting for his turn.
“During the earlier recon with Tom, I spotted a groundskeeper at the edge of the property. Crew cut. Weathered face.” Wade paused. “MARSOC tattoo on his forearm.”
Gabe straightened. “Raiders?”
“Faded, but he wasn’t hiding it. I circled back alone. Guy was spooked—kept checking over his shoulder, talked in fragments. But he heard that a resident checked herself out a couple days ago. A woman, he thought.”
“Checked herself out,” Gabe repeated. “His words?”
“His words. That’s what he was told. Said people did it all the time.
” Wade’s mouth twitched—the closest thing Wade had to a smile when nothing was funny.
“Direct quote: ‘These rich idiots do whatever they want. One time some rockstar got ahold of a staff member’s cell phone and ordered himself a helicopter.’”
Piper snorted behind him. On screen, Agent’s ear flicked.
“So Pacific Crest’s story is that Elena Whitfield left voluntarily,” Gabe said.
“That’s the company line,” Wade said.
Gabe took a breath. “Here’s where the company line falls apart.”
He told them about the crashed car. Pirelli’s name on the registration.
Front end crumpled into a guardrail on the coast road, four miles north of the facility.
Driver’s door open. Blood on the steering wheel.
No driver found. State patrol had responded and documented the scene two days ago.
The report sat in the system like a flare nobody had answered.
The kitchen table had gone still.
“And Pirelli reported the car stolen,” Tom said. Not a question—an assumption. The logical next step.
“No,” Gabe said. “He didn’t.”
Tom blinked. Reagan’s mouth dropped open.
Gabe shrugged. “There’s no stolen vehicle report. I ran the plate, the VIN, his name. Nothing. His car was used in what looks like an escape, crashed on a public highway with blood on the wheel, and the man never picked up the phone.”
“That’s—” Reagan started.
“It gets worse,” Gabe said. “No missing person report for Elena Whitfield. Anywhere in the state system. I ran it six ways. Nobody has reported her missing. Not Graham. Not the facility. Not Pirelli.”
Dead silence.
“A woman steals her doctor’s car,” Gabe said, laying it out the way he’d lay out evidence for a case—because that’s what this was now. “Crashes it on a coastal highway in January. Bleeds on the steering wheel. And heads off into a storm. And no one has raised an alarm.”
Wade growled. “That’s some kind of crazy.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” Gabe agreed.
Even Cara looked a little dazed. “Absolutely.”
Behind him, Piper’s hand stopped moving on Agent’s fur.
“She’s out there,” the girl said. “She’s hurt and she’s alone and nobody’s looking for her.”
Nobody corrected her. Nobody could.