The Nightmare Thief
The Nightmare Thief
Meg Gardiner
In the California wilderness no one can hear you scream.San Francisco Forensic Psychiatrist Jo Beckett doesn’t dissect the body or the crime scene – she dissects a life and a mind, recreating the victim as a person, piecing together the story of their death to get to the truth. And then she goes after the killer.Autumn Reiniger wants something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy’s bought her the car and the apartment, but now she wants excitement. And what Autumn desires, she gets.Her father signs-up her and five friends for an ultimate urban reality game. ‘Edge Adventures’ alert the SF police that a ‘crime situation’ is underway, so the authorities will ignore any squealing tires or desperate cries for help.Then – when working on a case nearby – Jo Beckett encounters a group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a wilderness adventure. Suspicious, she takes a closer look. And winds up with an invite to a birthday party she may never leave …
The Nightmare Thief
Meg Gardiner
Dedication (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
For Nancy Fraser
Contents
Cover (#u6670ac7d-8d45-58da-9760-f4a698a89a04)
Title Page (#ub4d4ef11-0350-569e-9870-97604d4f64d8)
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Meg Gardiner
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The young trader stumbled from the trees like a scarecrow running on legs of straw. Her suit was muddy, her blouse torn, her sleek Asian hair matted with pine needles. She ran into the street directly in front of Autumn Reiniger’s BMW.
Autumn braked. “Oh, man.”
The trader glanced at her but didn’t break stride. With one arm she clutched a battered lockbox. The other arm she cradled to her chest, protecting what looked to Autumn like a broken wrist.
This was the place. Fun city.
The trader ran across the street to the driveway of Peter Reiniger’s palatial home. She was the last to emerge from the eucalyptus grove at the edge of the Presidio. The others huddled on the driveway. Beside them, Reiniger sat on the tailgate of a Mercedes SUV.
Autumn got out of her car. She took a step, but Reiniger gestured for her to stay put.
The trader swayed to a stop. Nakamura, that was her name— Autumn recognized her from one of her father’s glossy corporate brochures. Chest heaving, the woman dropped to her knees.
She set down the lockbox. After long seconds she raised her gaze to Reiniger.
Her silence made Autumn’s skin tingle. Nakamura was controlling pain and raw emotion. And she was unintimidated—it was stirring. She knelt on the driveway, black hair falling across her face, and she held Peter Reiniger’s gaze. With her good arm she fumbled open the lockbox. Inside, hundreds of multicarat stones glittered like tears.
“I win,” she said.
A hush pressed upon the street. Birdsong, wind through the trees, traffic down the hill along the San Francisco waterfront, all ebbed. Reiniger climbed off the tailgate.
“And?” he said.
She dug her hand into the stones and clutched a fistful. “Ransom my team.”
The people huddled around the SUV cheered. Nakamura let the stones—cubic zirconia, playtime diamonds—cascade back into the box.
Reiniger pulled her to her feet. “You okay?”
She wobbled, but smiled. “You owe me a raise.”
A medic jogged up. “Let’s take a look at that arm.”
Her colleagues thronged her. Autumn grinned and applauded. The woman was tough. From the roof of the Mercedes SUV, a cameraman panned the scene, catching their glee.
And . . . cut. Cue the music from Chariots of Fire. Autumn strolled toward her dad, hands in the back pockets of her jeans.
The game runner got to Reiniger first. “We’ll edit the video and burn copies for everybody.”
Reiniger nodded. “We’ll stream it at our board meeting.”
The game runner, a black guy with the hard fitness of a running back, poured antiseptic on a gauze pad and handed it to Reiniger. “Clean up.”
Cleaning up was what Edge Adventures did. Absolutely. Reiniger pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Scrapes covered his elbow. This kidnap scenario looked to Autumn like it had been rowdier than most.
She took the gauze pad from him and dabbed at the scrapes. “Messy.”
“Realistic,” he said. “The screaming’s all part of the game.” Only at team-building weekends run for Reiniger Capital.
“It’s how I find out what my people are made of,” he said. Autumn had heard it from her dad before: Running a hedge fund could be risky and stressful, but Edge Adventures helped people find what was really inside. Toughness. Spirit. His staff now clustered around a cooler, beer bottles in hand, exhausted and proud. Two of them grabbed the lockbox and poured the fake diamonds over Nakamura’s head, as if dumping a bucket of ice on the winning coach at a football game.
Edge Adventures didn’t simply sell excitement. They showed clients the light.
Edge created urban reality games, role-playing scenarios that took clients into an imagined demimonde of crime and rescue. They threw people in the soup.
Edge offered kidnappings, manhunts by bounty hunters, and even a night locked in a morgue—all in all, the chance to face your demons and to act out fantasies of crime and danger. Today, Edge had grabbed Peter Reiniger’s team off a street in downtown San Francisco for a simulated heist scenario.
Coates, the game runner, checked Reiniger’s elbow. “It’s fine.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for a discount,” he said.
Autumn saw a quick jab of anxiety on Coates’s face, and thought: And he’s not going to sue you.
“We’re cool,” Reiniger said. “This was what my daughter here calls sick fun.”
Autumn rolled her eyes.
Coates slapped Reiniger on the back. “As always, we’re happy to have your business.”
“However, I do want to speak to you about our run-in with the police. See me inside in five minutes.”
Frowning, Coates went to help the Edge staff load their gear into the SUV—ropes, emergency flares, and replica firearms that looked mean as all get-out.
Reiniger turned to Autumn. “You’re half an hour late.”
“My car isn’t working right. There’s a light on the dashboard.”
“Which light?”
“The one that tells you it’s time to buy a new car.”
“You mean 'Service’?”
Laughing, she stretched and kissed his cheek. “Joking, Dad.”
“Sure you are.”
Autumn was a month shy of turning twenty-one. She bounced on her toes, knowing he would get the message. Big birthday. Better think big gifts.
She nodded at the scene on the driveway. “You wanted me to watch the grand finale why, exactly?”
“To see how things work.”
“Work? You’re playing Ocean’s Eleven. And Name That Phobia.” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t deny it.”
“I don’t.”
“But you wanted me to sit on the sidelines. And what, cheer?” She crossed her arms. “Put Band-Aids on their boo-boos?”
He crooked his index finger and beckoned her to follow him. Inside, the house was gauzy with sunshine. The view through the living room to the terrace showed windswept Monterey pines and the blue waters of the bay.
Reiniger said, “Hold out your hand.”
Lightness, anticipation, winged through her. About time. She raised her hand. And Reiniger slapped a heavy manila envelope into her palm. She eyed him uncertainly.
“Open it,” he said.
Autumn tore open the envelope. Inside was a memo. It was stamped, in red, CLASSIFIED.
From: Edge Adventures
To: Autumn Reiniger
Re: Your assignment
“Welcome to adulthood,” he said. “You bought me a game?”
OUTLAW is an urban reality scenario that off ers a variety of roles for you and your closest friends. Crime syndicate boss, bounty hunter, prison escapee. Edge employees will take other roles and run the scenario.
“A three-day weekend, for six of you.” Reiniger smiled. “It’s a designer crime spree.”
Her confusion began to clear. Ultra-deluxe.Outlaw.Prison break.
“Oh my God. Do we get a speedboat?” she said.
“If you want one.”
Helicopter rescue.
“Dad—is this for real?”
Hunt down the crime boss, or BE the boss and escape the long arm of the law.
“And this is totally plush, right? No team building. No 'get in touch with your inner hero.’ ” Her voice turned hard. “No 'fight your demons.’ Just fun. And five star. Right?”
He pointed to the location of their syndicate headquarters: the Mandarin Oriental.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
As Autumn hugged him, a Corvette revved into the driveway. Reiniger patted her on the back. “Go on.”
It was her boyfriend. She ran outside, smiling like a cat that had just cornered a mouse.
Fight your demons.
She would know about phobias, Reiniger thought. Too bad hers didn’t include fear of shopping.
His daughter was adorable: quick, clever, winning. And such a pretty girl, with the tumbling brown curls of a Victorian aristocrat. He’d never been able to deny her anything. She always wore him down. Her relentlessness was a quality he admired. So why did he get a nagging feeling of unease when he gave in?
Because he had acquiesced to assuage her heartbreak when he and her mother divorced. And to salve her grief when her mother died. He had lavished her with gifts. And what did that get him? Demands for more.
Autumn had the BMW. She had an apartment he’d bought her in the city. She had a spot at the University of San Francisco, a college to which he gave generous donations. And she regarded classes as a hindrance to her tanning schedule.
No team building. No “get in touch with your inner hero.”
But heroism was precisely what he wanted her to discover.
Nothing compared to going out on the rim and facing your deepest fears. And Edge offered a red-in-tooth-and-claw experience, rarely found in twenty-first-century America, of feeling truly, deeply, alive. Its full-immersion adventures were the modern world’s closest equivalent to primitive initiation rituals.
He paid through the nose, but it was worth it.
For years Autumn had asked to take part in an Edge scenario. And, abruptly, Reiniger didn’t want to give her the thrill she coveted. He wanted to give her a wake-up call. She had peculiar fears. She wielded them as a weapon to manipulate him whenever her sense of entitlement was threatened. It was time to quash them.
Coates rapped on the open door. “You got a question about the SFPD?”
Reiniger waved him in. “Yeah. Why did they show up at exactly the wrong moment today?”
Coates was a former Oakland cop. He was Mr. Law-and-Order and always alerted the authorities before a scenario was about to run. If a client was going to be grabbed off the street, Edge wanted the cops to know it was a party, not an abduction.
But the San Francisco police had nearly derailed today’s scenario, right at the start. As Nakamura was being dragged toward the kidnap van, an SFPD patrol car had screeched up, lights flashing.
Coates shook his head. “Pure chance. No way to grab people off the street without being seen.” He eyed Reiniger warily. “They left. I squared it.”
“That cruiser arrived thirty seconds into the kidnap. Almost like they had a heads-up.”
Coates stiffened. “From Edge? No way. We have zero motive to stall a scenario.”
He glanced out the door at Reiniger’s team.
“It wasn’t one of them,” Reiniger said. “They didn’t know when the kidnap was going down.”
“So it was nobody. Like I said—chance.”
Reiniger wasn’t convinced, but let it go. “I want to ask you something else.” He checked that Autumn was out of earshot outside. “I want to add a layer to Autumn’s birthday scenario. It needs to be more than a party.”
“You want us to heighten the scenario’s intensity?”
“It will do her good.”
Coates considered it. “We can add a twist to the crime spree. Does she have an issue you want her to work on?”
Reiniger wanted Autumn to learn the value of teamwork. And with her stubborn streak, she would need to be scared into learning it.
“There is something,” he said.
There was a big red button. Push it, and Edge would trigger a childhood loathing that had become a mulish dread.
“You know how some people hate clowns?”
“A not-uncommon childhood fear.”
“Autumn hates cowboys.”
“That’s a new one on me,” Coates said.
“It goes back to when she was little. This guy scared her at a party.”
“Luckily, a cowboy phobia is unlikely to impinge on modern life.”
“But it’s silly, and she’s let it grow out of all proportion. She calls him the Bad Cowboy.”
Reiniger had barely seen him: a staff member at the party venue, corpulent and sweating in his boots and Stetson. He had stopped unruly kids from running in front of vehicles in the parking area.
That, apparently, was the origin of Autumn’s loathing. The man had scolded her. Sharply—which shamed and spooked her. And for a dozen years since, she had complained about it, usually at awkward moments. The Bad Cowboy had scared her. Naughty children got punished, he said. Careless children got hit by cars and killed, he said. He was creepy. Why wouldn’t Dad take it seriously?
Reiniger heard the subtext: Pay attention to me, Daddy. Indulge me.
“Guy was some ex–rodeo rider. Hefty kid with stitching on his shirt that said, 'Red Rattler.’ ”
“And he dressed like he was still at the rodeo?”
“Fourth of July party. The staff wore Americana outfits,” Reiniger said. “Here’s my point. If Autumn could confront the Bad Cowboy during the weekend—and defeat him—it would be the icing on her birthday cake.”
“Red Rattler—he was a pro rodeo rider? You got a name for this guy?”
“Doesn’t matter whether you track him down. It’s not the man; it’s the bogeyman he’s become in her imagination.”
“It’s what the Bad Cowboy represents,” Coates said.
“You got it.”
“Psychodrama.”
Which Reiniger wanted to kill, dead. “Maybe you could have one of your game runners dress like him.”
Autumn came into the living room, chattering to her boyfriend.
Coates nodded to Reiniger. “Leave it to me,” he said, and headed outside.
Dustin Cameron, smooth and overeager, held out his hand. “Sir.”
“Autumn’s told you?” Reiniger said.
She looked giddy and calculating. “A crime spree weekend. And I’m going to play the queen of the underworld.” She grabbed Dustin around the waist. “You be the DEA agent who’s after me.”
“I want a big gun,” Dustin said.
Dustin lifted weights and tucked his expensive sunglasses in the open collar of his polo shirt. His aspirations were ill defined. But Dustin’s father was a Washington lobbyist. The boy came from a family with power and swagger. He would do well.
And he could take Autumn places. Reiniger hoped she wouldn’t tire of him. Dustin needed to emerge from the crime spree weekend a hero. He would ask Coates to ensure it.
Autumn squeezed the young man. “The game’s going to be badass. Absolutely goddamned badass.”
“Autumn,” Reiniger said.
She laughed. “I’m getting into character. One you designed.”
Reiniger’s phone rang. He stepped away to take the call.
“Dad—”
He put up a hand to forestall her. “The Asian markets are opening soon.”
He answered the call. After a moment Autumn pulled Dustin out the French doors onto the terrace. She looked stung. Reiniger walked from the room and closed the door behind him.
In a copse of trees down the hill, Dane Haugen adjusted the focus on his Leica binoculars. The laser rangefinder gave the distance to Reiniger’s terrace as 122 meters. Through the hazy sunlight, Autumn Reiniger looked as bright and unaware as a piece of glass.
“Photos,” Haugen said.
Sabine Jurgens raised her Nikon and snapped a dozen shots of Autumn and the young man who was groping her.
“My, my,” Sabine said. “Mr. Cameron is testosterone personified.”
“What are they saying?”
Beside Haugen, Von Nordlinger aimed a parabolic microphone at the terrace. He put a hand to his earphones. “They’re talking about the game. She just got the invitation.”
“Record the conversation,” Haugen said.
Von pressed a button and listened, his slab of a face thick with concentration. The earphones stretched over his pumpkin-size head.
Haugen watched Autumn. “Does her description of the scenario match the specs Sabine pulled off the Edge database?”
Von nodded. “Prison break . . . speedboat . . . six in the party. Autumn’s talking about who to invite.”
Sabine snapped more photos. Her face was severe, her red hair cut boyishly short. Though she lacked any hint of softness, she moved with cold fluidity. Haugen found her stunning, in the way of an electric eel: smooth and cunning and purposeful.
Her intrusion into the Edge computer system had found OUTLAW SCENARIO—Autumn Reiniger booked for mid-October. But that hack was now twenty-four hours old.
“Get back into the Edge system tonight,” Haugen said. “I want details—the scenario’s starting point, the timing, the equipment Edge is bringing.”
She lowered the Nikon. “Not all Coates’s notes go on the computer system.”
Von said, “I can search their office.”
Haugen turned, removed his sunglasses, and stared at Von without blinking. Von scratched his nose and shrank back.
Haugen continued to glare. “We leave no footprints. We do nothing that could tip Edge to our existence.”
Von looked at the ground. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Hardly,” Haugen said.
But Sabine was correct: Terry Coates sometimes modified scenarios on the fly. That was why Haugen had shadowed the Edge team on today’s kidnap scenario—to see whether they stuck to the script. And, crucially, to see whether the police stuck to the script when challenged.
Thanks to Sabine’s hack, he had known where and when Edge would grab Reiniger’s corporate team. When Terry Coates pulled up, precisely at noon, Haugen was watching from a coffee shop across the street. He had already phoned the police.
SFPD response time to a 9-1-1 call reporting an abduction at gunpoint: three minutes, forty-two seconds.
Time required for Coates to convince the SFPD it was a game: four minutes dead. Once the uniforms confirmed that Edge was running a team-building exercise, and that the department had been informed of this in advance, they drove away.
Excellent.
Haugen swept the binoculars and saw, on the driveway, Reiniger Capital’s crew celebrating their escapade. He saw Terry Coates, buff and slick and unctuous. Peter Reiniger stepped outside and was swarmed by his acolytes. Accepting kudos, undoubtedly.
Haugen lowered the binoculars. “Do you understand who Peter Reiniger is?”
“Richer than God,” Von said.
“He’s a pivot point. He’s the fulcrum that will provide the leverage we need. And, thanks to his daughter, he is going to be”—Haugen savored the word—“pliant.”
“So we’re going to grab her,” Von said.
The air was sharp with salt, and with promise. Haugen raised the binoculars and took another look at Autumn. “Happy birthday, princess. Surprise, surprise.”
Chapter 2 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Wednesday, October 10
Stop kidding. It costs how much?”
The guy in the attendant’s booth didn’t look up. “Twenty-four bucks for the first hour, twelve-fifty each hour after that.”
Evan Delaney blinked. For parking? Maybe she should ram the exit barrier and escape the garage, instead of forking out. Then, because street parking in San Francisco meant a fight to the death, she could drive her Mustang straight downhill, launch it into the bay, and swim to her meeting.
The car in line behind her honked.
“Fine,” she said. “You want me to open my wallet, or a vein?”
