Chapter 31
The next morning, Cara gripped the dashboard of Reagan’s car. “If you don’t take that spot, I’m going to take it for you.”
“The Tesla has his signal on,” Reagan said.
“The Tesla has been circling for ten minutes. His signal is aspirational.” Cara pointed through the windshield. “Go. Now.”
Reagan cut the wheel and slid into the spot. The Tesla honked. Reagan didn’t look.
Thursday morning, San Francisco. Stores just opening, the Mission District shaking off the fog, and Cara was about to do something she hadn’t done in five years: dress a team for a con.
Not a con. An investigation. But the mechanics were the same—you couldn’t walk into a place and be believed unless you looked like you belonged there, and right now her team looked like they’d been sleeping in truck stops. Which they had.
They walked fast. Cara pulled Reagan into a thrift store on Valencia with good bones and fast turnover, and they talked while they moved through the racks.
“So walk me through it again,” Cara said. “What Tom found. I was too tired last night to retain it all.”
Reagan pulled a men’s blazer off a hanger, checked the shoulders, set it back.
“Eighteen months of payments flowing out of the Whitfield Foundation’s West Coast office.
Large sums—six figures, some of them—routed through at least three shell companies that don’t appear to do anything.
No employees. No offices. No products. Just accounts that receive money and pass it on. ”
“Dead drops.”
“Exactly. At the end of one chain, a payment to a lab supply company Tom thinks is connected to the compound.” Reagan held up a flannel.
Cara shook her head. “Graham’s signature is on the authorizing documents.
His office approved every transfer. On paper, he’s the man funneling Foundation money to whoever made the drug they used on his own niece. ”
Graham Whitfield, using family money—Elena’s family’s money—to fund the thing that erased her.
“But Tom can’t get everything from the hotel,” Cara said.
“The digital trail only goes so far. The corporate filings reference physical records—contracts, countersigned agreements, original memos. Tom says the kind of paper that proves who actually authorized what, not just whose name got stamped on a form.” Reagan found a charcoal blazer, checked the label, draped it over her arm.
“That paper is in the Foundation’s office. Nob Hill. Sixteenth floor.”
Reagan glanced at her. “Which is why we’re shopping at eight in the morning instead of sleeping like ordinary people.”
Cara pulled a sport coat off the rack. Slate blue, decent cut She tpictured Gabe’s shoulders and put the jacket in the cart without comment.
“So,” Reagan said. “Are we going to talk about it?”
“Talk about what.”
“The ten-hour drive down the I-5 with Gabe. The fact that you came in last night looking like someone had read you your rights.”
Cara studied a bright yellow tee shirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cara.”
“We drove. We dropped off the vial. We drove some more. It was scenic.”
Reagan stopped walking. Turned. Gave her the look. “Whatever you talked about, it clearly didn’t end well. I could read it on both of you in about two seconds.”
Cara said nothing. Examined a pair of boots.
“Fine.” Reagan grinned. “I’ll just make you do it later.”
They moved on. Two more stores. Pants, shirts, shoes—everything. Cara knew too well that clothes made the man when you were running a job. The wrong shoes, a cheap watch, a collar that didn’t sit right—any of those was a tell, and tells got you caught.
Five minutes after they returned, the hotel room looked like a department store had exploded. They’d brought new looks for everyone. Tom, Piper and Elena would stay back while Reagan, Cara, Wade and Gabe ran the caper, but she and Reagan figured they should all change up their appearances.
Bags everywhere. Tissue paper. Tags. Piper sat cross-legged on the air mattress holding a vintage leather jacket she’d pulled from the pile.
She’d paired it with a black tee and boots that had no business on a sixteen-year-old from a coastal Oregon town, and when she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, the grin that crossed her face was pure, uncomplicated joy—the kind that only happens when you’re young enough to believe that the right jacket can change your life.
Tom looked up from his laptops. “Absolutely not.”
“Too late,” Piper said.
Cara handed over outfits. Tom got a button-down with the sleeves already rolled. Piper studied him critically. “You look like a hacker cosplaying as someone with a 401(k).”
Her dad pressed a hand to his heart. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Gabe took the sport coat without comment. Tried it on. Cara had guessed the shoulders—it fit like she’d known his measurements. He turned, checking the hang of it in the mirror.
She busied herself with Elena.
The woman stood at the edge of the bed where Cara had laid out options and touched the fabrics one at a time. The silk blouse: too corporate. That was Graham’s world, the Foundation galas, the life she’d been erased from. The tailored blazer: too sharp. She flinched from it.
