Page 12 of Undertow

If Reagan only knew.

5

Tom's voice reached Gabe before he hit the bottom step down to the unofficial team's basement headquarters. The scents of flour and spices on the storage racks below melded with the more interesting aroma of take-out pizza. Pepperoni, if he had to guess.

“— fourteen shell companies, three of which were incorporated in Delaware the same week Elena Whitfield entered the facility, and I am telling you, that is not a coincidence, that is architecture —”

Gabe descended the stairs.

The basement hit him like it always did — low ceiling, concrete walls, the long scarred table, the whiteboard Wade installed when they'd insisted on helping Gabe find his brother. Cara had added a second lamp since the Blaire case. Piper provided the beanbag chair, and twinkle lights. Now the space reminded Gabe of a cross between a high tech crime lab and a teenager's bedroom.

The whole team was there. Nobody looked up when he appeared.

Tom had three monitors going and a fourth propped on a stack of old bakery catalogs. Reagan sat at the far end of the table with a legal pad, pen moving fast. Wade leaned against the wall near the stairs, arms crossed, mapping the room, cataloguing the exits, filing everyone's position. Piper was cross-legged in the beanbag with a laptop on her knees and a phone in her other hand, operating both simultaneously with the ease of someone who'd never known a world that required choosing.

Cara stood at the whiteboard.

ELENA WHITFIELD in neat capitals at the top. Below it, a timeline taking shape. Arrows. Question marks. Names he didn't recognize yet.

She looked up when he came down — sleeves pushed back, hair in a chaotic bun, eyes sharp with the focus she got when a problem had its teeth in her.

“You're late,” she said.

“I had a rooster situation.”

“Harold Bianchi's rooster clocked in at six forty-seven,” Tom said, without looking up. “Complaint filed at seven-oh-two. Resolved by seven-ten. You had five minutes.”

Gabe looked at him.

“I have the non-emergency dispatch feed,” Tom said, in the tone of someone offering a perfectly reasonable explanation.

“Of course you do.”

“Coffee's hot,” Reagan said, still writing.

“Pizza's going fast,” Piper added. “You might want to claim a slice before Wade finishes it.”

“I said I wasn't that hungry,” Wade said, from the wall.

“There's a difference?”

“Yes.”

Piper looked at Gabe with the expression of someone who had been storing this information for exactly the right audience. “He also reorganized the case files while he was waiting. Chronologically. Alphabetical within each date.”

“It was faster,” Wade said.

Gabe pulled out a chair, poured a coffee, and sat down. He looked at the whiteboard. Looked at Cara. “Tell me where you are.”

Cara told him. Briskly — Derek Voss, client, story about two-thirds complete. The man claimed his girlfriend, Elena Whitfield, 28, went from Pacific Crest Wellness Center on the Oregon coast, three nights ago in the middle of that last big storm. Voss says the facility called it a voluntary departure.

Gabe winced.

Cara caught it. “What?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If that’s true, no one will be looking for her.”

Cara smiled faintly. “Exactly why we’re considering the case.”