Talking to Jo Beckett had better be worth it.
The story Evan was investigating was big, strange, and wormy with holes. Trying to get the full picture was maddening—but that was typical of freelance journalism. That wasn’t why she was going to talk to a forensic psychiatrist. No, Jo Beckett had called her. Because Beckett was also investigating the death of Phelps Wylie, attorney-at-law.
Phelps Wylie had collected antiques and bought his suits at Hugo Boss. He was short, bald, and toad-mouthed, with limpid eyes. Whenever Evan saw his photo, she heard “Froggy Went A’ Courtin’.”
He had been found dead in an abandoned gold mine in the Sierras.
Wylie had disappeared from San Francisco one Saturday morning the previous April. Months later and two hundred miles away, his remains were found pinned beneath rubble in the mine, so badly decomposed that no cause of death could be determined.
The local sheriff’s department thought he got caught in a flash flood while hiking and was swept to his death. That, or he got drunk during a walkabout in the high country, stumbled on the mine, and fell into the shaft while exploring. Or he threw himself down the shaft deliberately. Basically, he took a midnight header to oblivion, and nobody knew how or why.
It was the biggest backcountry hiking death to hit the State Bar since the defense attorney’s from the Manson Family murder trial, and Evan was writing a feature story about it for California Lawyer magazine.
But the story stubbornly refused to come together. She’d felt like she was poking roadkill with a stick, coaxing it to dance. Until, out of the blue, Jo Beckett, MD, phoned and asked to meet.
That was the reason Evan parked and hiked to a coffeehouse near Fisherman’s Wharf.
Java Jones was steamy and felt lived in. The young barista had a silver nose ring, Tiggerish energy, and curls the color of the coffee she was brewing. Her name tag said tina. Bad Dogs and Bullets was playing on the stereo.
Evan approached the counter. “This sounds like a honky-tonk requiem.”
“You want something tall and strong to go with the song?”
“And hot. Make sure he can skin a bear, and looks good on a horse.”
Tina smiled. “Americano, large?”
With a gust of wind the door opened and a woman came in: early thirties, café Americano curls, subdued athleticism beneath boho-chic clothes. She waved at the young barista and scanned the place.
She couldn’t be called elfin—she was too sober. Her gaze seemed warm but guarded. Or maybe she was just analyzing the clientele.
Had to be the shrink.
“Jo?”
“Evan.” The woman extended her hand. “Thanks for coming.” Evan nodded at the barista. “You’re sisters?”
Jo smiled. “Yeah, but drink this coffee for a month and you’ll look just like us.”
She ordered an espresso containing so many shots that the mug vibrated. Evan glanced her over. So. This was the deadshrinker.
Jo looked the compleat Californian: Doc Martens and a Mickey Mouse watch, the hint of East Asian heritage a few generations back. She wore a Coptic cross on a chain around her neck. The light in her brown eyes looked both engaging and shrewd.
Evan bet that 90 percent of people who heard the words forensic psychiatrist got tongue-tied and skittish, worried that Jo was sizing them up for tics and compulsions. Because she was one of them.
Jo led her to a table by the windows. “I’m performing a psychological autopsy on Phelps Wylie. His law firm has asked me to investigate his mental state and try to determine the manner of his death.”
“And how’s that going?”
“It’s frustrating.” She sat down. “Wylie’s life contradicts every assumption the sheriffs drew about his death. He didn’t hike. Didn’t like the mountains. He did like gold, but in the form of bullion traded by his corporate clients. And he liked booze, but when it was poured into champagne flutes at the opera house.”
“Bear Grylls he wasn’t,” Evan said.
“Not by a New York mile. You know how a psychological autopsy works?”
“You examine a victim’s psychological life to figure out how he died.”
“Yes—when a death is equivocal. That is, when the police and medical examiner can’t tell whether it was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. When they hit a dead end, they call me to evaluate the victim’s mental state,” she said. “I’m their last resort.”
“And I’m yours.”
Jo’s expression turned piquant. “I’m aware of the irony.”
Evan paused. Her skittishness was abating, because she saw on Jo’s face the same drive and foreboding she felt herself.
“This investigation is getting to you, isn’t it?” she said.
“It’s under my skin like a tick. Tell me about Wylie. I need background, insight, some clue to Wylie’s personality and motivations, any evidence that will help me build a timeline of his final twenty-four hours.”
“Did he have a psych history?” Evan said.
“None.”
“Think his death was from natural causes?”
“What, he dropped dead picking wildflowers, in a flood channel, and got washed into that mine by a convenient downpour?”
Jo’s tone was caustic. Evan liked that. She batted down a smirk. “Do you think Wylie was murdered?” she said.
“Possibly. Do you?”
“I’d lay money on it. He was a baby barracuda, angling to reach the top of the legal food chain. He made enemies. And his friends say that before his disappearance he seemed preoccupied and brooding. The word edgy has come up more than once.”
Jo nodded. “And then there’s the car.”
Shortly after Wylie disappeared, his Mercedes turned up near the Mexican border, stripped, abandoned, and wiped clean of fingerprints.
“The gold mine is in a remote part of the Stanislaus National Forest. So maybe the car thief stumbled across the empty Merc on an isolated logging road and decided to take a five-hundred-mile joyride. But color me skeptical.”
Evan nodded. “If you determine Wylie’s state of mind, will that prove how he died?”
“Not necessarily. I don’t have a Magic Eight Ball that says murder or accident. Clients who think I can dowse for death end up disappointed.”
“Your psychological autopsy broke open the Tasia McFarland case.”
Jo’s gaze sharpened. “That case ended with the man I love shot and wounded, and the media crawling over me like scorpions. So be aware that I tread carefully when dealing with the press.”
Evan’s eyes widened. “Tread carefully? You fought a battle royale against the Creature from the Channel of the Blondes. And you took her down, live on national television. For which, by the way, I should throw confetti over you.”
Jo laughed.
“And if you’re so wary of the press, how come you called me?”
“You have a background as a lawyer yourself. You’ve been looking at the case from angles I probably haven’t. And I’m told you’re a straight shooter.”
A shadow passed behind Jo’s eyes. It seemed to say, And I know how you got into trouble, Ms. Delaney. Did Jo know why this case pulled so hard on her? Her own father had gone missing. And though Evan had found him, in the aftermath the certainties in her life had boiled away in a cauldron of grief.
She went still. “Who gave you my name?”
“It’s no secret you’re doing this story,” Jo said.
A tickle began at the base of her skull. “Still—who pointed you in my direction?”
“My sources are confidential. As are yours. Right?”
“As acid rain.”
Jo looked at her calmly.
Cool down. Evan drummed her fingernails on the tabletop. “Very well.”
They gauged each other for a moment longer. Then, simultaneously, they got out notepads, pens, and digital audio recorders.
Jo said, “Have you seen the police reports?”
“Tuolumne’s. Not the SFPD’s.”
“Okay. The day before Wylie disappeared, he worked a full day. His e-mail and phone records show nothing out of the ordinary. His last call was to a client at six p.m. He mentioned no plans to go hiking in the Sierras. Saturday morning, he pulled his Mercedes out of the driveway. He phoned his mother from the car and said he was headed to the office. That’s the last anybody heard from him.”
Something about the timing scratched at Evan, but she couldn’t pin it down. “Have you spoken to his clients?”
Jo’s expression became studiously neutral.
“That’s confidential?” Evan said.
“Absolutely. However, Wylie’s client list isn’t. Nothing stops you from interviewing them.”
“Got a copy?”
Jo handed her a file folder.
Evan smiled. “Okay, I’ll trade.”
From her backpack she took maps and photos of the rugged country near the abandoned gold mine. She handed Jo an eight-by-ten.
Jo looked surprised. “Satellite photos?”
“Orbital image taken two days before Wylie’s disappearance.”
“The resolution’s amazing.”
Evan handed her another. “Same patch of terrain, snapped from the same satellite, but this month.”
Jo stilled. “How did you get these?”
“Relatives with the right passwords. See what I see?”
Jo pored over the photos. “The flood channel. It’s much deeper on the recent image.”
Evan unrolled a U.S. Geological Survey map. “Have you been up there?”
Jo’s dispassion turned to disquiet. “I’ve carved out some time to drive up next week.” She examined the map. “I know that part of the Sierras. The terrain’s brutal. Look at the topo lines.” She traced a series of closely convergent changes in elevation. “Forest, granite crags, sheer drop-offs, and when heavy rain falls, flash flooding is a real problem. If Wylie was hiking, he could plausibly have gotten caught in a washout. I mean, I know native Californians who think they’re safe camping by the Russian River after a downpour.”
“I’m from the Mojave Desert. I know people who thought they were safe driving across eighteen inches of rushing water on a highway,” Evan said. “What are you thinking?”
“The sheriffs’ photos didn’t fully depict the severity of the terrain. Or . . .”
Evan raised an eyebrow. “The timing?”
Jo straightened. “I need to get up there ASAP. Because your satellite photos suggest that the flash flood occurred after Wylie disappeared.”
“Precisely.”
Noise swirled around them, the clatter of coffee cups and silverware. The intensity on Jo’s face mirrored Evan’s own feelings. She felt a weight, heard a deep-background snarl. It was menace, looming.
Jo said, “The question is, what drove Wylie to that mine? Or who?”
The scratchy feeling, Evan’s sense that she’d missed something, intensified. “You said that the day before Wylie disappeared, his last phone call was from the office.”
“Right.”
“What about the dog walker?”
The evening before he disappeared, while checking his mail, Wylie had run into his next-door neighbor. The two spoke briefly.
Jo said, “I talked to him. He didn’t mention a phone call with Wylie.”
“No. He overheard Wylie take a call. When did you speak to him?”
“Two weeks ago.”
Evan felt a frisson. “I spoke to him yesterday. He said they chatted for a minute before Wylie’s phone rang. Wylie excused himself and answered it.”
Jo looked consternated. “What time was that?”
“Eight p.m.”
“Wylie got an incoming call on his cell phone.”
“Yes,” Evan said.
Jo’s gaze sharpened. “Wylie’s cell phone records show no calls after five thirty.”
They both tensed.
“He had a second cell phone,” Jo said.
“He damned well did.”
“Whoa.” Jo looked both irked and excited. “Did the neighbor overhear Wylie’s conversation?”
“A few words. He said Wylie mentioned something about running, and a concert. A rock concert, he thought.”
Jo sat straighter. Her eyes were alight. “Second cell phone. Was Wylie using it for sex or for bad business?”
“I’ll check. But if this mystery phone didn’t show up in Wylie’s records, it’s either pay-as-you-go or registered under somebody else’s name. Unless we can unearth the number or the phone itself, we won’t find out who called him.”
Jo looked again at the photos. “What did the neighbor hear Wylie say? Exactly.”
Evan checked her notes. “Wylie mentioned something about how they 'ran.’ And 'rock.’ ”
Jo tapped one of the photos. It showed massive wedges of granite. “Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe he was talking about the mountains.” She stood. “I need to clear my schedule. I have to get up to the Sierras.” She extended her hand. “Thanks for the information.”
“We should compare notes again. Forty-eight hours from now?”
“You bet.” Jo’s smile was hardly neutral. It was hungry.
“Excellent. And who gave you my name?”
That smile became enigmatic. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours.”
Jo headed for the door, blowing a kiss to her sister as she left. Evan took a breath, excited, and her stomach pinched.
Who had put Jo in contact with her?
The door opened and the wind whispered in, teasing her, hinting at his name.
But she hadn’t told him about the feature story. She hadn’t told him because she hadn’t spoken to him—though he was the man who knew her better than anyone. He was the man she loved, and who had left her inconsolable, struggling through emotional wreckage after her father went missing. The man she didn’t know how to face, the man she had promised to marry.
She slung her pack over her shoulder and walked out.
Jo jumped off the cable car near the top of Russian Hill. The tracks rang with the sound of gears and cables beneath the road, a bright noise that echoed the humming of her nerves. In the park across the street from her house, a basketball hit the backboard and sluiced through the net. Sophie Quintana grabbed the rebound, and saw her.
She hopped and waved. “Jo, you be on Dad’s team.”
Gabe stood beneath the basket, hands on his hips, catching his breath. “That was a quick meeting.”
Jo jogged to the court. “Hurried back to be your point guard, Sergeant.”
He looked good in the October sunlight. Ripped and smiling and welling with energy.
“What’s that gleam in your eye?” he said.
Sophie turned and charged the lane, ten years old and confident that her agility would outgun the grown-ups. Her brown ponytail flicked in the breeze. Her cheeks were bright. Her smile, Jo was happy to see, looked unburdened.
She dodged around Jo and took the layup. The shot hit the rim.
Jo caught the rebound. “The campout with your cousins is this weekend, right?”
The little girl nodded. “Friday.”
Gabe said, “What kind of plan are you hatching?”
Jo passed him the ball. “I’m going to the Sierras.”
“And you want a pararescueman to ride shotgun?”
A whistle from the backcourt caught her attention. The man on the far side of the court raised his hands and called time-out.
“You no longer look like you want to take this day out back and shoot it,” he called to her. “So I’m guessing your meeting went well.”
She excused herself from the game and walked toward him. “You were right. Evan was the one I needed to talk to.”
Jesse Blackburn smiled, short and sharp—a slice. “Glad to hear it.”
His jeans had a hole in the knee. His T-shirt said FIND YOURSELF IN PARADISE and hung loose from his swimmer’s shoulders. His eyes were blue and keen with questions.
Jo gave him the answers. “Yes, she wanted to know who gave me her name. And, no, I didn’t tell her it was you.”
He spun the wheelchair and coasted toward her. “Thank you.”
“But, Jesse, she knows you crossed swords with Phelps Wylie in court. Of course she suspects. She can easily find out I was at UCLA with you. And that you’re in San Francisco to argue a case before the Ninth Circuit.”
An undertow seemed to pull at him. He and Evan had promised their futures to each other—and then they were assaulted by a cascade of Bad. He thought he had brought it down on them and couldn’t see how to swim out from under. Now Jo had spent time with Evan, while he had not. The hurt showed on his face.
He lived with plenty of pain. He had survived more. And he would survive this. But merely surviving would be a waste. Evan was clearly his match. Together, Jo had no doubt, they sparked heat and light. For them to lose that connection would be heartbreaking.
She said, “If Evan asks me again, I still won’t tell her. But you should.”
He looked away, at the sun jumping off the blue waters of the bay. “Not yet.”
“What will waiting accomplish?”
He pushed to the fence that bordered the park, hung his arms on top, and stared toward Alcatraz.
Jo leaned on the fence beside him. After a moment, she said, “I never thanked you for coming to Daniel’s funeral.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“You drove three hundred miles that day. I appreciate it.”
“It was the least I could do.” He paused. “Is that your way of reminding me that none of us has unlimited time?”
“You know what it’s like to live a suddenly changed life. I appreciate that too.”
Jo had become a young widow in the time it took to blow out a match. She knew all about being stared at. About being That Girl. That Guy. The one who lost . . . the ability to walk. A lover. The future that they’d never have. Jesse’s friendship, the fact that he understood what she had gone through, meant a lot to her.
He stared at the water. “This cut is deep.”
“When did wounds ever stop you? What did you tell me once?” His smile was thin. “When you can’t change a situation, and can’t get out of it, you have to go forward. It’s a fucking fact of life.”
“I tattooed that statement on my rear end. Thanks for confirming I got the wording right.”
His smile turned wry. “You and Evan are definitely going to hit it off.” He laughed and shook his head.
Gabe called to them. “Guys, I need help on defense. Sophie’s killing me here.”
They headed back toward the basketball court. Sophie was dribbling the ball, bobbing and weaving in a circle around him. Her laugh sounded silvery.
Jo said, “I also remember the second half of that statement, Jesse.”
“The important thing is not to be afraid. Even when you know what’s coming.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t forget it.”
Chapter 3 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Friday, October 12
Limo didn’t begin to cover it. They drove south down 101 in a sick beast of a vehicle: a stretch Hummer, black with honest-to-God flames painted on the sides. As if Autumn truly were the queen of a trashy, flashy drug cartel and this was her monster ride. She stretched on the plush bench seat and watched San Francisco rush by.
Dustin pulled a bottle of champagne from the Hummer’s mini-fridge. “Time to toast the birthday girl.”
Lark Sobieski shook her head. “Not a good idea. We need to stay sharp.”
Lark’s punkish black hair swooped over one eye, nearly covering her glasses. Her ouroburos tattoo rolled over the pudge of baby fat above the top of her jeans. The dragon swallowing its own tail was red and sumptuous against her brown skin.
Dustin unwrapped gold foil from around the cork. “Maybe you need to stay sharp. But this is how the narcotraficantes do it down in Juarez.”
Grinning, he shook the bottle and popped the cork. It ricocheted off the driver’s headrest.
Lark ducked. “Careful.”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Watch it, bucko.”
Dustin laughed. “I don’t own this ride. It wrecks, Edge Adventures pays.”
He tilted the gushing bottle to his lips. Champagne poured across his chin. He wiped it off and made a face at the label: VEUVE CLICQUOT.
“Not half as good as the stuff my dad serves on his boat. But Edge didn’t stock Colt Forty-five”—he raised his voice at the driver—“so it’ll have to do.”
He held out the bottle to his housemate. Noah Holloway put up his hands.
“I work for the G. No drinking on duty.”
Noah had a sunny smile and laid-back manner. From across the limo, Lark admired his bed-head hair and uncomplicated surfer’s calm. She seemed unaware that everybody could see her cheeks flush.