They went boho. Layered textures, warm colors, an oversized linen jacket over a vintage print—artist throwback, eighties by way of something older and softer. When Elena looked at herself, her eyes brightened for a moment.
Wade held his blazer at arm’s length like it was a dead animal.
“I’ll look like a realtor,” he said.
“Exactly,” Cara said. “You look like a guy who owns property and has opinions about interest rates. Nobody’s going to look at you twice in Nob Hill.”
“That’s because realtors are invisible.”
“That’s the whole point.”
Cara dressed herself last. She always did—you dressed everyone else first, because other people’s costumes required objectivity and your own required something closer to instinct. She’d picked her pieces without trying them on.
Dark jeans that actually fit. A charcoal V-neck, simple, expensive looking. Low-heeled ankle boots, black. She twisted her hair up off her neck.
She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror and stilled.
This woman looked like she belonged in a city—like she’d walked out of a meeting on Market Street and was heading somewhere better. She looked sharp, composed, and a little dangerous.
She turned back to the room and found Gabe studying her.
He didn’t look away.
She did.
While Wade wrestled with the blazer’s existence, Cara laid out the plan.
Gabe and Cara would scout the Whitfield Foundation office—find the building, map the entrances, figure out how to get to the sixteenth floor.
Tom would keep working the digital trail from the hotel, chasing the shell companies and the lab at the end of the money chain.
Reagan would work her contacts—she thought she had a line on someone inside the Foundation’s SF office who might talk.
Wade ran security. Elena and Piper stayed with Tom.
“All of this,” Cara said, “because somewhere in that office, there’s a paper trail that connects Graham Whitfield to every dollar he moved. And when we find it, we own him.”
Piper had her phone up.
Wade caught the movement half a second too late. “What are you doing?”
Piper’s thumb moved.
“Who are you texting?”
“No one.”
“Was that Diane?”
Piper put her phone behind her back. The phone buzzed. She glanced at it.
Wade, attempting to sound like he didn’t care: “What did she say?”
“She said you clean up nice.”
Wade’s ears went red. He did not take off the blazer.
A moment later, Diane sent a photo: Agent the cat sprawled across the bakery counter on his back, one paw draped over a cooling rack.
Piper turned the screen so everyone could see, and for a second—just one—the room went quiet in a different way.
Haven Cove was still there. The bakery was still standing.
The cat was still ridiculous. And somewhere on that coast, a life was waiting for them to come back to it.
Reagan crossed the room. Reached up and straightened Tom’s collar, her fingers lingering on the fabric. “You had a tag showing.”
Their eyes held.
Behind Reagan’s back, Piper mimed a heart with both hands.
Cara’s phone rang as they were cleaning up the tags and tissue paper. The screen read DEREK VOSS.
The room went still. Cara held up a hand and stepped into the bathroom, pulling the door mostly closed. “Hello, Derek.”
“Cara. Hi.” Warm. Concerned. “I just wanted to check in. Any news on Elena? Is she safe? How’s your team holding up?”
"Everyone's fine." Like he cared. "We're making progress."
"Good. Good." A beat. "And Elena? Any sign?"
"We're following leads."
"Right. Of course." Another beat — longer this time. "Have you found anything? Documents, records — anything I should know about?"
"We don’t work for you, Derek."
"Cara, I'm trying to help here. I think I deserve—"
"And we appreciate that."
"Fine," he said. The warmth was gone. What replaced it was clipped, tight, the voice of a man adding something to a list. "Just — keep me in the loop. That's all I'm asking."
He hung up.
Cara stood in the bathroom for a moment, phone in her hand.
They'd made an enemy. She was fairly sure of that. A minor one — a bruised ego in an expensive jacket. She'd handled worse. Derek Voss was a footnote. A nuisance with a Wikipedia page and a grudge.
Phone in hand, she headed back into the main room.
Tom was at the desk with his laptops, three screens glowing, headphones on.
Elena sat at the window reading on Piper's phone, feet tucked beneath her in the linen jacket, almost smiling.
Piper was beside her, showing her something on the screen, and the two of them looked — for a moment — like two people who weren't running from anything.
Wade and Reagan had gone ahead to the Foundation building.
Which left Cara and Gabe, walking out of the hotel into a Thursday in San Francisco.
The Mission was alive around them: murals and coffee shops and people moving fast with purpose and people moving slow with none, and somewhere north, in a glass tower on Nob Hill, a sixteenth-floor office held the paper that could bring Graham Whitfield down.
The hunt was on.