Chapter 43
"Door."
Gabe didn't say it out loud. His mouth shaped the word and his eyes held Cara’s.
The gunshot was still inside her head, a high, thin tone behind everything else. Whitfield was sliding sideways in his chair. There was a smell she didn't want to name — burned powder and something organic underneath. Derek was turning toward the hallway scream, the gun still in his hand.
From the corner of her eye Cara, caught Gabe's shoulder dropping into the angle that meant now.
She flew out of the chair and sprinted for the door.
Behind her — at the edge of her vision, at the edge of what she could process — Wade came off the wall. She felt it more than saw it, the way you feel a truck pass on a narrow road. Two hundred plus pounds of unfolding motion.
One of the guards went down underneath him with a sound she would still be hearing tomorrow. A weapon hit the baseboard and skittered.
Gabe was a blur on her left. Two strides covering ten feet.
Then the awful crunch of bodies meeting at full speed, and the barrel of the rifle swinging up between them toward the ceiling.
For one terrible second Derek's face was inches from Gabe's with no mask on it at all — just a man fighting to keep a gun.
The second guard reached for them.
Tom moved before Cara registered him moving.
Not gracefully — Tom wasn't built for it — but he came in from the side hard enough to send the man stumbling into the desk.
Tom, no. The thought arrived bright and useless, and then the guard's elbow caught Tom across the jaw and Tom went down.
The guard's hand reached for his holster.
Wade was already there. He came across the room in three strides and put the man on the floor with a sound that made Cara's teeth ache.
Her hand found the doorknob. Cool brass. Real. She pulled.
Elena was pressed against the opposite wall like she meant to push herself through it.
Hands flat on the plaster, face the white of paper.
She stared at the open door and the room beyond it — at Graham slumped sideways in his chair, at the blood on the mahogany, at the uncle who'd let them erase her now bleeding out on the carpet where his chair had rolled.
"Elena." Cara grabbed her arm. "Look at me."
Elena’s eyes found her. Slowly. Like surfacing.
“Which way out?”
Elena blinked. Then something shifted behind her eyes—the same thing Cara had seen at the kitchen table in San Francisco when Elena had said I need to walk back in there standing up. Not courage, exactly. Deciding.
“Left,” Elena said. “End of the corridor. Fire exit. It doesn’t lock from inside.”
“Show me.”
Elena pointed left and headed off. Cara stayed on her heels.
Behind them the sounds from the office were getting worse—something heavy hitting a wall, a man grunting, Wade’s voice low and dangerous—and then Gabe’s voice, clear and controlled, the voice he used when he was in charge: “On the ground. On the ground now.”
Elena hit the fire exit at a run. The door banged open into white coastal daylight and salt air and the parking lot where they’d left the trucks an hour ago in another lifetime. Cara pulled Elena behind the nearest vehicle and made her sit down.
“Stay here.”
“He’s dead,” Elena said. Not a question. Her voice was flat and strange. “My uncle’s dead.”
No point in denying it. Cara nodded. “Yes.”
Elena stared at the building. At the cream stucco and the wraparound windows and the tasteful bronze sign. Then she put her face in her hands and made a sound that wasn’t crying, wasn’t screaming, was somewhere in the territory between the two that doesn’t have a name.
Cara put an arm around her thin shoulders and guided her to a bench at the base of the front stairs.
Two cars pulled into the parking lot fast, no sirens, no lights. Plain wrap cars with Federal plates. The doors opened and four people in windbreakers got out moving like people who already knew what they were walking into. Becky Hammersmith had promised Gabe two agents. She sent four.
Reagan was crossing the parking lot at a dead sprint with her phone in her hand. She dropped to a knee beside Elena and looked at Cara. “Piper’s in Wade’s truck. Locked in tight.” She jutted her chin at the building. “What’s the situation?”
“Gabe and Wade have Derek. Tom’s hurt.”
Reagan was on her feet and through the fire exit before Cara finished the sentence.
Cara and Elena waited, Elena’s head against Cara’s shoulder.
In the distance, the Pacific crashing against the bluff.
Seagulls wheeled overhead as if nothing had happened.
Barely seconds later, two of the agents marched Derek out in handcuffs.
He stared at the ground, face blank, no acknowledgement of Cara or Elena.
No smile. No charm. The mask was gone and there was nothing underneath it.
Tom came out next, holding his jaw, one lens of his glasses fractured. He waved at them, then whipped out his phone. Calling Piper, she guessed.
Wade came out rolling his right shoulder. The limp was practically gone, amazingly, but a new cut above his eyebrow bled into his collar. He walked to the nearest SUV, leaned against the hood, and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them and looked at Cara and Elena. “You two good?”
“We’re good.”
Wade closed his eyes again, lips moving in a silent prayer.
Gabe came out last. He came through the fire exit with blood on his knuckles and his shirt untucked and the stillness of a man who had done exactly what needed doing and would feel every minute of it tomorrow.
He found Cara in the parking lot. Didn’t speak.
Put a hand on Elena’s shoulder, then on Cara’s.
Derek was by the federal car. One of the agents had a hand on his head, guiding him into the back seat. Tom stalked over. He looked at Derek through the open car door. “My daughter is sixteen. You sent me her picture to make a point. Now it’s my turn."
To Cara’s surprise, the agents backed away.
Expression still blank, Derek looked up at Tom.
Tom raised a bruised fist but quickly dropped it. “Nevermind. You’re not worth sacrificing my principles for.”
As Cara watched, Derek opened his mouth. Her breath caught. What could he possibly say?
Tom held up a hand. “You should not speak. Seriously. Don’t. I will end this conversation past anything your lawyers can fix.”
Derek closed his mouth. The nearest agent stepped between them and closed the door.
Cara watched the feds pull away. The Pacific kept breathing below the bluff. The bronze sign caught the light.
Elena was safe. So were the people Cara loved.
It was over.
She closed her eyes. Thank You, Lord.