Peyton Mackie grabbed the bottle. “I’ll drink on duty. Under-cover agents have to practice holding their booze.” She keeled back on the seat and coughed down a huge swallow.
Laughing, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “And speaking of law enforcement . . .” She raised her hand like a gun, two fingers for the barrel, thumb cocked. “Got you in my sights, Reiniger.”
“Screw you, Fed,” Autumn said.
Peyton’s blond hair slid over her shoulder. She was wearing raspberry velour Juicy Couture track bottoms and a pink cami. She made a ridiculous federal agent.
Autumn snapped her fingers. “Sobieski. Take down Agent Pretty-in-Pink.”
Lark sighted at Peyton down the length of her arm, as if it were a sniper rifle. “Pow. You’ve got no head, Fed.”
Peyton wilted, eyes crossed, tongue hanging out. Lark blew on her fingers.
Autumn ran her hands across the crushed red velvet of the bench seat. The limo had been a surprise, a definite five-star stunner. When her doorbell rang, she’d found a man in sunglasses and a black Edge Adventures baseball cap on the porch.
“I’m the game runner. The clock is now ticking on your scenario,” he said.
She paused, bemused. “We still have an hour to drive to the rendezvous point.”
“Not anymore. Your father sent me.”
Now her stomach fluttered. Her dad had told Edge to pick her up because he didn’t trust her to arrive at the crime spree on time. The game runner, Kyle, was at the wheel of the limo, eyeing her and her friends in the mirror from behind his shades.
Peyton grabbed the champagne bottle and crawled along the bench seat to Cody Grier. She curled herself around him. “Share.”
Grier’s eyes widened in surprise. “The bottle? You trying to bribe me to turn against the syndicate?”
In honor of playing Autumn’s consigliere, Grier had come dressed like a member of the Rat Pack. He adjusted his straw trilby and pulled Peyton against his side.
Lark continued to gaze at Noah, until she sensed Autumn watching. She turned to the window.
“Keeping an eye on the opposition,” she said, and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“Good. Tell me if anybody follows us.” Outside, beyond the traffic, Autumn saw weeds and run-down wooden houses slumped against one another by the freeway. Her stomach tightened. “I’m serious about that.”
Lark gave her a funny look. “What’s wrong?”
Autumn gestured at rusting trash cans and busted cars parked on a crumbling hillside. “This is not five-star.”
Get me to the Mandarin Oriental, she thought. Edge had reserved a cluster of rooms at the end of a hall, to emulate a summit being held by a crime syndicate. And all at once she didn’t want to be stuck at the end of a hall. Cornered.
“Autumn?” Lark said.
“Over the past couple of weeks, have you had the feeling some-body’s watching you?” she said.
“Like who?”
“Like somebody who moves away when I look out the window. Or steps behind trees on campus when I pass by.” She waited for Lark to agree, but her friend stared with skepticism. “Never mind.”
“Are you serious?”
“Maybe it’s Edge, doing reconnaissance. They do, you know— they research all their clients.”
“They spy on you?”
“They generate dossiers.” She nodded at the driver, Kyle, and lowered her voice. “He probably knows all about us. Don’t you get that feeling? That he’s . . . seen us?”
Lark watched as Kyle changed lanes. “He looks like he’s trying to get us there smack on the dot.”
“Right.”
Lark’s mouth turned down. “Autumn, are you okay?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
Autumn folded her arms across her chest. Dustin and Peyton were swapping turns with the champagne bottle. Grier was texting—God, let it not be his dope dealer. They didn’t need that complication this weekend. Noah was glancing at Lark from the corner of his eye.
Her father didn’t believe any of them could drive across town on schedule. So he had rounded them up like sheep. The pellet in her gut grew hotter.
What, she wondered, had her father told Edge Adventures about her?
At the Emery Cove Marina, Terry Coates scanned the checklist. His brother and two other game runners were prepping the speedboat. Fuel. Life jackets. First-aid kit. Check. Phone call to the SFPD, alerting them that a scenario was about to run: Check.
“Looking good,” Coates said.
The wind was stiff, the sun dazzling on the water. Across the bay, San Francisco spilled across the hills, white as chalk in the autumn light. Coates savored the view.
Running Edge Adventures was a sweet gig. It was Disneyland for the rich and adrenaline deprived. It was Self-Discovery a la carte and Phobias, Inc. rolled into one. And it was a whole lot more fun than driving a patrol car in downtown Oakland.
With his graying hair and the Edge Adventures polo shirt tucked into his jeans, Coates thought he looked exactly like a former cop. But he had a halfback’s build, and people sometimes took him for a retired ballplayer. Didn’t you used to play for the Raiders?
Maybe in another life he would have played pro ball. But in this life, he had found a niche—a profitable niche—helping others live out their sometimes-twisted fantasies. He had just one hard rule: In an Edge Adventures game, crime would never pay.
Anybody but him, that is.
He never let clients play a game in which criminals got away with murder. Scenarios designed around a sting were cool. An outlaw-with-a-code-of-honor thing was okay with him. Robin Hood. Butch and Sundance. But no scenarios where serial killers took victims or street gangs gunned down the cops. He wanted his games to end with exhilaration, and edification—thus endeth the lesson—that sent clients back to their boardrooms with some speck of insight into living a wholehearted life.
But today, he suspected, he would be playing ringmaster to a sorority food fight. Autumn Reiniger, according to her father, needed some severe excitement to wake her up to the realities of adulthood.
This scenario had a lot of unknowns. His research into the six kids who were going on the weekend had been cursory, because they had almost no history. Their answers on the Edge questionnaire told him only that they were green, protected college students. Autumn Reiniger and Dustin Cameron came from highly privileged backgrounds, which raised flags with him. The children of super-wealthy parents frequently thought that every crisis could be solved by having Daddy write a check.
The other kids—Peyton Mackie, Lark Sobieski, Noah Holloway, and Cody Grier—were question marks. They’d never been in trouble with the law. There were a couple of medical issues going on with—
“Terry?”
Coates turned. His brother stood at the controls of the speedboat.
“We’re ready to rock.”
“Outstanding,” he said.
Coates prepared to cast off from the dock. As he untied the boat’s mooring lines, his phone beeped with an incoming text.
6 POB.
The message was from Kyle Ritter, driving the limo. Six passengers on board. They were headed to the assembly point.
Coates glanced again across the bay. At the southern tip of San Francisco, barely visible, was Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Beyond it was the barren scrubland of Candlestick Point, where the speedboat would rendezvous with Autumn’s party.
The boat fired up. The engine sounded like a throaty lion.
Coates hoped the twist he’d designed into Autumn’s scenario wasn’t too far out of bounds. Nothing was dangerous, simply— unpredictable.
Happy Birthday from Red Rattler. That little gift was going to light her up like a roman candle. Set her whole weekend on fire.
He tossed the mooring lines aboard the boat, and his phone rang. He glanced at the display and answered with deliberate, jaunty assurance.
“Mr. Reiniger. Autumn’s group is on the way. I just received confirmation.”
“Good. Keep the rest of the weekend to schedule this tightly and I’ll be pleased,” Reiniger said.
Schedule? Reiniger kept changing it. Edge had scrambled to meet this morning’s last-minute request to pick up the kids, and with a limo, no less. It was lucky they could spare a team member to drive.
“I’m boarding a flight,” Reiniger said. “I’ll be five hours en route, then I’m headed directly to a meeting. But phone me this evening. I want a status update.”
“Will do.”
Coates put a hand over his ear. It was windy, and people were approaching on the dock, laughing, swinging a picnic basket between them.
“Remember,” Reiniger said, “Autumn may act assertive, but inside she’s scared. If she tries to hide from her fears, make her hold her ground. Don’t let her retreat.”
“So she defeats the Bad Cowboy and crosses the Rubicon.”
“And be sure her boyfriend comes off in a good light.”
Reiniger ended the call. Coates stared at the phone, feeling vaguely uneasy. His brother said, “Terry?”
He looked up. The man and woman carrying the picnic basket had stopped beside the speedboat. They were wearing floppy hats and sunglasses. They had semiautomatic pistols in their hands.
Coates reached automatically to his hip for the Oakland PD service weapon he no longer carried.
“Don’t.” The man raised his pistol and centered it on Coates’s chest. “Hands behind your head.”
Chapter 4 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The limo pulled off the freeway into a sketchy industrial area of warehouses and machine shops. Autumn saw cracked asphalt, rusting cars, trash, men in dirty clothes. They passed a vast parking depot for empty big rigs: truck after truck after truck.
“So not five-star,” she said.
Kyle glanced in the rearview mirror. “This ain’t the destination.”
His voice twanged around the limo. It had an unpleasant echo. I’m driving, and that’s that. Peyton took another swig of champagne. Grier turned up the stereo. Sinatra, “Come Fly with Me”— he was taking the Rat Pack theme to extremes.
Autumn knew the contours of the game. Terry Coates had outlined it and sent her forms to fill out, on everything from medical conditions to nut allergies. She’d had to sign on every dotted line. She hadn’t been told that adulthood would involve so much paperwork. She didn’t like it.
But she did like the crime spree scenario: She was the head of an international criminal enterprise that trafficked in pleasure. She was on the run after breaking out of prison. Running with her were Lark, her enforcer; Grier, her consigliere; and Dustin, her deputy and prime piece of beef. They would attempt to escape Peyton and Noah, the federal agents hunting her down.
And she wasn’t just going to escape from federal custody. She was going to take down the enemies who had betrayed her and sent her to prison. She was going to destroy their centers of power, rob them blind, and collect booty. Loot, swag, pillage. Because it was her birthday.
She felt nervous and excited and—hungry. She couldn’t wait to get going.
But she didn’t know why the scenario had to start in such a dismal neighborhood. The Hummer sped by a huge parking lot, a sloping black prairie of asphalt, and she saw stadium lights. Candlestick Park came into view. It was a grimy concrete Frisbee plastered with billboards for the ’49ers. An endless line of aqua blue Porta-Potties bordered the whole empty, sagging affair.
Then Autumn spotted golden fields dotted with stubby pines and caught the sparkle of sunlight off the bay. Kyle swung the Hummer through a gate. He gunned it through a long, empty parking lot and stopped sideways across four slots. The engine coughed and hacked until he shut it down.
He turned. “Okay, kiddies. We’re here. Sack up.”
Dustin squinted against the sunlight. “This is Candlestick Point?”
Kyle got out, opened the passenger door, and beckoned the group out. Noah held out his hand for Lark. She shook her head. “Opposite teams, Noah. I let you grab my hand, next thing you’re slapping a pair of cuffs on me.”
“You take that risk.” Smiling, he gripped her hand and got out.
Peyton followed, tugging Grier along. “Hey, I’m a U.S. Marshal. If anybody plays with handcuffs, it’ll be me.” She tucked a finger under Grier’s belt. “And I’m talking to you.”
Grier popped the collar of his shirt. “You won’t get me. I pay people off. That’s my job. If I can’t, I run.”
Kyle looked like he was trying to keep a straight face. “If you like shackling prisoners, Miss Mackie, shouldn’t you be wearing a police uniform?”
She smiled, patently coy. “You like handcuffs?”
He smirked and poked up the brim of his cap. “Knots are more my style.”
Autumn pushed Peyton forward and climbed out. “Move, Mackie.” Before you start doing a pole dance.
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area was virtually deserted. The grass was unmown. The trees were gnarled by the wind. On the sand at the water’s edge, a man was performing tai chi. In the distance an elderly couple ambled along, pushing a baby stroller that held their tiny white poodle.
Past the glittering water, on a spit of land that protruded into the bay, giant loading gantries and cranes stood idle at the abandoned Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. On the bay, a container ship steamed toward Oakland, its wake as white and frothy as cake icing. The wind battered Autumn’s hair away from her face. She pulled on a Marine Corps utility cap and smoothed down her gold cashmere sweater.
She inhaled the strong sea air and shivered. All at once she felt great.
Dustin came up behind her and nuzzled her neck. “Last kiss before battle?”
She leaned her head back. “Last kiss till one of us takes the other as a prize.”
On the asphalt next to the limo, Grier and Noah shadowboxed. Lark’s phone rang, and she answered, “Reiniger Cartel World Headquarters, Sobieski the Assassin speaking. How may I direct your call?” Then, giggling, “Hi, Mom.”
Kyle scanned the parking lot, one hand steepled over his brow. After a minute he reached inside the Hummer and took out a walkie-talkie.
“Ritter calling base.”
Static.
“Ritter calling base, come in.”
More static. He got his phone, made a call, and frowned. Autumn knew that look. It was the one she got when she called her father. Voice mail.
She tugged on Dustin’s sleeve. “All that crap from my dad about getting here on time, and we have to stand around waiting for the game to start?”
Dustin shrugged. His smile was slippery, like it had been oiled. “They’re going to spring things on us. It’s cool.”
“Ask the driver what’s going on.” She pinched him. “Dustin. This is boring.”
Dustin raised his hands in submission and walked toward Kyle. “Hey, man, thought your team was supposed to be waiting for us here. What’s going on?”
Kyle looked up, sheepish behind his sunglasses. “Coordinating with HQ.” He frowned again at his phone. “It’s just . . .” His lips, full and red, had constricted. He looked baffled.
Autumn crossed her arms. “Where are the other game runners?”
Ritter raised his hands, a mollifying gesture. “Guys, I’m as new to this as you. Let’s just ride it and see what happens.”
“New?” Autumn said.
He smiled, greasy and uncertain, trying to play it. “I’m Edge’s most recent addition to the team.”
“You’re brand-new on the gig?” Dustin said.
“First time for everybody, man. It’s no biggie. And I’m sure this delay is just a glitch.” Kyle gave one more beseeching glance at his silent cell phone.
“Are you telling us we came to the wrong place?” Dustin looked around, weaving.
Autumn’s voice rose. “This has been planned for months. And you came in at the last minute?”
The others stopped horsing around and walked over. Noah said, “What’s going on?”
Autumn pointed at Kyle. “Did you screw up? Because if you did, my dad will have your ass on a skewer.”
Kyle’s expression dried, like a chunk of Sheetrock. “I did not screw up. We changed plans at the last second, thanks to a specific request by your father for Edge to provide this limo. My boss called me at seven A.M. We had to scramble to get this Hummer and pick you all up,” he said. “So no offense, Miss Reiniger, but if there’s a problem, it’s your dad . . .”
Autumn stiffened, but Kyle caught himself.
“Let’s all cool down.” He forced a smile. “It’s just a hiccup. I’m sure the rest of the team will be right along.”
Peyton grabbed the champagne bottle from Dustin. She took Grier’s hand and pulled him toward the Hummer.
“Knock on the window if anybody shows up,” she said.
Autumn swallowed. The hot pellet in her stomach had returned. How could this turn bad, so quick? It was her day.
Lark looked around: at the empty, wind-bitten park, the flying saucer stadium, the bay. Then she stood straighter. “Oh. Look.”
Dustin’s gaze swerved around. “Whoa.”
Lark jogged toward the bay. Noah ran after her. “All right.” Autumn blinked, fighting the sting in her eyes. On the water, arcing around the abandoned cranes at Hunters Point, was a white speedboat.
Kyle let out a breath, half laugh, half sigh. “There you go.”
“That’s them?”
He waved her forward. “Let’s hit it.” He banged on the window of the Hummer. “Peyton. Grier. Out. We got bogeys incoming.”
Autumn’s anger let go and a bright stripe of excitement painted the view. She grabbed Dustin’s hand and pulled him toward the beach.
Chapter 5 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The speedboat razored through the chop past the cranes at Hunters Point and skipped across the bay toward Candlestick Point. Dane Haugen held the throttle wide open.
“Masks on,” he said.
Von Nordlinger pulled a black ski mask over his face. Haugen did likewise. Over the mask he put on the wraparound sunglasses he had purchased that morning. His hands were already covered by black calfskin gloves.
He picked up his walkie-talkie and clicked Transmit. “This is Viking. We are three hundred meters from the beach and closing.”
The boat bounced on the whitecapped water. Over the walkie-talkie, a woman’s voice scratched at him.
“This is Ran. We are thirty seconds from the rec area parking lot.”
Haugen smirked. Ran. How apropos of Sabine to employ a Norse goddess as a cover name, one that meant theft. “Masks on. Hold position.”
“Roger,” she said.
He had to wear the mask. He was fair, tall, well built, and so handsome that a Hollywood producer had once told him that he could have opened feature films. The word chiseled, he had decided, fit him best. And his presence was magnetic—almost bewitching to women. He saw himself as a classic figure, perhaps Spartan. Nobody who saw him could forget him. He was too striking.
He raised his binoculars from the strap that hung around his neck. At Candlestick Point, the trees bent beneath the wind. The park’s sad picnic tables were empty. On the muddy beach, a group of young people jogged into sight.
“It’s them.”
Von slipped the pistol from the small of his back and chambered a round. Behind the ski mask, his watery blue eyes were eager.
“Clear the round,” Haugen said.
Von glanced sharply at him.
“Do it now,” Haugen said. “We will not damage the merchandise.”
“But if they run—”
Haugen clipped him in the side of the head with the walkie-talkie. Von lurched and grabbed his ear. “Christ, you—”
“Clear the chamber, and safety your weapon. Now. Before I dump you overboard.”
Struggling to hold himself steady against the chop, Von cleared the chamber and safetied the pistol. He wouldn’t look at Haugen.
“If they run?” Haugen said. “Of course they’re going to run. They’re young and fit and pumped up, and they think this is a game. We want them to think it’s a game. Our plan depends on them thinking so.”
