Chapter 32
The Whitfield Foundation's San Francisco office occupied the sixteenth floor of a glass tower on Nob Hill that looked like it had been designed to make people feel small. Gabe stood across the street between Cara and Reagan, with a coffee he wasn't drinking and studied the building.
Wade's voice came through the earpiece. "Security desk in the lobby.
One guard, contract, not building staff.
Badge check for employees, sign-in sheet for visitors.
Elevator bank requires a lobby badge — guard buzzes you through.
Sixteenth floor is open plan with a reception area and a hallway to the left that leads past a break room to a records room. Keycard door."
"And we're getting through the keycard door how, exactly?" Gabe asked.
Reagan held up a plain white card with a faded Foundation logo. "Former staffer. Left last year."
Gabe looked at her. "Is there anywhere you don't know someone?"
Reagan considered this. "Not likely."
"When did you even get that?"
She scoffed. "You didn't think I walked three blocks just for coffee this morning, did you?"
Fifty-fifty that an old keycard still worked. Gabe didn’t love those odds. Not that they had a choice.
Cara waited beside him on the sidewalk, and she didn’t look like Cara. THer posture had changed. She even held her coffee differently, her grip delicate, the grip of a woman who’d never worked a day with her hands.
It was unsettling. And impressive.
And then, there was that ring. If it had been real, it could have bought Haven Cove. The town and the harbor. Gabe tried not to think about how it made his gut twist to imagine another man’s ring on her finger.
“The mission,” she said, not looking at him, “is the filing cabinet. Tom traced eighteen months of payments out of this office through shell companies. Graham’s signature is on the authorizing side.
But someone signed on the receiving side.
Those countersignatures are on the original contracts, and the originals are physical. In that records room.”
“So we photograph the contracts. Get the names.”
“And Tom does the rest.” She checked her watch. “We’re potential donors interested in the Foundation’s elder care initiatives. You’re the money. I’m the one who decides where it goes. Let me lead. And when I excuse myself—”
“I keep the guide talking.”
“As long as you can.”
“How long do you need?”
“Five minutes. Maybe less.”
She said it the way other people said, “pass the salt.” Like breaking into a locked records room in a building she’d never been in was just another item on the list.
“Wade, we’re going in,” she said. “Keep the line open.”
“Reagan’s in a coffee shop on the corner with eyes on the lobby. You’ve got backup. Go.”
The lobby guard didn’t look up from his phone. Gabe signed the visitor sheet—a name he’d invented that morning, a phone number that went to a burner Tom had configured—and the guard buzzed them through. First checkpoint, passed.
The elevator doors opened onto a plush hallway. Fresh carpet, framed photos, the hush of money that had been laundered into respectability. A young woman in a navy dress met them at reception.
“Mr. and Mrs. Calloway? I’m Jess. We spoke on the phone.”
“Jess, thank you so much for fitting us in.” Cara shook Jess’s hand with both of hers. “My husband and I have been looking at elder care initiatives in the Bay Area, and the Whitfield Foundation keeps coming up.”
Nothing to see here. Nope. Nada.
The tour was polished. Conference room, small library, a wall of donor plaques.
Jess talked about the Foundation’s elder care programs with the earnest conviction of a person who believed every word, which made it worse.
The programs were real. The good work was real.
And underneath it, Graham Whitfield had been siphoning money to fund a drug that erased people’s memories.
Gabe played the quiet husband—the one who let his wife do the talking but whose questions had teeth. “What percentage of your annual budget goes to direct services versus administrative overhead?”
Jess consulted her notes.
He thought of another issue. “How does the Foundation vet its pharmaceutical partnerships?”
Cara was asking her own questions—how were care facilities selected, what external audits existed—and each one sounded like due diligence and was actually reconnaissance.
Gabe could see it in how her eyes moved: cataloging doors, mapping the hallway to the left, measuring the distance to the break room and whatever lay beyond it.
Ten minutes in, she leaned toward Jess. “I’m so sorry—could I trouble you for the restroom?”
“Of course. Down the hall, second door on the right.”
Cara touched Gabe’s arm—the gesture of a wife telling her husband she’d be right back—and she was gone.
Gabe had counted time under pressure before—on stakeouts, in interrogation rooms, in the back of unmarked cars waiting for a signal that meant go. This was different. This was counting time while Cara was somewhere on this floor doing something that would get them both arrested if it went wrong.
“So, Jess,” he said. “Tell me about the Foundation’s governance structure. How does the board oversee disbursements?”
Jess brightened. Governance was her strong suit, apparently.
She talked about the board of directors, the quarterly reviews, the audit committee.
Gabe nodded. Asked follow-up questions. Maintained the interested expression of a man with money to spend and due diligence to perform, while behind his eyes he was counting.
One minute.
He could hear his own pulse in his ears. Low. Steady. Faster than it should be. The hallway Cara had turned down was visible from where he stood—just barely, a sliver of corridor past the reception area. Empty. Quiet.
Two minutes.
“And the elder care facilities themselves,” Gabe said. “Does the Foundation conduct site visits? Regular inspections?” He knew the answer didn’t matter. He needed Jess’s mouth moving so that his silence didn’t become a question.
Jess talked about annual reviews. Compliance standards. A pilot program in Sacramento. Gabe filed none of it. His attention was split between Jess’s face and the hallway, and the hallway was winning.
Three minutes.
A door opened somewhere on the floor. Gabe’s pulse spiked. Footsteps—but they went the other direction. A phone rang at an empty desk and went to voicemail.
“Are you all right, Mr. Calloway?” Jess asked.
“Absolutely.” He smiled. It was the hardest thing he’d done all day. “I was just thinking—my wife will want to see the financials before we commit. Does the Foundation publish an annual report?”
“Oh, of course! Let me grab that for you.” Jess excused herself toward a supply room.
Gabe resisted the urge to move—to walk toward that corridor and look for Cara, to listen for the click of a keycard or the whisper of a drawer opening.
Cara appeared around the corner.
She was composed. Unhurried.
She reached his side at the exact moment Jess returned with a glossy annual report.
“Sorry about that.” Cara said, her smile was perfect. “Shall we continue?”
They finished the tour. Cara promised to be in touch after she and her husband discussed things over the weekend. Jess beamed. The elevator doors closed.
Gabe exhaled.“Well?”
“That went well, don’t you think?” She responded brightly, still in character.
The code was clear. She’d gotten the intel.
They waited until they’d crossed the street and rounded another corner before she explained what she’d gotten: contract after contract—authorizing memos with Graham’s signature on the left and, on the right, countersignatures from corporate entities with names that sounded like they’d been generated by a medical thesaurus.
Meridian Health Partners. Cascadia BioLogistics. Apex Geriatric Solutions.
“Twelve contracts,” Cara said. “Six entities. Three recurring signatures on the receiving side. I don’t recognize any of them. Tom will.”
“The keycard worked?”
A smile ghosted across her face. “We owe Reagan’s contact. Big time.”
Gabe looked at her. The donor persona was falling away—the silk-blouse warmth replaced by something sharper and more real.
The fugitive, the baker, the flour-dusted apron and the cinnamon rolls and the small-town smile—those were the disguise.
This woman, the one who’d walked into a locked room and walked out in four minutes with twelve contracts on her phone—this was closer to the real her.
That terrified him. Not because she was dangerous. Because he was falling for someone he hadn’t fully met yet.
Cara smiled—a real smile, not the donor’s, not the baker’s. For the first time since the coast, they weren’t running. They were winning.