Chapter 40
Cara had made the call the night before.
It had been easier than she’d expected. The woman on the other end had gone warm on cue, because of course she did.
The Ellison family could be a high-ticket admission.
Cara needed another appointment ASAP. She’d be bringing her fiancé and the family’s attorney this time.
Things with her brother had gotten worse. They were ready to discuss terms.
She’d hung up and sat on the sagging plaid couch in the cabin and felt Reagan watching her from across the room.
“You sure about this,” Reagan had said.
“Nope.” Cara had looked at the phone in her hand. “But it’ll work. Graham won’t be able to help himself. He’ll come.”
That had been twelve hours ago. Now it was morning, and the team had been acting weird for ten minutes.
Reagan was arranging and rearranging a first aid kit that had been packed since last night.
Tom checked a zipper on a gear bag, over and over again.
Piper had announced she needed to take a very long time brushing her teeth.
Wade stood by the cabin door holding his keys and looking at the ceiling with the patience of a man who had decided he would outlast everyone else’s nonsense.
“What?” Cara addressed the room, finally.
Reagan zipped the first aid kit. Tom zipped his bag. Piper stuck her head out of the bathroom with foam at the corners of her mouth, looked at the room, then retreated.
Wade let out a sigh. He side-eyed Cara. Then Gabe. Then Cara, again. “You two, need a minute.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“A minute. Together. Talk.” Wade’s tone was that of a man explaining long division to a very slow child. “The rest of us will be outside. You two talk.”
“We do not need a minute,” Cara said.
“We’re fine,” Gabe agreed.
Wade pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not fine. Take the minute, or Piper will make you read her ridiculously long list of reasons why you need to talk.”
From the bathroom: “Ooh, I totally will!”
“Wade,” Cara said, “whatever you think is going on—”
Ignoring her, he opened the cabin door. “You have sixty seconds.”
Reagan swept past Cara with the first aid kit and a smirk that could have cut glass. Tom followed, his ears slightly red. Elena made it out the door with her face carefully turned toward the floor.
Piper was the last one. She paused long enough to mouth, “I love this for you,” at Cara before Wade shoved her gently through the door.
The door closed behind them.
Gabe fingered his phone charger. “Well, so.”
Cara shuffled her feet. “Yeah.”
Outside, Wade’s voice: “Sixty seconds!”
Cara opened her mouth. Closed it.
“When this is over,” Gabe said.
She nodded. “When this is over.”
Gabe reached for the front door.
Not meeting their eyes, Wade cocked his head. “In the truck.”
The ride to Pacific Crest passed in a silence nobody needed to fill.
Wade pulled the SUV into a fire road on the south side of the hospital property.
Tom and Elena slipped out. Elena had her hair pinned up to shave ten years off her face, a pair of drugstore reading glasses, and a patient ID lanyard Tom had cloned from the facility’s visitor system.
Tom wore the kind of uniform a maintenance contractor wore when he didn’t want to be noticed—gray work pants, gray jacket, a laminated ID on a retractable lanyard, a soft-sided tool bag over one shoulder.
They would wait at the service entrance until the food tray deliveries came through and the back corridors were busy. Elena knew the schedule.
Cara reached for Elena’s hand. “You know the way.”
Elena squeezed back. “I know the way.”
Tom and Elena headed for the woods. Wade pulled back onto the main road.
“Okay, Mrs. Ellison,” Wade said, looking at Cara in the rearview. “Show us what you’ve got.”
Gabe, sitting beside her in the back seat, reached over and took her hand. His grip was warm and steady. A feeling she could get way too used to.
She looked at him.
“Breathe,” he said.
“You, too.”
That made him laugh. “For sure.”
Wade rolled out of the vehicle, straightening his jacket. “Let’s do this.”
A different receptionist manned the front desk. This one wore her hair in a smooth low bun and a smile that had been installed at the same time as the fresh flowers. She stood up when the three of them came through the door.
“Ms. Ellison,” she said, warmly, but it was recognition by file, not by face. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you.” The Ellison voice came back effortlessly—a little breathy at the edges, the cadence of a woman who carried a recognizable last name and had learned to carry it lightly. She introduced Gabe as her fiancé and Wade as their family attorney.
"Of course. I have you down for eleven with Dr. Meyers.
" The receptionist's fingers tapped her keyboard.
Her smile flickered. The flicker was the tell.
"Although—one moment. It looks like Mr. Whitfield has asked to greet you before your consult begins.
He sits on our Foundation board, and he's on-site this morning.
He likes to introduce himself personally when a family is considering the facility for someone they love. "
"How thoughtful," Cara said.
Wade's jaw ticked. Nothing a stranger would read.
The receptionist led them down a hallway Cara had walked before, past abstract watercolors Cara had priced before, to a door Cara had not been through before.
A private consult room. Leather chairs. A low table with a pitcher of cucumber water.
A wall of windows overlooking the coastal gardens.
Everything was calibrated to make a family with a recognizable last name feel at home.
Cara sat. Gabe sat. Wade took the chair angled toward the door, which was the chair you took when you were playing the attorney but thinking like the security.
The receptionist closed the door behind her.
"He bit," Wade said quietly.
It was the possibility they'd built the day around. The Ellison name was bait Graham wouldn't leave sitting on the hook for long—if he was anywhere on the property, he'd find a reason to look in. They had planned for it. They hadn't known. Until now.
Her phone buzzed once against her thigh. Elena.
In. Heading to the room.
Cara slipped the phone back into her jacket.
She did not smile. She arranged her face into the one Ms. Ellison wore when she was worried about David and grateful for the privacy of the facility and prepared to write a very large check.
Gabe, beside her, had gone perfectly still—the still he went when there was work to be done and he was the man to do it. Wade watched the door.
They waited. Two hallways over, Elena would be escorting Tom toward the server room. Somewhere on the grounds, a set of FBI agents in an unmarked car was pretending to eat bagels and watch their phones.
Cara took Gabe's hand again. This time she didn't let go.
The door opened.
Graham Whitfield came through it wearing a cashmere sport coat and a sad smile, closing the door behind him with the easy authority of a man whose name appeared on the donor wall in the lobby and who was used to being deferred to in every room of this place.
He looked at Wade, and Wade's manufactured boredom, and then at Gabe, and Gabe's cover-man stillness, and finally, with all the time in the world, at Cara.
"Ms. Sweet," he said. He couldn't help it. He wanted her to know he'd seen her from a mile off.
He sat down in the leather chair across from her and crossed one leg over the other. "So. Here we are."