He shouted over the roar of the engine, enunciating each word carefully, as if lecturing a cognitively challenged janitor. Von stared at the prow of the boat. His lips were pressed white, his nostrils flaring beneath the ski mask, but he kept his mouth shut this time.
Haugen aimed the speedboat directly at the beach. The boat was a fine piece of machinery. And the drug runner’s vehicle of choice. Credit Terry Coates—the ex-cop knew his stuff. Too bad for Edge Adventures that the boat had been so easy to steal.
Haugen breathed in the sharp salt air. So far, so perfect. His team had taken control of the Edge game runners without a fight. Coates had thought briefly about resisting, but the sight of Von’s Glock had stopped him in his tracks. Coates didn’t want to die over a bunch of spoiled college kids.
No, the Edge game runners had gone down on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Von and Sabine had needed mere seconds to cuff their hands with zip ties and march them to their SUV. Then Haugen and Von took the boat and headed for the rendezvous. Sabine and the other men on her team had driven away with the Edge game runners, transporting them to the leased big rig parked in the middle of the huge truck depot near Candlestick Park.
The fact that Sabine was now on scene, and in position at the recreation area, meant she and her team had stuffed the game runners inside the big rig—gagged and zip tied in a circle with their feet chained to a ring in the center of the trailer. The game runners couldn’t lie down, couldn’t turn around, couldn’t even kiss one another, much less scream for help or kick the walls to draw attention. And the walls of the trailer were draped with heavy padding, the kind used by moving companies to protect grand pianos in shipment. The padding would deaden any noise. Nobody was going to miss the game runners for at least forty-eight hours. Just like nobody was going to miss Autumn and her friends.
And that was all the time Haugen needed.
He finally glanced at Von. “Do you think there’s the slightest chance I’ll risk shooting Autumn Reiniger here, at a public park?”
Von stared at the beach. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
Haugen smiled thinly. “Is that wit? A bon mot?” Intellectual gymnastics from the man—Von had just earned back a point or two. “You’re right. I was using a rhetorical device. We will not, I repeat, not risk damaging our investment by injuring Ms. Reiniger.”
“I think I got it now, boss.” Von looked at the beach. “Just one question.”
“Yes?”
“Six people in her party, right?”
“Correct.”
“So why are there seven of them there on the sand?”
Chapter 6 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Jo paused at the crest of the ridge. The sun was a gold needle in a deep blue sky. She leaned back against a boulder spackled red with lichen. A moment later, Gabe joined her.
She swept back curls that had escaped her ponytail. “Thirty seconds. Gotta catch my breath.”
Gabe shrugged off his backpack and got out a canteen. He took a swig and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She drank and wiped her lips. “You have an altimeter?”
He shook his head. But the rise and fall of his chest told her they were at significant altitude.
Her truck was parked two miles back and probably a thousand feet below them on a narrow logging road. She and Gabe had been hiking for ninety minutes. According to her Stanislaus National Forest trail guide and the map Evan Delaney had given her, they were still a mile from the abandoned gold mine where Phelps Wylie had been found dead.
Gabe scanned the crown of the forest. All around, covering the mountainside, were lodgepole pine, white fir, and dogwoods turning crimson. He pointed at a soaring conifer whose dusty green boughs spread above them.
“That’s Jeffrey pine. It only grows above six thousand feet.” He smiled at her, a challenge. “Still way too low to worry about supplemental oxygen.”
“Yeah, sure—you could have HALO jumped and beaten me here. No need to brag.”
“Nah. The government gets annoyed when a PJ uses Air National Guard resources to meet his girlfriend for a date.”
He set his Oakley sunglasses on top of his head. He looked like he was in fighting trim, and he was talking like it too, as a deflective mechanism. But he couldn’t keep Jo from surreptitiously doing a visual sweep of his vital signs.
His skin tone was good: bronze, with a ruddy glow from the hike. Respirations were rapid, but that could be expected because of the altitude. His pulse was strong. She could see it beating in his neck, where it met the line of his jaw. His eyes were clear, dark, and focused. On her.
She slid her arms around him and kissed that beating pulse point. Wordlessly he pulled her tight against him and held her. She felt him breathing. He kissed the top of her head and then she tilted her face up and he kissed her right, on the lips. Twice.
Then he smiled, patted her backside, and picked up his pack again. “Wasting daylight, campers.”
Jo saluted. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
But she couldn’t stop herself from keeping an eye on him. Tough cookie didn’t begin to describe Gabe, even on his worst day. And today was far from his worst.
He was strong and young and resilient. But he hadn’t fully recuperated from being shot in the chest with a 9 mm bullet.
He had only recently returned to work with the California Air National Guard, and to grad school at the University of San Francisco. He had not yet received medical clearance to return to active military duty. He hadn’t put back on all the weight he’d lost in the hospital or recovered his stamina. A patch of sweat darkened his USF T-shirt between the shoulder blades. He still had a considerable amount of pain, which he refused to dampen with medication.
That, Jo knew, stemmed from pride and machismo and the determination to provide a clean and sober example to Sophie. And it stemmed from being a PJ, a pararescueman, with the Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. Gabe worked search and rescue on land, sea, and air. And when on active duty, he performed CSAR, combat search and rescue, sometimes leaping into firefights from thirty thousand feet, using HALO parachute jumps—high altitude, low opening—designed to maximize stealth and speed and a PJ’s chances of reaching the scene of the rescue alive.
Jo followed him along the crest of the ridge, through slices of sunlight in the cool air. The terrain was dry and spare and wild, beautiful and incredibly quiet. Looking up, past the green tops of the pines, she saw only sere blue. Her footfalls landed softly on dirt and pine needles. Beyond them she heard the rustle of the breeze through the boughs of the trees. The only signs of human encroachment were power lines strung from metal pylons that towered atop nearby ridges in the mountain range. The lines skimmed high above gorges and rivers, and for a moment Jo wished she could simply hang a zip line from one and slide directly toward the mine.
Gabe followed her gaze. “No way.”
She laughed. Ahead, the trail switchbacked to the bottom of a ravine before crossing a rocky stream and climbing up the other side. But upstream, where the slope steepened and began its climb to the timberline and snowcapped crags of the high Sierra, power pylons stood on opposite ridges of the ravine, linked by an aluminum catwalk.
“It would cut three miles off our trip. Save us a couple of hours and hundreds of feet of climbing,” she said.
Gabe leaned toward her. “Bzz.”
“Okay, there’s high voltage, and the danger that the bridge would collapse.”
“If it’s thrills you want, let’s get out of here and get a room. So come on and examine this mine, pronto.”
“Right.”
They had a reservation for the night at the Lodge at the Falls in Yosemite. That meant a couple of hours driving still to come, after the hike out. The wind sent a shiver through the trees. It sent a shiver through her as well.
Phelps Wylie would never have chosen this as an afternoon’s recreation.
Maybe he had taken a joyride in his warm, luxurious Mercedes, listening to Madama Butterfly on his German stereo system. But he never would have driven two hundred miles from home into a mountain range where, not much more than a century earlier, the Donner Party had become trapped for the winter and ended up eating each other.
Wylie’s death was no accident.
“Wylie had a map. Or he had a guide. He had some reason for being up here.”
Gabe glanced over his shoulder. “Not a good one.”
“Got that right, Sergeant.” A gust lifted her hair from her collar. “Okay, let’s pick it up. This wind is only going to get stronger. And we’re going to lose the sun.”
Gabe nodded. “Weather’s coming.”
She felt a cold thread skim past her, like a hundred pinhead snakes. Bad vibe about covered it. “Let’s move.”
Chapter 7 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Haugen eased off the throttle. As the speedboat settled lower in the water he counted the people on the shore ahead, running toward the beach.
Three women, four men. What was an extra man doing there?
“Maybe it’s a random picnicker,” Von said.
Haugen’s jaw tightened. “Who runs toward a boat driven by men in ski masks?”
Von didn’t reply.
The boat crept forward. The wind raised spray on the water. Haugen tented a hand over his forehead to cut the glare, then adjusted his sunglasses to get a clearer view of the extra man on the beach. With a start, he was reminded that these weren’t his prescription pair. He had purchased these sunglasses this morning with cash, just as he had purchased his black work boots and gloves and pants with cash, all at separate stores, and had bought his black tactical gear online through a corporate account that couldn’t be linked to him. Should anybody report his description to the police, nothing he wore could tie Viking, the kidnapper, to Dane Haugen.
But as a consequence, he couldn’t get a crisp view of the people on the sand. He grimaced and covered. “We’ll find out who it is in sixty seconds. We play it by the book, until we have to play it by ear. Follow my lead.”
“No shooting,” Von said. The black mask, stretched across his basketball of a head, rendered his expression unreadable. But complaint was in his voice.
Haugen turned his head toward the man. Haugen’s dead-eyed glare was hidden, but Von still cringed, intimidated. Good.
Haugen got the walkie-talkie. “Ran, come in.”
Sabine came back, staticky. “We’re on site. Ready to egress. But our numbers are—”
“Extra man in the picture. Repeat, extra man in the picture. Possibly a bystander.”
She paused. “Possibly not?”
“Don’t know,” Haugen said.
Another pause. “Understood.”
He shoved the throttles to full power. The engine snarled. The stern of the boat dug into the bay, the bow rose, and they bounded across the whitecaps toward the beach. Haugen put the walkie-talkie to his lips again.
“Going in. Follow my lead.”
Autumn ran behind Dustin toward the beach. The speedboat, white and sleek, knifed through the glinting water straight at them. Ahead, Lark and Noah jogged to a stop at the water’s edge. Peyton was walking behind Grier, raspberry velour hips swaying, champagne bottle swinging in her hand. Up the sand in the distance, the tai chi practitioner stopped to watch.
Autumn caught up with her friends. The limo driver, Kyle, ran up behind her.
“All right, you all. Time to separate.” He pointed at the boat. “They’re coming to pick up Ms. Reiniger and her muscle.” He nudged Lark, Dustin, and Grier toward her. Then he pointed at Peyton and Noah. “You two federal agents—you best get lost, if you don’t want to get taken down in a firefight.”
The boat drew nearer.
“Or captured and interrogated,” Kyle said.
Grier adjusted his straw hat. “Listen to the man—he knows the score. If you can’t deny the charges or buy ’em off, you’d better split.”
Peyton worried the charm bracelet on her wrist. Grier took off his smiling skull ring and handed it to her. “My marker, Marshal. You want to change teams, you call me.”
Autumn rubbed her palms against her jeans. “The boat—they’re picking me up after my prison break?”
“That’s right. We are now on the clock.”
Kyle reached beneath his Edge Adventures windbreaker and pulled out a handgun that looked like something Colonel Quaritch would fire at aliens in Avatar. Matte silver, with a huge telescopic sight atop the barrel.
He smiled, a cool leer. “And I, Ms. Reiniger, am your nemesis. U.S. Marshal Kyle Ritter, tasked with apprehending you and preventing your crime spree. If I was you, I’d run before I got brought down like a deer.”
Autumn blinked. Then she turned and sprinted toward the water.
Twenty meters from shore Haugen slewed the boat sideways and brought it to a halt. Von leapt over the side, gun out, and splashed through the shallow water toward the beach.
The Reiniger girl was running toward him. Excellent. Her friends seemed confused. In the distance, sprinting over the park’s low hills, came the first members of Sabine’s team.
Up the beach, a man in drawstring pants was doing tai chi. Haugen catalogued him. Bystander. Along the path, toward the fishing pier, an elderly couple ambled out from behind the trees. The woman was rotund. She was pushing a baby stroller that held a white poodle. Every few seconds she leaned over to pet and coo at it.
Bystanders. Their presence was not a problem. Haugen had planned on having to take Autumn Reiniger’s group with people watching. That was the whole point of the way he had designed the operation.
They had waited to ambush the Edge Adventures crew until after the boss, Coates, had phoned the SFPD. So the cops now knew a scenario was running at Candlestick Point. They didn’t have to like it. They just had to believe that, whatever happened from this point on, it was all a game.
Sabine sprinted into sight. A ski mask covered her face. A very real SIG Sauer was gripped in her right hand. She pulled herself to a stop. Walkie-talkie to her mouth.
“Seventh person in Autumn’s group has a gun. Do we back off?”
Haugen raised his walkie-talkie and hesitated. Who was the man in the baseball cap, waving a toy science fiction cannon at Autumn Reiniger?
Chapter 8 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Autumn saw the alien-killer gun in Ritter’s hand, heard the “let’s play” snicker in his voice, and ran. The non-smile lingered on Kyle’s face. The speedboat bobbed in the cove, engine rumbling. A man in a ski mask was at the controls. Another was over the side and splashing through the water toward her. He was short and stout, with a huge round head covered by the mask. He too had some kind of gun in his hand, not as flashy as Kyle’s, and was holding it high so as not to get it wet.
He waved. “Autumn. This way. I’ll cover you.”
She dashed for the water, her heart racing. She realized she was smiling. Grinning. She yelled, joyful.
The stout gunman pointed at Dustin. “You too.” He reached shore and swung into a stance: arms straight, gun pointed at the other people on the sand.
Autumn heard Peyton shout. Noah cried, “Come on.”
She looked over her shoulder. Three more masked people, swathed in black, had appeared behind them, armed, charging toward the beach.
The stout gunman beckoned to her. “Hurry.”
She hesitated. Her boots were brand-new Stuart Weitzman black leather, buckled, gleaming, top-bitch riding boots. “I can’t get these wet.”
Peyton squealed. Autumn saw a masked attacker descend on her roomie, grab her around the waist, and sweep her off her feet. One of her little bow-covered ballet slippers flew off. Peyton threw her head back, squealing like a piglet.
Dustin splashed into the water.
“Wait—give me a piggyback,” Autumn said.
Dustin slowed, unsure. The stout gunman charged past him to the beach, crying, “Get in the boat.”
The man grabbed Autumn, hefted her into a fireman’s carry, and began trudging back toward the boat. She heard the water sluice around his feet.
“Careful.” She bounced up and down, her stomach thumping against his shoulder. “This is undignified. I’m the Queen of the Underworld.”
She raised her head. On the beach, Peyton lay facedown on the sand, a raspberry velour prisoner with her hands laced behind her head. Nearby, an attacker marched Grier and Noah toward her, gun aimed at their backs.
Lark was farther down the beach. She was waving at the elderly couple with the poodle. The woman, chubby and black with a foam of white hair, had a cell phone in her hand. Lark was undoubtedly explaining to her that this was all a joke.
With a grunt the stout gunman heaved Autumn onto the speedboat. She clattered awkwardly over the side and Dustin pulled her in. The gunman clambered aboard. A tall man stood at the throttles, completely sheathed in black, from his ski mask to his wraparound shades to his tactical clothing to his gloves.
Using sign language, he told the stout gunman to take the helm. Then he leapt over the side of the boat into knee-deep water and forged toward the beach.
“Awesome,” Dustin said. “Freakin’ awesome, man.”
The boat bobbed. Autumn grabbed the side of the hull to steady herself. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
The man at the throttles turned and glared at her.
“Come on . . .”
Why didn’t he say anything?
Haugen splashed through the water to the beach. The situation on shore looked like kindling, ready to ignite. Sabine’s team had three of the college students under control but the fourth, a crow-haired girl who had the earnestness of a librarian, was trying to soothe the old lady with the poodle. Lark Sobieski—Haugen recognized her from surveillance photos. Sabine was headed toward her.
The seventh man on the beach—the stranger—stood gripping a ludicrous toy gun in both hands. From seventy meters away his face was just a blur, but even so Haugen could see who the man was.
He was a damned Edge Adventures employee.
Haugen ran toward the tête-ê-tête with the poodle couple.
“. . . a role-playing game,” Lark was saying. “Honest. It’s a birthday party.”
Sabine reached Lark. “Get in the speedboat, quickly. Your principal is unprotected.”
Lark gestured to the poodle woman. “I’m explaining to them.”
“My responsibility, not yours. And I have the business cards.” Sabine put a calming hand on Lark’s shoulder. “Get going.”
With a final look at the elderly couple, Lark ran toward the boat. Young Ms. Sobieski, Haugen thought, was going to be an irritant. She had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
But right then she wasn’t the main problem.
The elderly couple glared at Sabine. From the baby stroller, their dog whimpered. Sabine lifted the mask from her face. Her expression was calm. With the blue contact lenses, dramatic makeup, and a blond wig, she was well-enough disguised. She handed the old woman a card.
“Sorry to alarm you. This is just a game,” she said.
The woman pointed at Sabine’s handgun. “Doesn’t look like fun to me.”
“Fake. It’s from Toys 'R’ Us. Listen, this was cleared with the parks department and the SFPD. The rangers should have posted signs. I’ll speak with them about the oversight.” She got out her phone. “Could I have your name, so I can tell them whom they’ve inconvenienced?”
She had it under control. Haugen stepped away and beckoned to Pat Stringer, one of Sabine’s team. He was a black-clad little weasel of a man. Haugen drew him out of the others’ earshot.
“We have a problem,” Haugen said.
“Tell me about it.” Stringer glanced up the beach at the Edge employee who was guarding Peyton and Noah with his toy gun. “Edge changed the scenario at the last second. They brought in an extra man. And I think I know why.”
He nodded at the parking lot. Parked across four slots was the crassest, biggest Hummer Haugen had ever seen.
“Peter Reiniger asked Edge to pick up the kids,” Stringer said.
Haugen eyed the Edge man from afar. Black baseball cap, sunglasses, Edge windbreaker, that absurd toy weapon. “Have you seen him before?”
