Chapter 22
Reagan drove. Cara hadn’t asked her to—Reagan had simply walked to the driver’s side, and Cara had let her, because her ribs were screaming.
The ribs were worse this morning. Every bump in the road sent a bright thread of pain through her side.
Gabe’s posture had shifted when she’d reached for her jacket, the slight forward lean that said he’d wanted to help and had stopped himself, the jaw that tightened when she’d moved stiffly past him.
She didn’t know what to do with that. The protectiveness.
It wasn’t possessive—Gabe wasn’t wired that way.
It was something quieter and more dangerous.
She’d spent most of her adult life making sure no one tracked her damage—hiding the bruises, minimizing the limp, constructing a version of herself that didn’t need monitoring.
She wasn’t used to any of it—not the warmth in her chest, not the panic it put right beside it, not the terrifying implication that someone could see her clearly and still choose to lean closer instead of away.
She shifted in her seat. The ribs objected.
The coast highway unspooled ahead of them. Gray sky, gray water, the monochrome of the Oregon coast in January that made the whole world feel like a pencil sketch.
Sara Medina’s house was a small bungalow on a street that dead-ended at a bluff. Cedar shingles gone silver with salt air. A garden that had been loved once and was now merely maintained. Wind chimes on the porch that rang in a key sounding like loneliness.
Reagan peered over the steering wheel, studying the house. “Think Elena’s in there?”
“No. The woman we’ve been studying wouldn’t put a friend in danger that way.”
Reagan pursed her lips, nodding. “Yeah, that’s my read, too. Still, I think I’ll hang out here, watch the back.”
“Good idea.” Cara opened the door and slid out of the vehicle. She hurried up the front steps and knocked.
The door opened two inches. Chain on. One eye, dark and frightened, scanning past Cara to the street behind her.
“Sara Medina?”
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Cara. I’m a friend of Elena’s.”
The eye studied her. Cara held still and let herself be read.
She knew what Sara was looking for—the tells.
The suit, the badge, the polished confidence of someone who’d been sent.
Cara was wearing jeans and a flannel jacket and had a bruise visible above her collar, and maybe that was what did it—the bruise said what credentials couldn’t.
“No, you’re not.”
Cara tilted her head, probing the other woman with every sense. What did Sara Medina need to hear to trust her? “You’re right. The truth is, I find people in trouble.”
The other woman only stiffened harder. “Good for you.”
What was the key here? Cara lifted a silent prayer. Lord, let her believe me.
"Sara." Cara kept her voice low, unhurried.
"Elena was a patient at Pacific Crest Wellness.
She disappeared from their care three weeks ago.
The people who run that facility are looking for her—and they have resources.
Money. Reach." She paused. Let that land.
"I'm not with them. I'm trying to find her before they do.
And I think you might be the only real friend she has left. "
The eye held hers. Cara could hear the woman breathing—shallow, fast, the sound of someone recalculating.
"She's in trouble," Cara said. Quieter. "And I think you already know that."
The breath caught. The chain slid off. The door opened.
Sara Medina was small. Dark hair pulled back. Mid-thirties but wearing it like forty—the kind of aging that came from worry rather than years. She led them into a living room that was tidy, sparse, and smelled like chamomile tea and the quiet of a woman who’d been alone with her fear for too long.
She sat on the edge of an armchair. Didn’t offer them anything. Her hands were clasped in her lap. She pressed her thumbnails into each other—a nervous habit, repetitive, the kind of thing you did when you needed to feel something small and controllable because everything else wasn’t.
Cara let the silence hold. Rushing would break this. Sara needed to arrive at trust on her own terms, in her own time.
“How did you find me?” Sara asked.
“Elena’s name came up in an investigation we’re running. Your name came up connected to hers.” Cara kept it vague, kept it true. “We’re not with those men. We’re not with the people who hurt her. We’re trying to find her before they do.”
Sara looked at Reagan. Reagan met her gaze with the steady, unhurried patience of someone who understood that trust was earned in silence, not words.
Sara’s hands loosened in her lap. Just slightly. Just enough. “You want to know about Elena.”
“I want to know about Elena before,” Cara said. “The Elena you knew.”
