Page 62 of Undertow

"We're following leads."

"Right. Of course." Another beat — longer this time. "Have you found anything? Documents, records — anything I should know about?"

"We don’t work for you, Derek."

"Cara, I'm trying to help here. I think I deserve⁠—"

"And we appreciate that."

"Fine," he said. The warmth was gone. What replaced it was clipped, tight, the voice of a man adding something to a list. "Just — keep me in the loop. That's all I'm asking."

He hung up.

Cara stood in the bathroom for a moment, phone in her hand.

They'd made an enemy. She was fairly sure of that. A minor one — a bruised ego in an expensive jacket. She'd handled worse. Derek Voss was a footnote. A nuisance with a Wikipedia page and a grudge.

Phone in hand, she headed back into the main room. Tom was at the desk with his laptops, three screens glowing, headphones on. Elena sat at the window reading on Piper's phone, feet tucked beneath her in the linen jacket, almost smiling. Piper was beside her, showing her something on the screen, and the two of them looked — for a moment — like two people who weren't running from anything.

Wade and Reagan had gone ahead to the Foundation building.

Which left Cara and Gabe, walking out of the hotel into a Thursday in San Francisco. The Mission was alive around them: murals and coffee shops and people moving fast with purpose and people moving slow with none, and somewhere north, in a glass tower on Nob Hill, a sixteenth-floor office held the paper that could bring Graham Whitfield down.

The hunt was on.

32

The Whitfield Foundation's San Francisco office occupied the sixteenth floor of a glass tower on Nob Hill that looked like it had been designed to make people feel small. Gabe stood across the street between Cara and Reagan, with a coffee he wasn't drinking and studied the building.

Wade's voice came through the earpiece. "Security desk in the lobby. One guard, contract, not building staff. Badge check for employees, sign-in sheet for visitors. Elevator bank requires a lobby badge — guard buzzes you through. Sixteenth floor is open plan with a reception area and a hallway to the left that leads past a break room to a records room. Keycard door."

"And we're getting through the keycard door how, exactly?" Gabe asked.

Reagan held up a plain white card with a faded Foundation logo. "Former staffer. Left last year."

Gabe looked at her. "Is there anywhere you don't know someone?"

Reagan considered this. "Not likely."

"When did you even get that?"

She scoffed. "You didn't think I walked three blocks just for coffee this morning, did you?"

Fifty-fifty that an old keycard still worked. Gabe didn’t love those odds. Not that they had a choice.

Cara waited beside him on the sidewalk, and she didn’t look like Cara. THer posture had changed. She even held her coffee differently, her grip delicate, the grip of a woman who’d never worked a day with her hands.

It was unsettling. And impressive.

And then, there was that ring. If it had been real, it could have bought Haven Cove. The town and the harbor. Gabe tried not to think about how it made his gut twist to imagine another man’s ring on her finger.

“The mission,” she said, not looking at him, “is the filing cabinet. Tom traced eighteen months of payments out of this office through shell companies. Graham’s signature is on the authorizing side. But someone signed on the receiving side. Those countersignatures are on the original contracts, and the originals are physical. In that records room.”

“So we photograph the contracts. Get the names.”

“And Tom does the rest.” She checked her watch. “We’re potential donors interested in the Foundation’s elder care initiatives. You’re the money. I’m the one who decides where it goes. Let me lead. And when I excuse myself⁠—”

“I keep the guide talking.”