“No. He’s new. This is his first scenario.”
Haugen’s acid reflux flared. This should not have happened. This was not part of the plan. And it posed several difficulties.
His whole enterprise depended on keeping everybody in the dark—the public, the police, and of course the kids whose weekend was being hijacked. Perpetuating the illusion that the game was still in progress could not have been more vital.
He couldn’t let this Edge newbie—“What’s his name?”
“Ritter.”
He couldn’t let Ritter ruin his finely tuned scheme. But he couldn’t leave him here. Nor could he beat the man unconscious and throw him in the back of the Hummer—the beach was crawling with witnesses. And he couldn’t spare the time or the manpower to subdue Ritter and deliver him to the big rig in the truck depot.
And he could not possibly leave the garish Hummer parked there for the weekend. The vehicle couldn’t draw more attention if he put a giant ice cream cone on the top and played tinkling children’s music. The dog-stroller granny would talk about it. The rangers would investigate.
And every second they lingered on the beach bent his exquisitely tuned timeline further out of shape.
Tick-tock.
“Has Ritter asked questions?” Haugen said.
“He asked why we were late.”
Haugen turned slowly. “He thinks we’re the real Edge team?”
“Like I said, he’s brand-new. He was hired by Terry Coates and hasn’t met anybody else from the company.” Stringer looked at the ground. “But Ritter’s asking where Coates is—which brings up a third problem.”
“What?”
With a jerk of his head, Stringer led Haugen to Sabine’s Volvo SUV. He popped the tailgate.
The back of the Volvo contained their gear, including a six-foot army duffel bag with canvas tarps inside. One of the tarps had been removed and spread across a large lump in the back.
Haugen’s jaw tightened. “Coates . . .”
“Fought back when we tried to load him in the big rig. He grabbed for Max’s weapon and—”
“I warned you he was an ex-cop. I specifically told you—”
“That if anybody tried to attack it would be Coates. I know. It happened too fast.”
Haugen lifted the edge of the tarp. The man’s dead eyes stared through him.
It was not the first freshly killed body he had seen. But Haugen wanted to throttle Stringer, right there.
“You couldn’t have loaded this in the big rig?”
“People were coming. We had no time. And it’s too hot to leave him in the back of that truck. After three days . . .”
“Shut up.”
Sabine ran over. “Got Ma and Pa mollified. But we have to get out of here or we’re screwed.”
Haugen kept his voice flat. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I tried. You interrupted me.”
He held still for a cold moment, staring at the corpse. Then he looked down the beach at Ritter and at the Hummer.
He took Sabine by the arm. “You’re coming with me in the speedboat. We’ll ride herd on Autumn.” He pointed to Stringer. “You drive the Volvo to the dock. Von and Friedrich will take that Hummer, and Ritter, and follow you. We’re going to turn this to our advantage.”
“Extra man—Ritter’s a loose wheel,” Stringer said.
“We’ll decide what to do with him later. Right now, we need to get all these people and that limo off this beach and get out of San Francisco.”
Stringer slammed the tailgate and sprinted back to the beach, shouting, “Into the Hummer. Let’s go, kiddies.”
Noah Holloway, Peyton Mackie, and Ritter eagerly followed him back to the flame-riddled attention magnet.
Sabine faced Haugen, expressionless. She knew they were committed now. She pulled the mask back down.
Together they ran across the beach and splashed through the water to the speedboat. Von lugged them aboard. Autumn, Lark, Cody Grier, and a tipsy-looking Dustin Cameron turned toward Haugen eagerly.
“Ready to run?” he said.
“Finally. I have stealin’ to do,” Autumn said.
“Don’t we all.” Haugen slammed the throttles forward, spun the wheel, and sent the boat flying across the bay.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_4e4970b6-606e-5fe3-9805-701896423b92)
The entrance to the abandoned mine gaped in the mountain-side. Jo held back. The mine’s wooden support beams were weathered and rotting. Inside was a void: gloom and mystery.
“It’s all wrong,” she said. “Everything about this.”
The idea that Phelps Wylie had randomly hiked here, or that he had committed suicide by pitching himself down the mine shaft, struck her as absurd.
Gabe took a Maglite from his backpack and crouched in the entrance. The flashlight’s hard white beam shone on rubble, animal droppings, an empty plastic water bottle. The mine tunnel looked like a throat.
“Do you want to go in?” he said.
She put a hand against one of the support beams. “Not without roping up.”
She turned and examined the pine-stabbed mountainside. A fresh gash had been torn in the slope; a raw wound where the ravine had eroded violently under the force of fast-flowing, debris-strewn water.
“The flood channel certainly runs into the mine. I can understand why the sheriffs thought Wylie was swept to his death. Without having access to the satellite photos, it’s a logical conclusion.” She wiped her palms on her jeans. “I need to see the drop-off where his body was found.”
She put on her climbing harness, tied the end of a rope to it, and handed the rope to Gabe. He slung it behind his hips and held on, ready to anchor her if the floor inside the mine gave way.
“Shout if you run into mummies,” he said. “Or a mutant with a chain saw.”
“Jackass.”
“At your service, chica.” He handed her the flashlight and secured his grip on the rope. He was smiling, which almost allayed her fears.
Cautiously, sweeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, Jo walked into the mine. Though the roof was several inches above her head, she ducked. A rivulet of cold warning ran down her back. Her throat constricted and the old, desperate dread threaded through her, hissing, Small spaces collapse. The wind moaned like a ghostly pipe organ.
Stop it. Calm down. She forced herself to breathe. The walls were cool rock. Thousands of chisel marks were hammered into them. She wondered if anybody, ever, had gotten rich out of this hole.
Or if Wylie had thought he might.
Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.
Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?
She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fif-teen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.
Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam— a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.
“You all right?” Gabe said.
She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.
“Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”
She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”
Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”
“I’ll hurry.”
She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.
She looked at the trail.
Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.
It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.
Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.
“Gabe.”
He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”
Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.
“Yeah. I need gloves.”
She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.
“It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.
She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”
“You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”
“Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”
She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.
Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”
“You never know.”
“And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”
“Let’s check.”
She pressed the Power key. Nothing happened.
Gabe took his own phone from his pocket. It was the same, extremely popular brand.
“Got any more gloves?” he said.
She handed him a pair. He got his key chain—a carabiner on which hung a Swiss Army knife. From the knife he slid a straight pin. He used it to eject the SIM card from the dead phone. He swapped the SIM into his phone and turned it on. The phone lit up.
“Yes,” Jo said.
The SIM was damaged. Only portions of the display showed up— if it had been a piece of paper, sections would have looked washed out from water damage. The entire display was weak and faded.
“It won’t be stable,” Gabe said.
Quickly she scrolled through the controls. She found the damaged SIM’s phone number.
“Write this down.” She rattled it off and Gabe scrawled it on his wrist. “The cops can get started with that.”
With increasing excitement, she checked the call register. The damaged SIM displayed only partial phone numbers. And there was no identifying information on any of the callers. But the numbers were all in the Bay Area. That strongly suggested to her that it was Wylie’s phone.
The screen flickered. “I’m going to lose it.”
She got her own phone. As quickly as she could, she sent it data from the damaged unit. Then she looked again at outgoing calls. A series of three-digit phone numbers had been called in rapid sequence. 6-2-2. 9-4-4. 8-2-1.
She felt chilly. “I think somebody was trying to dial nine-one-one.”
“Trying repeatedly to dial nine-one-one, and missing?”
The wind gusted around them. Gabe’s expression sobered.
“Yeah,” she said.
Somebody would miss if he was trying to dial 9-1-1 without looking at the display. If he was dialing for help surreptitiously— because the phone was in his pocket or behind his back. If he was in deep trouble.
The display faded briefly to white. It came back dimmer than before.
She needed to find everything she could before the SIM died. The sheriffs probably had tech experts who could revive it, but she couldn’t take the chance. Hurriedly she scrolled through the phone’s apps and found a dictation function.
She tapped Play.
She heard sounds. Noises. Scratching, muffled—the sound of the phone’s microphone recording from inside in somebody’s pocket.
She heard a man’s voice. “Where are we going?”
She glanced at Gabe. His eyes were dark.
The man’s voice again: “Just tell me that much. How far should I plan to drive? Do I need to stop for gas?”
Jo closed her eyes. Her heart was beating hard. “It’s him. It’s Wylie.”
On the phone, a long pause. “Well?”
Finally, more distant, another voice answered. “Drive.”
“Please, I just want—”
“Shut up.”
The second voice was swaddled in ambient sound.
“Man or woman?” Jo said.
Gabe shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
They listened for another minute. They could hear Wylie breathing heavily.
“He’s scared,” Jo said.
Engine noise. Wylie spoke: “Stay on Five-eighty? We’re going to be at Altamont in a minute. How far—”
A sound like a dull slap.
Jo clenched her jaw. “Wylie’s driving someplace against his will. And he’s trying to leave a trail, to tell people where he’s headed.”
Wylie’s voice came through again, shaky now: “Why are you doing this?”
The other voice, distant, more muffled than before. Words too hard to make out. Jo held the phone closer to her ear.
“You know what the score is,” the voice said.
Who was in the car with Wylie? A man, or a woman with a deep voice . . . was it a jealous husband? A former lover? Because the voice sounded on the edge.
“Shut up. Or”—noise—“punishment.”
The recording cut out.
“Damn,” she said.
Punishment.
“We have to get this to the sheriff’s department.”
She ejected the SIM from Gabe’s phone and sealed it in the Ziploc baggie. They hurriedly gathered their gear, and Gabe shouldered his pack.
“Hang on,” she said.
They were too deep in the wilderness to get a signal strong enough for a phone call. But sending a text message required only a weak signal and only for a few seconds. She typed a message to Evan, headed: URGENT. She queued up all the data she’d pulled from the damaged SIM, and pressed Send.
Message failed.
She tried again. Messages placed in queue. Will be sent as soon as possible.
Jo hefted her backpack. The voice on the phone had unnerved her.
And she knew that Phelps Wylie had not been hiking the mountainside when the floods swept down. He had been dragged to the mine at the mercy of a human tormentor.
The speedboat tied up at a harbor on Treasure Island. The men in ski masks shut down the engine and leapt onto the dock. In the abrupt silence, the boat bobbed, water lapping against the hull.
Treasure Island: good omen.
Autumn climbed onto the dock. The ride had been thrilling. It had rattled her teeth. Lark climbed out behind her, followed by Grier and Dustin. A minute later the Hummer came tearing up, followed by a black Volvo SUV. At the sound of the engines a seagull took flight, squawking.
The tall man pointed at the Hummer. “Inside, on the double.”
They ran along the dock and piled in. Inside were Peyton, Noah, and Autumn’s “nemesis,” U.S. Marshal Ritter, aka Kyle the Edge Adventures guy.
Autumn hesitated. “I thought we were broken into separate teams.”
“There’s been an adjustment to the itinerary,” said the boat driver. “First, you get commando training. We’re going to an assault course.”
“I didn’t sign up for training. I get a crime spree. Emphasis on spree.”
The stout gunman climbed into the Hummer, grabbed their overnight bags and purses, and tossed them onto the dock. “Give me your phones. You’re going to boot camp.”
Reluctantly they handed their phones to him. He climbed out and slammed the door. Outside, more masked people scurried around. Somebody opened the baggage compartment at the back of the Hummer and began loading gear. A heavy object landed with a thud.
Haugen watched Stringer and Friedrich shove the heavy duffel bag into the luggage compartment of the Hummer. They slammed the hatch. Autumn leaned toward the window and stared out at him.
Von came over. “What if they figure it out before we get to the compound?”
“We’ve talked about this,” Haugen said.
“They’re not as stupid as I expected, and they’re not drunk enough yet.”
“You quiet them immediately. You do it in front of the group, pour encourager les autres. You film it, so Peter Reiniger will be convinced that we’re serious.”
“And then I get rid of the evidence.”
“Yes. And make sure it’s one of the disposables.” Haugen paused, to be sure Von understood. “Not just the weapon—the one who becomes the lesson.”
The stout gunman climbed into the driver’s compartment on the passenger side. Another man, wispy and blond, pulled off his mask and got behind the wheel. He cranked the ignition, grinding it until the Hummer finally fired up. They got on the Bay Bridge and headed east, toward Oakland. Finally the stout gunman pulled off his ski mask. A head shaped like a pumpkin sat atop his chunky frame. He ran a hand over his hair.
“Greetings. I’m Von, your drill instructor.”
Autumn leaned toward him. “I don’t want an assault course. I want room service.”
“Assault course and spa,” Von said. “Honey, it’s six-star. Don’t worry.”
Dustin raised his head. “As long as there’s booze.”
“There’s always booze,” Von said. “It’s a party.”
Chapter 10 (#ulink_c7f8f7b7-43cd-5655-9ba0-f29d20b60c02)
Through the pines Jo saw, at last, the crest of the hill. They’d been hiking back toward her truck for two hours. She was thirsty, and an altitude headache was lurking. The sun darted in and out from between gathering clouds. The air had a nip.
She was itching to get Phelps Wylie’s damaged cell phone to the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, down the twisting mountain road in Sonora. She took her phone from her jeans pocket. No signal. The messages to Evan Delaney remained in the queue to be sent.
“We’re still probably forty miles from the nearest cell tower,” Gabe said.
He slowed on the trail and took a careful breath. He looked golden in the sunlight. His eyes were warm and full of life. But breathing deeply could still cause him pain, because of scar tissue, gunshot damage, and surgical work. He was trying to get a lungful of oxygen without feeling as if a spear had ripped open his side.
She ran a hand down his arm and squeezed his hand. “Home-stretch.”
The final two hundred yards of the trail zigzagged around pines and October yellow cottonwoods and lichen green rocks, to a clearing beside the logging road. Through the trees she glimpsed sunlight bouncing off the windows of her Toyota Tacoma pickup.
She heard music and voices. She and Gabe exchanged a look.
They walked into the clearing, and Jo slowed. Rock music was blaring from a car stereo, the Kings of Leon promising that your sex was on fire. A gargantuan black Hummer was parked by her truck. Red and yellow flames were painted on its sides. Its hood was up.
A motley group of young people loitered nearby. Young women with carelessly styled hair wearing tired jeans and expensive shoes. Fit young men trying to impress them. And failing—one guy sat on the dirt with his back against the Hummer, head hanging low. He was almost as green as the splotch of vomit a few feet away. A girl in pink velour lay on the backseat of the Hummer, feet sticking out the open door.
Gabe murmured, “Early in the day for so much hilarity.”
Two men were bent over the Hummer’s engine. One wore a baseball cap with EDGE ADVENTURES stitched on it. The other was dressed in black tactical gear. He was wiry and had a dark orange wisp of a mustache, like an overripe peach.
He straightened and said, “Von.”
A third man walked out from behind Jo’s truck.
Gabe didn’t slow or say a word, but as they crossed the clearing he took his hands from his pockets and stepped a foot ahead of Jo. Her internal radar began to ping.
She said, “Engine trouble?”
The man called Von nodded. He too was dressed in tactical black. He was wiping grease from his hands with a rag.
“Hope it’s just the battery, not the starter,” he said.
Peach Fuzz added, “We’re chauffeuring our young guests on their way to a weekend outing. One of them got car sick.”
The young guest in question, the green-faced boy, was, at the moment, crawling alongside the Hummer toward a ditch.
Von nodded. He had a head like a basketball. “We stopped and then couldn’t restart the engine. You got jumper cables?”
Jo’s antennae continued to twitch. Was that why he was snooping around her truck? “Yeah. I can give you a jump.”
She unlocked the truck and got the cables from the crew cab. Nearby one of the girls, a brunette wearing a gold sweater and jeans tucked into what looked like Prussian officer’s riding boots, sulked against the side of the limo.
“This is six-star?” She crossed her arms. “Where—Appalachia?”
Von said, “Gonna get back on the road in two minutes, Autumn.”
She ostentatiously checked her watch. “Two minutes max. Or you get me a helicopter and evacuate us to the Mandarin Oriental.”
One of the young men from the Hummer, who was wearing a Dean Martin–style hat and a sweatshirt with grier printed on the back, wandered near the trees, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.
“Weekend church retreat?” Jo said.
Von smiled. It looked robotic. “Twenty-first-birthday party. Daddy’s picking up the tab.”
Gabe took the jumper cables. His face was flat and his eyes alert. Jo got in the cab, fired up the engine, and maneuvered the truck grille to grille with the Hummer. Gabe raised the hood.
It took only a minute to get the Hummer started. The starter ground for a few seconds and then the big engine gunned to life, harsh and whiny in the mountain air.
The green-faced young man climbed to his feet. Swerving back across the clearing, he opened one of the Hummer’s doors and grabbed a water bottle. He sauntered over to Autumn and nuzzled her neck.
She pushed him away.
“God, Dustin. You smell like puke.” Gabe glanced inside the open door of the Hummer. Jo saw it too: a gleaming silver handgun with a telescopic sight.
Von said, “It’s a replica.”
The man in the Edge Adventures cap wiped his palm on his jeans and extended his hand. “Kyle Ritter. Don’t worry none about the guns. They’re for show.”
Gabe smiled, as robotically as Von had. “Just wondering what sort of birthday party you’re celebrating.”
Von took a business card from his shirt pocket. “Edge Adventures. The ultimate in urban reality games.”
Dustin walked over, water bottle hanging from his hand. “Yeah, we’re federal agents, guarding our prisoner. See?”
