Page 35 of Undertow

Cara got in the car. Wade pulled onto the highway without turning on the headlights. The darkness swallowed them.

17

The trailhead was a gravel rectangle carved into the hillside above the coast highway, unlit, unmarked except for a wooden post with a faded trail map under cracked plastic. Cara and Wade had been in position for forty minutes—bellied down in the wet scrub twenty yards upslope, rain soaking through their jackets, the Pacific a dull roar somewhere below the tree line.

Wade didn’t move. Cara had learned this about him during the Blaire Mitchell case, and it hadn’t stopped being unnerving.

She checked the time. The text had said after dark. Dark had arrived an hour ago.

Tom’s voice in her earpiece, barely above a whisper: “Burner just pinged a tower two miles south. Moving your direction.”

Headlights on the highway. A SUV pulled into the parking area. The headlights swept the gravel and went dark. The driver’s door opened.

Pirelli. She recognized him from the facility—the slim build, the careful posture. He stepped out and checked his phone. Paced. Checked it again. His breath made small clouds in the cold air. He was scared.

Three minutes. Five. Pirelli paced a tight circle, gravel crunching under his shoes.

Then: a second vehicle. This one came from the north—no headlights, engine idling low. It parked at the far edge of the lot. The driver stayed inside. A figure climbed out of the passenger side—tall, moving with purpose, face hidden under a hood.

Cara focused. Beside her, Wade shifted his weight half an inch. His version of going on alert.

The hooded figure crossed the lot toward Pirelli. Pirelli stepped forward, hands out, already talking—his voice carrying in fragments on the wind. Cara caught pieces.

“She took…”

“Can’t find…”

And then the word that made everything click: “Vial.”

Wade’s hand closed on her arm.

Not a signal. A warning.

Two figures materialized from the tree line on the far side of the lot. They hadn’t been there three seconds ago. They didn’t close on Pirelli. They fanned out, scanning the perimeter.

Looking for watchers.

“Go!” Wade shoved her sideways and down.

She went—rolling off the ridge of scrub and onto the muddy slope below, gravity and wet earth doing the work. Behind her, she heard the sound of impact—body against body—and Wade’s single sharp exhale as he took on the first man.

Cara hit the bottom of the slope on her hands and knees. Pine needles. Mud. The smell of wet earth and something metallic—adrenaline, maybe, or blood. She got her feet under her and ran.

Not toward the car. Away. Into the trees.

Behind her, footsteps. Heavy. Fast. The second man, crashing through the underbrush.

The slope dropped sharply to her left. The drop led to a creek bed. Rocks. Running water. Noise.

She slid down the slope on her hip, mud and gravel tearing through her jacket, and hit the creek bed hard. The water was shin-deep and brutally cold. She gasped but kept moving—downstream, fast, using the water noise to mask her footsteps and the creek stones to leave no tracks.

Behind her, the footsteps stopped. He’d lost her line.

She pressed herself flat against the creek bank—a cutout where the winter water had eroded a shelf of earth and roots. Chest-deep in the creek, water pushing against her legs, the cold already numbing her fingers. She went still. Every muscle locked.

He came to the edge of the slope. She could hear him—breathing hard, scanning, flashlight beam cutting through the rain and the dark. The beam swept the creek. Passed over the cutout where she pressed against the root wall. Moved on.

He stepped down toward the water.