Page 52 of Undertow

Piper was on the couch, pre-calc book open in her lap, earbuds in, watching Elena.

Wade was outside checking the perimeter.

He’d been doing it every two hours since Piper arrived—a slow, deliberate circuit of the property line, the street, the sight lines to and from the driveway.

Gabe’s phone buzzed.

Wad:Dark SUV. 2 blocks north. Engine off. Sightline to our driveway.

Gabe took a sip of coffee. Set the mug down. Picked up his phone as if checking the time and typed back:

How long?

Wade: Unknown. Was there when I started this pass. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour.

Then, a second later:

Wade: Tinted windows. Late model. Professional.

Gabe showed the photo to Tom, who took the phone, glanced at the plate, and typed the number into a search he’d clearly already been anticipating. Ninety seconds later, Tom’s expression shifted—the tightening around the eyes, the fingers pausing over the keyboard. Gabe had seen that expression before.

“Rental company,” Tom said, his voice low enough that Cara and Elena couldn’t hear. “Corporate account. Shell company billing through a management firm. This isn’t someone’s cousin doing a drive-by.”

Elena had stopped eating. “What’s happening?”

Gabe kept his voice level. “There’s a vehicle parked up the street. Dark SUV. Do you recognize that description?”

The color drained from her face. Not slowly. All at once. “That’s—at the facility. After I got out. There was a car like that. Same kind. Dark, tinted. I saw it near the gas station where I called Sara.” Her voice dropped. “I thought I’d lost them.”

“You did,” Wade commented from the doorway. “They just didn’t stop looking.”

But the SUV wasn’t searching anymore. It was parked. Stationary. Engine off, lights off, pointed at their driveway. Watching. Which meant whoever was inside had already seen the house. Already seen the vehicles. Lights on after midnight. Movement behind the curtains.

Tom spoke first. “If they haven’t already run our plates, they will. They’ll have names in fifteen minutes, max.”

“If,” Reagan said.

“When,” Tom corrected. “It’s a corporate operation. Running plates is the first thing you do.”

Gabe stood up. His chair scraped the floor. Every eye in the room went to him—the automatic, gravitational pull of people looking for someone to tell them what came next. He’d spent twenty years in that role. The man with the badge and the plan. Right now he had the badge and nothing else, and the badge from tiny Haven Cove was useless against a SUV full of hired muscle

“We’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”

Wade slapped his thighs. “Second that.”

Elena hadn’t moved.

“This is because of me,” she said.

“This is because of whoever’s in that car,” Cara said. “And we’re not going to be here when they figure out their next move.”

“They must have followed me.” Elena kept protesting.

“Not necessarily.” Wade jumped in. “They’ve been looking for us since the minute we decided to find you. Would have happened anyway.”

The woman’s tiny attempt at a smile told him she wasn’t going to buy that. Not that she needed to. The priority was escape.

Gabe was already thinking logistics—three vehicles, seven people, routes, timing. But the math didn’t work. They couldn’t all pull out of the driveway at once. Three cars leaving a house at midnight wasn’t subtle—it was a parade.