He opened the front door of the Hummer. A rifle was propped on the seat. Jo recognized the curved ammunition clip and tall front sight on the stubby barrel. It was an AK-47.
The girl whose feet were protruding from the Hummer sat up. “Badass. We are badasses.”
She pitched back on the seat again.
Jo checked the jumper leads. The Hummer’s engine was gunning. “Think you’re all set.”
Gabe disconnected the cables from the pickup’s battery. Jo caught his eye. He was wearing The Look.
Not his laid-back all-is-well look. The other one. It set Jo’s nerves on edge.
He slammed the hood of the pickup. Casually, he said, “Let’s roll.”
Von stuffed the rag in his pocket, his eyes on Gabe. “The weapons are decommissioned.” He gestured at Peach Fuzz. “Friedrich’s an ex-cop, and we have former military on staff. Everything’s cool.”
“Great.”
Gabe leaned into the crew cab and put the cables away. Under his breath he said, “Bullshit.”
He glanced at Ritter. “His gun’s patently a toy, something the guy picked up at a Battlestar Galactica convention. But the others are working firearms.”
Behind him, one of the girls turned up the music and began dancing. Ritter slammed the hood of the Hummer. Von clapped his hands. “Everybody, let’s go.”
Gabe glanced at them edgeways. “I’ve been on one of these role-playing weekends. In Finland, with a bunch of think-tank guys. Executives playing Cold War. One side gets captured by a Russian tank, then out pop the 'Soviet’ invaders—a bunch of Finnish lingerie models in Red Army hats. They had real Kalashnikovs, but it was obvious at a glance they’d been deactivated. The barrels were plugged. The firing pins had been removed. Colored tags were hanging from their muzzles to identify them as 'safe,’ ” he said. “Whatever this game is, it’s a bad one.”
“Let’s go.”
Jo was planning to drive straight down the mountain to the sheriff’s station. When she got there she’d tell the deputies about this drunken rodeo.
Behind her, Dustin stood by the door of the Hummer. “Lark, where’s Peyton?”
They looked around. The blonde in raspberry velour had wandered into the trees.
“Peyton,” Lark called.
Dustin shouted, “Mackie, get back here. We got boot camp. And after that, you got escaped felons to hunt.”
He reached into the Hummer and picked up the AK-47 from the front seat. “Peyton, come back before I come after you.”
He slung the strap over one shoulder like he was Rambo. The muzzle began to come up.
Gabe jumped at him. “Don’t.” He got his hand on the barrel and pushed it down. “Aim the barrel downrange. Never aim it at anybody.”
Dustin spun away. “What’s your problem? The gun’s fake. Fake.”
He ostentatiously swept the rifle in an arc, aimed it at the trees, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle fired. Four shots in a close burst, the sound cracking the air. Orange flame spit from the barrel, cartridge casings ejected, and the rounds hit the trunk of a pine. One two three four, splintering the wood in a rising progression.
The girls screamed. For the time it took to blink, Jo stood shocked. Then she yelled, “Get down,” and dived to the ground behind the pickup.
Gabe lunged at Dustin, twisted the rifle from Dustin’s grip, and shoved Dustin away from him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Dustin stared at the rifle with horror. “Jesus, what—? That thing . . .”
Peyton ran into the clearing. “What was that?”
Autumn clenched her fists in front of her mouth. Her eyes looked like silver dollars. Dustin gazed at her, baffled and terrified.
For a moment, the echo of gunfire stank around the clearing. Ritter looked stunned but hyperalert, as if ready to jump—in what direction, Jo couldn’t tell. Von, his face white, raised his hands calmingly.
“Sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. My fault,” he said.
Gabe spun on him. “Surprise?”
“Live-fire exercises when we get to the assault training course.” He tried to smile. “That shouldn’t a happened.”
Autumn raised both hands and said, “That’s it. I’m out.”
She stalked toward the back of the Hummer. “This entire thing is screwed. Where’s my phone? I’m calling my dad.”
Von turned. “No.”
She opened the luggage compartment. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
She froze. Then she screamed.
In the luggage compartment, a large green duffel bag had fallen partially open. A body was stuffed inside. A man’s blood-soaked shirt was visible. Autumn lurched back. Friedrich charged, grabbed her by the hair, and twisted her to her knees.
Gabe took the rifle in both hands and brought it up and got his finger on the trigger. But behind him came the sound of a slide being racked on a semiautomatic pistol. Von and Friedrich both had guns in their hands, aimed at his head.
“Put it down,” Von said.
Jo saw Gabe inhale. He was calculating. But the gunmen were too far apart to guarantee he could hit them both before they could get him. And there were too many people in the field of fire.
“On the ground,” Von said.
Gabe put the rifle down and raised his hands.
For a moment the air seemed to tremble. Then the young man with grier on the back of his shirt turned and bolted for the trees.
Friedrich swung his gun and sighted it on the kid’s back. The boy pounded toward the forest, arms flailing.
Autumn and Lark screamed, “No.”
“Friedrich,” Von yelled.
Friedrich fired. The shot blew Grier off his feet.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_6525575c-8145-5d99-95c6-bbf1baa9bf97)
Grier dropped to the dirt like a bag of sand. The shot echoed. Blood bloomed through his shirt. Autumn screamed, a loud, continuing wail.
Ritter shouted, “What are you doing?”
Jo lurched to her feet. And found a pistol pointed at her face.
“Don’t move,” Friedrich said.
A quicksilver fear rolled through her. Friedrich looked frantic. The gun was matte black. The bleak eye at the end of the barrel wandered across her face.
She struggled to keep her voice level. “I’m holding still. I’m unarmed.”
Peyton applauded. “Bravo.”
She wandered to the center of the clearing, offering a big, slow handclap. “Give Grier a hand.” She whistled. “Grier, you can get up. Take a bow.”
Autumn pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
Peyton waved, broadly, at Jo and Gabe. “And welcome our newest escaped convicts.” She laughed again. “Don’t you get it? They’re with Edge.”
Dustin looked like he’d just pissed himself. Noah stood, hands raised, blinking like a strobe light. Gabe was sweeping the scene with his gaze, checking that nobody else with a weapon was behind him. He was looking for an out.
Von aimed his pistol at Ritter. “Get Grier out of sight. Into the trees.”
Ritter cringed across the clearing. He picked up Grier’s feet and began dragging him away. Von casually took out his phone and snapped a photo of the body.
Peyton watched, swaying. Grier’s face dragged along the dirt, painting a trail with blood. Slowly, finally, understanding fired in her eyes. She gasped. Then she ran for the trees jaggedly, arms extended, hands like starfish.
Von picked up the rifle and tossed it to Friedrich. “Get them all in the Hummer.”
He racked the slide on his pistol and charged after Peyton.
Autumn screamed, “No!”
Friedrich shoved her into the Hummer, then swung the gun toward Dustin. Hacking—“Don’t shoot me”—Dustin stumbled in after her. Autumn clutched at him. Friedrich leveled the gun at Noah’s knees.
“Chill, man. I’m going.” Hands out, gesturing for calm, Noah climbed in as well. Lark was right behind.
Friedrich grabbed Jo by the biceps and beckoned Gabe. “You too. Right now.”
Gabe’s gaze was riveted on Friedrich. On Friedrich’s momentum and direction and his jittering gun hand. Jo knew what he was thinking, what he was desperate to signal to her: Don’t get in the Hummer.
If she climbed in that vehicle she was trapped. The quicksilver ran cold in her veins. She balked in Friedrich’s grip.
He shoved the gun against her side and shouted at Gabe. “In, now. Or she gets a new orifice in her rib cage.”
“Don’t,” Gabe said. “Lower the weapon. I’ll get in.”
In the trees beyond the clearing, Peyton’s screams deteriorated into sobbing. Von reappeared, hauling the girl by her hair. She was barely keeping her feet beneath her.
Gabe climbed into the Hummer. Jo stood rigid on the dirt. Friedrich rose on his toes and put his orange mustache near her ear.
“This gun has fifteen in the magazine. If you’re not in the vehicle in two seconds, I’ll start with your boyfriend.”
Jo couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. She climbed into the Hummer.
Von shoved Peyton in behind her, sobbing. The girl fell to her knees on the thick carpet. Lark grabbed her and held her tightly.
Ritter finished dragging Grier’s body to the trees and staggered back, tracked by the rifle under Friedrich’s gaze. Ritter’s eyes looked wild, spinning with shock.
“Hurry up,” Friedrich said.
Von turned to make sure Ritter was cooperating. Jo looked at Gabe. Last chance—the door on the far side of the vehicle. She scrambled across the Hummer.
Friedrich fired the pistol into the backseat. The report was shockingly loud. Fabric flew and cordite stank up the air. The screaming came from all directions.
“What the fuck?” Dustin yelled. His gaze rounded on Jo. “Hold still.”
He grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and yanked her back. She fell on her butt on the floor.
Jo sank her fingernails into his wrist. Then Gabe grabbed Dustin’s arm and twisted, quick and sharp.
Dustin let go. His eyes shone like cracked marbles. “What’s wrong with you?”
Von shoved Ritter into the passenger compartment, climbed in after him, and slammed the door. Friedrich jumped behind the wheel and put the huge vehicle in gear.
The Hummer lurched forward, tires spinning, and slewed across the dirt in a brown swirl of dust. Von braced himself on the seat, pistol raised. Dustin’s chest rose and fell. His gaze was frightened and resentful. Peyton cringed into a ball on the backseat, sobbing, fingers jammed in her mouth. Beside her, Kyle Ritter stared at Von, his face blank and hard.
Autumn sat rigid, blinking like an otter in the sunlight, fingers clenching the plush red seat. Lark and Noah had tumbled to the floor beside Jo. They looked like stunned fish.
Von held the gun steady. “Everybody lock your hands behind your head.”
They cinched their fingers behind them. The narrow road rose up the mountainside. Friedrich accelerated. The Hummer had power, but in the altitude the engine labored. The trees whipped past. Von wiped his hand under his nose.
He gestured to Jo and Gabe. “Pockets. Empty ’em.”
They threw their phones across the limo. Von scooped them up.
He nodded at Gabe. “Back pocket too, hombre.”
Reluctantly Gabe took out his folded buck knife and slid it across the carpet to him.
“Nobody move. Not a muscle.” Von climbed over the bench seat into the driver’s compartment.
Peyton’s sobs subsided to whimpers. Autumn was shaking. “Grier.” She turned to Dustin, buried her face against his shoulder, and cried. He whispered in her ear, “Quiet.”
In the driver’s compartment, Friedrich shot Von a crazed look. “What do we do?”
“We keep driving. We get there, and then we deal with it.”
“You know that Dane’s gonna flip,” Friedrich said.
“Shut up.”
“And Sabine’s gonna have your balls for breakfast.”
Jo’s stomach was cramping. Von, Friedrich, Dane, Sabine. They were being kidnapped by the damned Trapp Family Singers.
Ritter looked stunned. “My first scenario. I can’t believe it.”
Gabe said, “You work for Edge Adventures?”
“Started this week,” Ritter said.
“You see this gang before today?”
“No. Just Mr. Coates, the head guy. And I don’t know where he is.”
He’s in the luggage compartment, Jo thought.
The asphalt ran out and the road became packed gravel. It kicked under the tires, loud and insistent. The Hummer bumped over a rut and everybody jostled against one another.
Von leaned toward Friedrich. Low and hard, he said, “We can’t just dump them by the roadside.”
Ritter whispered to Jo. “I thought something was wrong when these people showed up. They seemed surprised to see me.”
They crossed a bridge. The tires droned on the concrete. Jo caught a glimpse of whitewater in the river below.
Dustin inhaled. “We gotta do something.”
Noah, the quieter of the two college boys, murmured, “What?”
Von turned and stared at them. The gun loitered in his hand. “Keep quiet.” He turned back to Friedrich. “This is a clusterfuck of major proportions. We got three people we never counted on and the kids know what’s happening. We have to keep going. All we can do is get to the location and lock everybody down.”
Friedrich shook his head. “We’re screwed.”
“We’re screwed worse if we toss them out someplace.”
Friedrich glanced in the mirror, and Jo’s stomach gripped. She was afraid he was thinking, Only if we toss them out alive.
The Hummer boated over the gravel. The road was curving up a steep gorge. The tires ran along the road’s edge, close to a drop-off.
“Just don’t slow down,” Von said. “Volvo’s two hours behind us. We get there, we lock everybody down, we think it through.”
Dustin gritted his teeth and hissed, “We should jump them.”
Gabe gave him a slow, considered look. “What are you talking about?”
“We outnumber them. We can take them by surprise. Get control of the car.”
Peyton shook her head, quick little movements. “No,” she whispered. “Grier. No, no, no.”
The road curved strongly, following the river in a hard continuous turn. Everybody slid toward the left side of the limo. The vehicle bumped over the uneven gravel surface. The trees grew thick on the right side of the road. The mountains rose behind. The gorge yawned on their left.
Jo scrambled onto a seat and buckled her seat belt. Autumn watched and did likewise.
Dustin lowered his voice to a sharp whisper. “We can swarm them.”
Gabe didn’t move. “Bad idea.”
Dustin looked at Noah. “We can take them.”
Von glanced at them, suspicious, but they were speaking too quietly to be overheard. He resumed his manic dialogue with Friedrich.
Dustin’s breathing picked up. He whispered, “They’re going to kill us all.”
“This is not the place,” Gabe said.
Dustin turned to him, pale, almost seasick. “And who are you, some guy who works at USF? Me and Noah and Ritter here, we charge. Three on one. You can sit here with your girlfriend if you want, but we have at least three men who can do this.”
Gabe’s eyes flashed, briefly, and dimmed again. “Not yet. Not here.”
His gaze slid toward the window. The Hummer was rocketing along the rutted gravel road, bouncing like a runaway covered wagon. To their left, an eroded gradient dropped into the depths of the gorge. There was no guardrail.
Jo whispered, “Dustin, look outside. Don’t be rash.”
They had no margin for error. The gorge was so deep that she couldn’t see the bottom. The light swept across the interior of the limo as they continued to bowl around the long, sweeping bend.
Friedrich’s hands jerked back and forth on the wheel like a cartoon character’s. “We are screwed. Royally.”
“Shut up.”
Von got out a cell phone and punched numbers. As he did, a chime echoed from his pocket. Jo recognized the sound: It was her phone, sending a message. Von pulled her cell out.
Dustin’s breathing accelerated. “He’s distracted.”
Dustin tensed. Gabe shot out an arm to grab him, but Dustin was beyond reach and in motion. Shouting like a wild man, he threw himself at the front seat.
Von heard the disturbance and turned, phone to his ear. Dustin lunged into the driver’s compartment and tackled him.
Friedrich’s head whipped around. “Shit—”
Gabe moved too, fast as a snake. Ritter was a beat behind him.
Jo saw Dustin’s flailing legs and grunting face. He was fighting Von for control of the gun. Noah scrambled toward the melee. The pistol waved in Von’s hand. Jo watched it swing. She couldn’t possibly reach it. She couldn’t get anywhere close to helping.
Friedrich gaped and lifted his foot off the gas.
“No,” Von yelled.
“Faster—don’t let them jump out.” Friedrich slammed on the power again. The Hummer leapt forward.
With Dustin in the way, Gabe couldn’t get close enough to grab Von’s gun. Instead, he swept his right arm around the headrest, grabbed Von by the hair, and smashed his head against the door frame.
“Dustin, aim the gun away from us,” Gabe said.
Von twisted and submarined and kicked like a trapped bull. Gabe slammed his head against the door frame again. With his left hand he gouged at Von’s eyes. Von’s knees came up and his feet kicked the dash and the gearshift and the windshield. Friedrich turned his head.
Von’s boot connected with it. Hard.
Friedrich’s head snapped sideways. He jerked the wheel.
Jo had a sick, falling sensation. No, don’t. Stay on the road.
Friedrich hauled the wheel back and straightened out.
The gun in Von’s hand fired.
Jo ducked. Peyton and Lark screamed. The windshield spidered and the Hummer swerved. Von kicked furiously. The pistol waved in the air. Dustin clawed at Von’s hand, trying to grab the gun.
“No, turn the barrel away from us,” Gabe repeated. “Pin his hand against the dash and aim the gun away.”
Von’s legs muscled wildly back and forth. Ritter dived for his knees. Gabe continued battering Von’s head against the door frame. Von weakened. The Hummer veered left.
Jo yelled, “Steer. Hold the wheel and stop the car.”
Lark threw herself onto a seat and grabbed a seat belt. She wrapped her arm through the shoulder strap and gripped it like a vine. The Hummer shuddered. The left front wheel caught the lip of the hill. Friedrich jerked the wheel, fighting, foot still to the floor. Jo saw Autumn’s eyes gleaming with fright.
From the driver’s compartment came grunts and shouts. The gun boomed again. Then again. Glass shattered and Friedrich’s hands dropped from the wheel.
The Hummer straightened momentarily and tilted. The light turned in the sky, shadow overtaking the window.
“Oh my God,” Autumn said.
Then everything went sideways, fast. Jo hit whoever was next to her. She cried out. She saw Gabe, arms around the headrest, gripping Von’s head. He let go, grabbed a seat belt, and braced himself. He snapped the buckle and grabbed for Lark.
The front of the Hummer angled down, sliding, fast. Through the window Jo saw the slope, covered with trees and boulders.
They flipped.