Sara talked. The woman who emerged was someone Cara hadn’t met yet—not the ghost in the case file, not the patient disappeared from Pacific Crest, not the name on a whiteboard.
According to Sara, Elena Whitfield was brilliant. Top of her class at Oregon State. Double major, biology and art history, because she couldn’t choose and refused to be told she had to.
“She drove four hours once,” Sara said, her voice softening into the texture of a memory that still hurt to hold.
“I had the flu. Junior year. She drove from Corvallis to my parents’ house in Medford with soup and three movies and stayed the whole weekend.
She slept on the floor.” Sara’s eyes went bright.
“That was Elena. She just showed up. Always.”
“And then her mom got sick,” Sara continued, her voice quieter.
“Lung cancer. Fast. Elena moved home to take care of her. Dropped everything—the grad school applications, the apartment in Portland, all of it. She was there every day. Every single day, for eleven months.” Sara’s voice caught.
“And then her mom died. And Elena—she didn’t come back from that.
Not really. The light just... went somewhere else. ”
The room was quiet. A clock ticked on the mantle. Somewhere outside, the wind chimes rang their lonely chord.
Sara looked at her clasped hands. Then at Cara. The decision was visible—the moment trust tipped over.
“She called me,” Sara said. “Three days ago.”
Cara’s heart rate climbed. She kept her face still. Beside her, Reagan didn’t move.
“I think she was at a gas station—I could hear the traffic, and that ding when a car pulls in.” Sara’s voice was thin, precise. “I knew it was her immediately. Even though months had passed. Even though she sounded different. Scared.”
Cara leaned forward. Just slightly. “What did she say?”
Sara winced. “She was scared, and she needed money. I wired two thousand dollars to a Western Union. It’s all I could come up with that fast.” She gave them the town. A small place on the coast, south of them. “She picked it up that afternoon. I checked.”
“And since then?” Cara asked.
“Nothing.” Sara’s voice barely held. “The call just ended. Mid-sentence. She said, ‘I hear a car,’ and the line went dead. I’ve been sick ever since.
I don’t sleep. I don’t—“ She stopped. Breathed. Put herself back together with the discipline of a woman who’d been doing this alone. “I don’t know if she’s alive.”
“She’s alive,” Cara said. And meant it.
The people hunting her didn’t send surveillance photos of teenagers as leverage against a dead lead. You only threatened when there was still something to threaten for.
Cara asked the follow-up questions. Which Western Union branch?
What time had Elena picked up the money?
Had she mentioned any landmarks—a motel, a town, a sound that placed her somewhere specific?
Sara gave what she could, which wasn’t much, but it was more than they’d had an hour ago. A town. A timeline.
Cara wrote her cell number on a piece of paper. Folded it. Set it on the table between them.
“If she calls again,” Cara said. “This number. Day or night.”
Sara picked up the paper and held it the way you’d hold something fragile—both hands, close to her chest. A lifeline. For Elena. Maybe for both of them.
Sara pulled her own phone closer. “I should take a photo of you. In case Elena contacts me,” she added quickly. “I could send it to her. Maybe I can convince her to get in touch.”
The offer lifted Cara’s spirits. That was a big leap from almost shutting the door in her face. Cara nodded. “A great plan.”
Sara snapped pictures of both her and Reagan. “If she calls…” she said.
But Cara knew the truth. Elena had called Sara. This was about Sara deciding whether she trusted Cara enough to contact Elena. Only time would tell.
Cara stood. Her ribs caught—a sharp, bright flare along her left side that she turned into smooth motion by sheer force of habit. She’d been hiding pain since before she could name the skill, and the body remembered even when the mind tried to forget. “We’re going to find her.”
She and Reagan were quiet on the drive south. The coast scrolled past—sea stacks, the flat gray expanse of the Pacific, the occasional small town that appeared and vanished like a passing thought.
Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. A photo from Piper: the pre-calc textbook propped open on the kitchen counter, a pencil balanced dramatically on top like a tiny fallen soldier.
Piper: Studying in protective custody. Dad says I'm not allowed to complain. I say this violates the Geneva Convention.
Cara laughed—actually laughed, a real one startled out of her by a sixteen-year-old’s refusal to let fear win. It felt strange in her chest. Good and strange, like a muscle she’d forgotten she had.