The Hummer capsized, hard. The roof of the car hit the slope with a crunching sound. The windows shattered. People flew around the interior of the limo. Jo hung on to the shoulder strap of her seat belt like a commuter in a subway car that had just been kicked into a tumble cycle. The gorge steepened, and upside down, they slid forward down the slope. Jo saw light, shadow, felt the roof crushing. Dust blew through the shattered windows. She saw boulders and the silver glint of water at the bottom of the gorge. Her mind went firework white. They were going down, all the way.
Chapter 12 (#ulink_832cac0c-0125-554c-b853-172f80131f38)
Evan Delaney paused at the foot of the marble staircase. She wanted to look meek and inconspicuous. Luckily, in the vaulted echo chamber of San Francisco City Hall, that wasn’t hard. City Hall looked like the U.S. Capitol, but gaudier. It had a gilded dome. It flashed a little leg. She backed against the banister and watched the man in the pin-striped suit descend the stairs toward her.
The word ambush had a lovely ring to it. It was full of hope.
The man came down the stairs slowly, his white hair bouffanting like a televangelist’s. He was surrounded by minions. He was a mortgage banker who had been testifying before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He had also been a client of the dead lawyer Phelps Wylie, and he was her last hope for an interview.
He drew near. She stepped out from the banister.
“Mr. Higgins, I have some questions about Phelps Wylie,” she said.
The minions rushed to block her, like a flannel wall. She persisted, batting them away as if they were Brooks Brothers moths.
“Mr. Higgins, do you have any comment on your lawyer’s death?”
He swept past her, down the stairs, into the cavernous foyer, and out the door.
She followed him to the street. Higgins climbed into a waiting car and zoomed away. The car disappeared into traffic, followed by the minion swarm.
Ambush? Strikeout. None of Wylie’s clients wanted to speak to her. Only a few had even bothered to give her a no-comment. The rest had deflected her calls. Higgins had been her final shot.
Maybe it was time to go home. She turned and headed for the parking garage. She could already hear her credit card, shrieking in pain. And then her phone beeped.
It was a text message from Jo. She slowed. No—it was three messages. She opened the first, and stopped.
I found Wylie’s 2nd cell. He was carjacked. Drove to Sierras under DURESS.
Evan’s lips parted.
Wylie recorded conversation during drive. 2nd person in car. FORCED HIM.
“Oh my God.”
More to come.
She opened the second message. It included Wylie’s cell phone number and forwarded his call list. Data corrupted, Jo warned, and, indeed, Recent Calls turned up as incomplete phone numbers. But most had the first seven digits, including area codes.
Jo’s third message included the log-in information for her voice-mail service.
Sent Wylie’s recording to my voice mail. Log in and listen. Must take cell to Tuolumne sheriff s in Sonora. Will call when get better signal.
She smiled at her phone. “Oh, Jo. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Pulse racing, she tried to phone Jo back. She got a recording. The number you are calling is out of range. Please try again later.
A misty wind gusted. She found a seat on a nearby bench and, with trepidation, called Jo’s voice mail and logged in.
She heard Wylie’s voice. “Where are we going?”
A chill inched up her back. She closed her eyes, and listened to Wylie’s desperate attempt to save himself and to leave a trail of evidence behind.
A new voice entered the conversation. “Shut up.”
It was a creepy reply from across Wylie’s car, swaddled in engine noise. The hairs on her arms stood up.
“—punishment.”
She couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. But its tone, flat and imperative, frightened her.
The recording ended. She opened her eyes, stunned. Jo had sent her a message in a bottle—from a dead man. Wylie had tried to tell people what was happening to him, even as he was being driven into the mountains to his death. He must have feared what lay up the road. But he kept talking.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed to a Starbucks across from the Civic Center Plaza. On a legal pad she cross-referenced the corrupted data from Wylie’s Recent Calls list. Different portions of each number had been lost, almost like a glass of milk had spilled across the screen. But she quickly saw that Wylie had called only a few numbers from the second cell phone. And he had received calls from only a handful of numbers. By cross-referencing, in most cases, she could assemble the entire number.
None of them belonged to Wylie’s clients, friends, or family.
She went online, pulled up a crisscross directory, and tried to put names to the numbers she had pieced together. No luck.
Time to cold-call.
She got out her phone and dialed the first number on the list. The number rang three times, paused, and rang again with a new tone, as though the call were being forwarded. A woman picked up.
“Ragnarok Investments.”
The voice was brusque, sharp. Impatient.
Evan paused. Was Wylie using the second cell phone for sex or for bad business? “I’m calling about the charity drive—for Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow church.”
The Ragnarok woman hung up.
Evan stared at the phone. Now, wasn’t that interesting. She turned to her computer and typed Ragnarok.
Chapter 13 (#ulink_6d899a4c-f33c-5824-8f9f-91350d11c3ea)
The hissing sounded like a geyser, hot and wet. The light trickled through windows that had shattered white. Dust hung thick in the air, motes spinning.
Jo coughed. She was breathing.
The hissing continued. The radiator. Behind it she heard the sound of rushing water. She blinked. Her fingers and toes and skin were tingling, sending adrenaline distress signals: Hell was this?
The roof of the Hummer was beneath her back. She was lying on pellets of shattered safety glass. She turned her head and heard the glass crunch, like broken bottles in a Dumpster. Other sounds infiltrated her pounding head. A low drone, like a moaning animal.
Hot fear jumped through her. “Gabe?”
Oh God, the roof of the Hummer was hard beneath her back but the floor was close above her head. Too close. The Hummer had been smashed on its plunge down the side of the gorge, like a gargantuan jaw squeezing down. Her chest caught.
She put her hands up and pressed against the floor of the limo. It was crushing her. She stifled a cry. She had to get out. Where was Gabe?
“Quintana.”
Across the vehicle, behind the dust, someone moved. “Jo.”
“Gabe . . .” The rest of her words disappeared in relief and overwhelming fear.
They had to get out. The car would crush them. “Move.”
The wire of panic heated her voice. She coughed back tears. Where were the others? Were they okay?
She was bruised and cut in a dozen places, her head was thundering, her muscles tighter than if she had tried to deadlift half a ton, cold. She had gripped the shoulder harness so hard that she had nearly sent her whole body into spasm. She fumbled for the buckle, punched it, got it to release.
She tried to turn over and banged her head on the roof—the floor—of the Hummer. Dust stung her eyes.
Behind her, the moan turned to hacking. Autumn was hanging from her seat belt, like a skydiver tangled in her harness. With the Hummer smashed, her knees scraped the roof below her. She was conscious, eyes wide. She hit the buckle release.
“Get out. Come on.” Jo could barely keep from screaming.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/meg-gardiner/the-nightmare-thief/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Meg Gardiner
In the California wilderness no one can hear you scream.San Francisco Forensic Psychiatrist Jo Beckett doesn’t dissect the body or the crime scene – she dissects a life and a mind, recreating the victim as a person, piecing together the story of their death to get to the truth. And then she goes after the killer.Autumn Reiniger wants something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy’s bought her the car and the apartment, but now she wants excitement. And what Autumn desires, she gets.Her father signs-up her and five friends for an ultimate urban reality game. ‘Edge Adventures’ alert the SF police that a ‘crime situation’ is underway, so the authorities will ignore any squealing tires or desperate cries for help.Then – when working on a case nearby – Jo Beckett encounters a group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a wilderness adventure. Suspicious, she takes a closer look. And winds up with an invite to a birthday party she may never leave …
The Nightmare Thief
Meg Gardiner
Dedication (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
For Nancy Fraser
Contents
Cover (#u6670ac7d-8d45-58da-9760-f4a698a89a04)
Title Page (#ub4d4ef11-0350-569e-9870-97604d4f64d8)
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Meg Gardiner
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The young trader stumbled from the trees like a scarecrow running on legs of straw. Her suit was muddy, her blouse torn, her sleek Asian hair matted with pine needles. She ran into the street directly in front of Autumn Reiniger’s BMW.
Autumn braked. “Oh, man.”
The trader glanced at her but didn’t break stride. With one arm she clutched a battered lockbox. The other arm she cradled to her chest, protecting what looked to Autumn like a broken wrist.
This was the place. Fun city.
The trader ran across the street to the driveway of Peter Reiniger’s palatial home. She was the last to emerge from the eucalyptus grove at the edge of the Presidio. The others huddled on the driveway. Beside them, Reiniger sat on the tailgate of a Mercedes SUV.
Autumn got out of her car. She took a step, but Reiniger gestured for her to stay put.
The trader swayed to a stop. Nakamura, that was her name— Autumn recognized her from one of her father’s glossy corporate brochures. Chest heaving, the woman dropped to her knees.
She set down the lockbox. After long seconds she raised her gaze to Reiniger.
Her silence made Autumn’s skin tingle. Nakamura was controlling pain and raw emotion. And she was unintimidated—it was stirring. She knelt on the driveway, black hair falling across her face, and she held Peter Reiniger’s gaze. With her good arm she fumbled open the lockbox. Inside, hundreds of multicarat stones glittered like tears.
“I win,” she said.
A hush pressed upon the street. Birdsong, wind through the trees, traffic down the hill along the San Francisco waterfront, all ebbed. Reiniger climbed off the tailgate.
“And?” he said.
She dug her hand into the stones and clutched a fistful. “Ransom my team.”
The people huddled around the SUV cheered. Nakamura let the stones—cubic zirconia, playtime diamonds—cascade back into the box.
Reiniger pulled her to her feet. “You okay?”
She wobbled, but smiled. “You owe me a raise.”
A medic jogged up. “Let’s take a look at that arm.”
Her colleagues thronged her. Autumn grinned and applauded. The woman was tough. From the roof of the Mercedes SUV, a cameraman panned the scene, catching their glee.
And . . . cut. Cue the music from Chariots of Fire. Autumn strolled toward her dad, hands in the back pockets of her jeans.
The game runner got to Reiniger first. “We’ll edit the video and burn copies for everybody.”
Reiniger nodded. “We’ll stream it at our board meeting.”
The game runner, a black guy with the hard fitness of a running back, poured antiseptic on a gauze pad and handed it to Reiniger. “Clean up.”
Cleaning up was what Edge Adventures did. Absolutely. Reiniger pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Scrapes covered his elbow. This kidnap scenario looked to Autumn like it had been rowdier than most.
She took the gauze pad from him and dabbed at the scrapes. “Messy.”
“Realistic,” he said. “The screaming’s all part of the game.” Only at team-building weekends run for Reiniger Capital.
“It’s how I find out what my people are made of,” he said. Autumn had heard it from her dad before: Running a hedge fund could be risky and stressful, but Edge Adventures helped people find what was really inside. Toughness. Spirit. His staff now clustered around a cooler, beer bottles in hand, exhausted and proud. Two of them grabbed the lockbox and poured the fake diamonds over Nakamura’s head, as if dumping a bucket of ice on the winning coach at a football game.
Edge Adventures didn’t simply sell excitement. They showed clients the light.
Edge created urban reality games, role-playing scenarios that took clients into an imagined demimonde of crime and rescue. They threw people in the soup.
Edge offered kidnappings, manhunts by bounty hunters, and even a night locked in a morgue—all in all, the chance to face your demons and to act out fantasies of crime and danger. Today, Edge had grabbed Peter Reiniger’s team off a street in downtown San Francisco for a simulated heist scenario.
Coates, the game runner, checked Reiniger’s elbow. “It’s fine.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for a discount,” he said.
Autumn saw a quick jab of anxiety on Coates’s face, and thought: And he’s not going to sue you.
“We’re cool,” Reiniger said. “This was what my daughter here calls sick fun.”
Autumn rolled her eyes.
Coates slapped Reiniger on the back. “As always, we’re happy to have your business.”
“However, I do want to speak to you about our run-in with the police. See me inside in five minutes.”
Frowning, Coates went to help the Edge staff load their gear into the SUV—ropes, emergency flares, and replica firearms that looked mean as all get-out.
Reiniger turned to Autumn. “You’re half an hour late.”
“My car isn’t working right. There’s a light on the dashboard.”
“Which light?”
“The one that tells you it’s time to buy a new car.”
“You mean 'Service’?”
Laughing, she stretched and kissed his cheek. “Joking, Dad.”
“Sure you are.”
Autumn was a month shy of turning twenty-one. She bounced on her toes, knowing he would get the message. Big birthday. Better think big gifts.
She nodded at the scene on the driveway. “You wanted me to watch the grand finale why, exactly?”
“To see how things work.”
“Work? You’re playing Ocean’s Eleven. And Name That Phobia.” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t deny it.”
“I don’t.”
“But you wanted me to sit on the sidelines. And what, cheer?” She crossed her arms. “Put Band-Aids on their boo-boos?”
He crooked his index finger and beckoned her to follow him. Inside, the house was gauzy with sunshine. The view through the living room to the terrace showed windswept Monterey pines and the blue waters of the bay.
Reiniger said, “Hold out your hand.”
Lightness, anticipation, winged through her. About time. She raised her hand. And Reiniger slapped a heavy manila envelope into her palm. She eyed him uncertainly.
“Open it,” he said.
Autumn tore open the envelope. Inside was a memo. It was stamped, in red, CLASSIFIED.
From: Edge Adventures
To: Autumn Reiniger
Re: Your assignment
“Welcome to adulthood,” he said. “You bought me a game?”
OUTLAW is an urban reality scenario that off ers a variety of roles for you and your closest friends. Crime syndicate boss, bounty hunter, prison escapee. Edge employees will take other roles and run the scenario.
“A three-day weekend, for six of you.” Reiniger smiled. “It’s a designer crime spree.”
Her confusion began to clear. Ultra-deluxe.Outlaw.Prison break.
“Oh my God. Do we get a speedboat?” she said.
“If you want one.”
Helicopter rescue.
“Dad—is this for real?”
Hunt down the crime boss, or BE the boss and escape the long arm of the law.
“And this is totally plush, right? No team building. No 'get in touch with your inner hero.’ ” Her voice turned hard. “No 'fight your demons.’ Just fun. And five star. Right?”
He pointed to the location of their syndicate headquarters: the Mandarin Oriental.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
As Autumn hugged him, a Corvette revved into the driveway. Reiniger patted her on the back. “Go on.”
It was her boyfriend. She ran outside, smiling like a cat that had just cornered a mouse.
Fight your demons.
She would know about phobias, Reiniger thought. Too bad hers didn’t include fear of shopping.
His daughter was adorable: quick, clever, winning. And such a pretty girl, with the tumbling brown curls of a Victorian aristocrat. He’d never been able to deny her anything. She always wore him down. Her relentlessness was a quality he admired. So why did he get a nagging feeling of unease when he gave in?
Because he had acquiesced to assuage her heartbreak when he and her mother divorced. And to salve her grief when her mother died. He had lavished her with gifts. And what did that get him? Demands for more.
Autumn had the BMW. She had an apartment he’d bought her in the city. She had a spot at the University of San Francisco, a college to which he gave generous donations. And she regarded classes as a hindrance to her tanning schedule.
No team building. No “get in touch with your inner hero.”
But heroism was precisely what he wanted her to discover.
Nothing compared to going out on the rim and facing your deepest fears. And Edge offered a red-in-tooth-and-claw experience, rarely found in twenty-first-century America, of feeling truly, deeply, alive. Its full-immersion adventures were the modern world’s closest equivalent to primitive initiation rituals.
He paid through the nose, but it was worth it.
For years Autumn had asked to take part in an Edge scenario. And, abruptly, Reiniger didn’t want to give her the thrill she coveted. He wanted to give her a wake-up call. She had peculiar fears. She wielded them as a weapon to manipulate him whenever her sense of entitlement was threatened. It was time to quash them.
Coates rapped on the open door. “You got a question about the SFPD?”
Reiniger waved him in. “Yeah. Why did they show up at exactly the wrong moment today?”
Coates was a former Oakland cop. He was Mr. Law-and-Order and always alerted the authorities before a scenario was about to run. If a client was going to be grabbed off the street, Edge wanted the cops to know it was a party, not an abduction.
But the San Francisco police had nearly derailed today’s scenario, right at the start. As Nakamura was being dragged toward the kidnap van, an SFPD patrol car had screeched up, lights flashing.
Coates shook his head. “Pure chance. No way to grab people off the street without being seen.” He eyed Reiniger warily. “They left. I squared it.”
“That cruiser arrived thirty seconds into the kidnap. Almost like they had a heads-up.”
Coates stiffened. “From Edge? No way. We have zero motive to stall a scenario.”
He glanced out the door at Reiniger’s team.
“It wasn’t one of them,” Reiniger said. “They didn’t know when the kidnap was going down.”
“So it was nobody. Like I said—chance.”
Reiniger wasn’t convinced, but let it go. “I want to ask you something else.” He checked that Autumn was out of earshot outside. “I want to add a layer to Autumn’s birthday scenario. It needs to be more than a party.”
“You want us to heighten the scenario’s intensity?”
“It will do her good.”
Coates considered it. “We can add a twist to the crime spree. Does she have an issue you want her to work on?”
Reiniger wanted Autumn to learn the value of teamwork. And with her stubborn streak, she would need to be scared into learning it.
“There is something,” he said.
There was a big red button. Push it, and Edge would trigger a childhood loathing that had become a mulish dread.
“You know how some people hate clowns?”
“A not-uncommon childhood fear.”
“Autumn hates cowboys.”
“That’s a new one on me,” Coates said.
“It goes back to when she was little. This guy scared her at a party.”
“Luckily, a cowboy phobia is unlikely to impinge on modern life.”
“But it’s silly, and she’s let it grow out of all proportion. She calls him the Bad Cowboy.”
Reiniger had barely seen him: a staff member at the party venue, corpulent and sweating in his boots and Stetson. He had stopped unruly kids from running in front of vehicles in the parking area.
That, apparently, was the origin of Autumn’s loathing. The man had scolded her. Sharply—which shamed and spooked her. And for a dozen years since, she had complained about it, usually at awkward moments. The Bad Cowboy had scared her. Naughty children got punished, he said. Careless children got hit by cars and killed, he said. He was creepy. Why wouldn’t Dad take it seriously?
Reiniger heard the subtext: Pay attention to me, Daddy. Indulge me.
“Guy was some ex–rodeo rider. Hefty kid with stitching on his shirt that said, 'Red Rattler.’ ”
“And he dressed like he was still at the rodeo?”
“Fourth of July party. The staff wore Americana outfits,” Reiniger said. “Here’s my point. If Autumn could confront the Bad Cowboy during the weekend—and defeat him—it would be the icing on her birthday cake.”
“Red Rattler—he was a pro rodeo rider? You got a name for this guy?”
“Doesn’t matter whether you track him down. It’s not the man; it’s the bogeyman he’s become in her imagination.”
“It’s what the Bad Cowboy represents,” Coates said.
“You got it.”
“Psychodrama.”
Which Reiniger wanted to kill, dead. “Maybe you could have one of your game runners dress like him.”
Autumn came into the living room, chattering to her boyfriend.
Coates nodded to Reiniger. “Leave it to me,” he said, and headed outside.
Dustin Cameron, smooth and overeager, held out his hand. “Sir.”
“Autumn’s told you?” Reiniger said.
She looked giddy and calculating. “A crime spree weekend. And I’m going to play the queen of the underworld.” She grabbed Dustin around the waist. “You be the DEA agent who’s after me.”
“I want a big gun,” Dustin said.
Dustin lifted weights and tucked his expensive sunglasses in the open collar of his polo shirt. His aspirations were ill defined. But Dustin’s father was a Washington lobbyist. The boy came from a family with power and swagger. He would do well.
And he could take Autumn places. Reiniger hoped she wouldn’t tire of him. Dustin needed to emerge from the crime spree weekend a hero. He would ask Coates to ensure it.
Autumn squeezed the young man. “The game’s going to be badass. Absolutely goddamned badass.”
“Autumn,” Reiniger said.
She laughed. “I’m getting into character. One you designed.”
Reiniger’s phone rang. He stepped away to take the call.
“Dad—”
He put up a hand to forestall her. “The Asian markets are opening soon.”
He answered the call. After a moment Autumn pulled Dustin out the French doors onto the terrace. She looked stung. Reiniger walked from the room and closed the door behind him.
In a copse of trees down the hill, Dane Haugen adjusted the focus on his Leica binoculars. The laser rangefinder gave the distance to Reiniger’s terrace as 122 meters. Through the hazy sunlight, Autumn Reiniger looked as bright and unaware as a piece of glass.
“Photos,” Haugen said.
Sabine Jurgens raised her Nikon and snapped a dozen shots of Autumn and the young man who was groping her.
“My, my,” Sabine said. “Mr. Cameron is testosterone personified.”
“What are they saying?”
Beside Haugen, Von Nordlinger aimed a parabolic microphone at the terrace. He put a hand to his earphones. “They’re talking about the game. She just got the invitation.”
“Record the conversation,” Haugen said.
Von pressed a button and listened, his slab of a face thick with concentration. The earphones stretched over his pumpkin-size head.
Haugen watched Autumn. “Does her description of the scenario match the specs Sabine pulled off the Edge database?”
Von nodded. “Prison break . . . speedboat . . . six in the party. Autumn’s talking about who to invite.”
Sabine snapped more photos. Her face was severe, her red hair cut boyishly short. Though she lacked any hint of softness, she moved with cold fluidity. Haugen found her stunning, in the way of an electric eel: smooth and cunning and purposeful.
Her intrusion into the Edge computer system had found OUTLAW SCENARIO—Autumn Reiniger booked for mid-October. But that hack was now twenty-four hours old.
“Get back into the Edge system tonight,” Haugen said. “I want details—the scenario’s starting point, the timing, the equipment Edge is bringing.”
She lowered the Nikon. “Not all Coates’s notes go on the computer system.”
Von said, “I can search their office.”
Haugen turned, removed his sunglasses, and stared at Von without blinking. Von scratched his nose and shrank back.
Haugen continued to glare. “We leave no footprints. We do nothing that could tip Edge to our existence.”
Von looked at the ground. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Hardly,” Haugen said.
But Sabine was correct: Terry Coates sometimes modified scenarios on the fly. That was why Haugen had shadowed the Edge team on today’s kidnap scenario—to see whether they stuck to the script. And, crucially, to see whether the police stuck to the script when challenged.
Thanks to Sabine’s hack, he had known where and when Edge would grab Reiniger’s corporate team. When Terry Coates pulled up, precisely at noon, Haugen was watching from a coffee shop across the street. He had already phoned the police.
SFPD response time to a 9-1-1 call reporting an abduction at gunpoint: three minutes, forty-two seconds.
Time required for Coates to convince the SFPD it was a game: four minutes dead. Once the uniforms confirmed that Edge was running a team-building exercise, and that the department had been informed of this in advance, they drove away.
Excellent.
Haugen swept the binoculars and saw, on the driveway, Reiniger Capital’s crew celebrating their escapade. He saw Terry Coates, buff and slick and unctuous. Peter Reiniger stepped outside and was swarmed by his acolytes. Accepting kudos, undoubtedly.
Haugen lowered the binoculars. “Do you understand who Peter Reiniger is?”
“Richer than God,” Von said.
“He’s a pivot point. He’s the fulcrum that will provide the leverage we need. And, thanks to his daughter, he is going to be”—Haugen savored the word—“pliant.”
“So we’re going to grab her,” Von said.
The air was sharp with salt, and with promise. Haugen raised the binoculars and took another look at Autumn. “Happy birthday, princess. Surprise, surprise.”
Chapter 2 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Wednesday, October 10
Stop kidding. It costs how much?”
The guy in the attendant’s booth didn’t look up. “Twenty-four bucks for the first hour, twelve-fifty each hour after that.”
Evan Delaney blinked. For parking? Maybe she should ram the exit barrier and escape the garage, instead of forking out. Then, because street parking in San Francisco meant a fight to the death, she could drive her Mustang straight downhill, launch it into the bay, and swim to her meeting.
The car in line behind her honked.
“Fine,” she said. “You want me to open my wallet, or a vein?”
Talking to Jo Beckett had better be worth it.
The story Evan was investigating was big, strange, and wormy with holes. Trying to get the full picture was maddening—but that was typical of freelance journalism. That wasn’t why she was going to talk to a forensic psychiatrist. No, Jo Beckett had called her. Because Beckett was also investigating the death of Phelps Wylie, attorney-at-law.
Phelps Wylie had collected antiques and bought his suits at Hugo Boss. He was short, bald, and toad-mouthed, with limpid eyes. Whenever Evan saw his photo, she heard “Froggy Went A’ Courtin’.”
He had been found dead in an abandoned gold mine in the Sierras.
Wylie had disappeared from San Francisco one Saturday morning the previous April. Months later and two hundred miles away, his remains were found pinned beneath rubble in the mine, so badly decomposed that no cause of death could be determined.
The local sheriff’s department thought he got caught in a flash flood while hiking and was swept to his death. That, or he got drunk during a walkabout in the high country, stumbled on the mine, and fell into the shaft while exploring. Or he threw himself down the shaft deliberately. Basically, he took a midnight header to oblivion, and nobody knew how or why.
It was the biggest backcountry hiking death to hit the State Bar since the defense attorney’s from the Manson Family murder trial, and Evan was writing a feature story about it for California Lawyer magazine.
But the story stubbornly refused to come together. She’d felt like she was poking roadkill with a stick, coaxing it to dance. Until, out of the blue, Jo Beckett, MD, phoned and asked to meet.
That was the reason Evan parked and hiked to a coffeehouse near Fisherman’s Wharf.
Java Jones was steamy and felt lived in. The young barista had a silver nose ring, Tiggerish energy, and curls the color of the coffee she was brewing. Her name tag said tina. Bad Dogs and Bullets was playing on the stereo.
Evan approached the counter. “This sounds like a honky-tonk requiem.”
“You want something tall and strong to go with the song?”
“And hot. Make sure he can skin a bear, and looks good on a horse.”
Tina smiled. “Americano, large?”
With a gust of wind the door opened and a woman came in: early thirties, café Americano curls, subdued athleticism beneath boho-chic clothes. She waved at the young barista and scanned the place.
She couldn’t be called elfin—she was too sober. Her gaze seemed warm but guarded. Or maybe she was just analyzing the clientele.
Had to be the shrink.
“Jo?”
“Evan.” The woman extended her hand. “Thanks for coming.” Evan nodded at the barista. “You’re sisters?”
Jo smiled. “Yeah, but drink this coffee for a month and you’ll look just like us.”
She ordered an espresso containing so many shots that the mug vibrated. Evan glanced her over. So. This was the deadshrinker.
Jo looked the compleat Californian: Doc Martens and a Mickey Mouse watch, the hint of East Asian heritage a few generations back. She wore a Coptic cross on a chain around her neck. The light in her brown eyes looked both engaging and shrewd.
Evan bet that 90 percent of people who heard the words forensic psychiatrist got tongue-tied and skittish, worried that Jo was sizing them up for tics and compulsions. Because she was one of them.
Jo led her to a table by the windows. “I’m performing a psychological autopsy on Phelps Wylie. His law firm has asked me to investigate his mental state and try to determine the manner of his death.”
“And how’s that going?”
“It’s frustrating.” She sat down. “Wylie’s life contradicts every assumption the sheriffs drew about his death. He didn’t hike. Didn’t like the mountains. He did like gold, but in the form of bullion traded by his corporate clients. And he liked booze, but when it was poured into champagne flutes at the opera house.”
“Bear Grylls he wasn’t,” Evan said.
“Not by a New York mile. You know how a psychological autopsy works?”
“You examine a victim’s psychological life to figure out how he died.”
“Yes—when a death is equivocal. That is, when the police and medical examiner can’t tell whether it was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. When they hit a dead end, they call me to evaluate the victim’s mental state,” she said. “I’m their last resort.”
“And I’m yours.”
Jo’s expression turned piquant. “I’m aware of the irony.”
Evan paused. Her skittishness was abating, because she saw on Jo’s face the same drive and foreboding she felt herself.
“This investigation is getting to you, isn’t it?” she said.
“It’s under my skin like a tick. Tell me about Wylie. I need background, insight, some clue to Wylie’s personality and motivations, any evidence that will help me build a timeline of his final twenty-four hours.”
“Did he have a psych history?” Evan said.
“None.”
“Think his death was from natural causes?”
“What, he dropped dead picking wildflowers, in a flood channel, and got washed into that mine by a convenient downpour?”
Jo’s tone was caustic. Evan liked that. She batted down a smirk. “Do you think Wylie was murdered?” she said.
“Possibly. Do you?”
“I’d lay money on it. He was a baby barracuda, angling to reach the top of the legal food chain. He made enemies. And his friends say that before his disappearance he seemed preoccupied and brooding. The word edgy has come up more than once.”
Jo nodded. “And then there’s the car.”
Shortly after Wylie disappeared, his Mercedes turned up near the Mexican border, stripped, abandoned, and wiped clean of fingerprints.
“The gold mine is in a remote part of the Stanislaus National Forest. So maybe the car thief stumbled across the empty Merc on an isolated logging road and decided to take a five-hundred-mile joyride. But color me skeptical.”
Evan nodded. “If you determine Wylie’s state of mind, will that prove how he died?”
“Not necessarily. I don’t have a Magic Eight Ball that says murder or accident. Clients who think I can dowse for death end up disappointed.”
“Your psychological autopsy broke open the Tasia McFarland case.”
Jo’s gaze sharpened. “That case ended with the man I love shot and wounded, and the media crawling over me like scorpions. So be aware that I tread carefully when dealing with the press.”
Evan’s eyes widened. “Tread carefully? You fought a battle royale against the Creature from the Channel of the Blondes. And you took her down, live on national television. For which, by the way, I should throw confetti over you.”
Jo laughed.
“And if you’re so wary of the press, how come you called me?”
“You have a background as a lawyer yourself. You’ve been looking at the case from angles I probably haven’t. And I’m told you’re a straight shooter.”
A shadow passed behind Jo’s eyes. It seemed to say, And I know how you got into trouble, Ms. Delaney. Did Jo know why this case pulled so hard on her? Her own father had gone missing. And though Evan had found him, in the aftermath the certainties in her life had boiled away in a cauldron of grief.
She went still. “Who gave you my name?”
“It’s no secret you’re doing this story,” Jo said.
A tickle began at the base of her skull. “Still—who pointed you in my direction?”
“My sources are confidential. As are yours. Right?”
“As acid rain.”
Jo looked at her calmly.
Cool down. Evan drummed her fingernails on the tabletop. “Very well.”
They gauged each other for a moment longer. Then, simultaneously, they got out notepads, pens, and digital audio recorders.
Jo said, “Have you seen the police reports?”
“Tuolumne’s. Not the SFPD’s.”
“Okay. The day before Wylie disappeared, he worked a full day. His e-mail and phone records show nothing out of the ordinary. His last call was to a client at six p.m. He mentioned no plans to go hiking in the Sierras. Saturday morning, he pulled his Mercedes out of the driveway. He phoned his mother from the car and said he was headed to the office. That’s the last anybody heard from him.”
Something about the timing scratched at Evan, but she couldn’t pin it down. “Have you spoken to his clients?”
Jo’s expression became studiously neutral.
“That’s confidential?” Evan said.
“Absolutely. However, Wylie’s client list isn’t. Nothing stops you from interviewing them.”
“Got a copy?”
Jo handed her a file folder.
Evan smiled. “Okay, I’ll trade.”
From her backpack she took maps and photos of the rugged country near the abandoned gold mine. She handed Jo an eight-by-ten.
Jo looked surprised. “Satellite photos?”
“Orbital image taken two days before Wylie’s disappearance.”
“The resolution’s amazing.”
Evan handed her another. “Same patch of terrain, snapped from the same satellite, but this month.”
Jo stilled. “How did you get these?”
“Relatives with the right passwords. See what I see?”
Jo pored over the photos. “The flood channel. It’s much deeper on the recent image.”
Evan unrolled a U.S. Geological Survey map. “Have you been up there?”
Jo’s dispassion turned to disquiet. “I’ve carved out some time to drive up next week.” She examined the map. “I know that part of the Sierras. The terrain’s brutal. Look at the topo lines.” She traced a series of closely convergent changes in elevation. “Forest, granite crags, sheer drop-offs, and when heavy rain falls, flash flooding is a real problem. If Wylie was hiking, he could plausibly have gotten caught in a washout. I mean, I know native Californians who think they’re safe camping by the Russian River after a downpour.”
“I’m from the Mojave Desert. I know people who thought they were safe driving across eighteen inches of rushing water on a highway,” Evan said. “What are you thinking?”
“The sheriffs’ photos didn’t fully depict the severity of the terrain. Or . . .”
Evan raised an eyebrow. “The timing?”
Jo straightened. “I need to get up there ASAP. Because your satellite photos suggest that the flash flood occurred after Wylie disappeared.”
“Precisely.”
Noise swirled around them, the clatter of coffee cups and silverware. The intensity on Jo’s face mirrored Evan’s own feelings. She felt a weight, heard a deep-background snarl. It was menace, looming.
Jo said, “The question is, what drove Wylie to that mine? Or who?”
The scratchy feeling, Evan’s sense that she’d missed something, intensified. “You said that the day before Wylie disappeared, his last phone call was from the office.”
“Right.”
“What about the dog walker?”
The evening before he disappeared, while checking his mail, Wylie had run into his next-door neighbor. The two spoke briefly.
Jo said, “I talked to him. He didn’t mention a phone call with Wylie.”
“No. He overheard Wylie take a call. When did you speak to him?”
“Two weeks ago.”
Evan felt a frisson. “I spoke to him yesterday. He said they chatted for a minute before Wylie’s phone rang. Wylie excused himself and answered it.”
Jo looked consternated. “What time was that?”
“Eight p.m.”
“Wylie got an incoming call on his cell phone.”
“Yes,” Evan said.
Jo’s gaze sharpened. “Wylie’s cell phone records show no calls after five thirty.”
They both tensed.
“He had a second cell phone,” Jo said.
“He damned well did.”
“Whoa.” Jo looked both irked and excited. “Did the neighbor overhear Wylie’s conversation?”
“A few words. He said Wylie mentioned something about running, and a concert. A rock concert, he thought.”
Jo sat straighter. Her eyes were alight. “Second cell phone. Was Wylie using it for sex or for bad business?”
“I’ll check. But if this mystery phone didn’t show up in Wylie’s records, it’s either pay-as-you-go or registered under somebody else’s name. Unless we can unearth the number or the phone itself, we won’t find out who called him.”
Jo looked again at the photos. “What did the neighbor hear Wylie say? Exactly.”
Evan checked her notes. “Wylie mentioned something about how they 'ran.’ And 'rock.’ ”
Jo tapped one of the photos. It showed massive wedges of granite. “Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe he was talking about the mountains.” She stood. “I need to clear my schedule. I have to get up to the Sierras.” She extended her hand. “Thanks for the information.”
“We should compare notes again. Forty-eight hours from now?”
“You bet.” Jo’s smile was hardly neutral. It was hungry.
“Excellent. And who gave you my name?”
That smile became enigmatic. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours.”
Jo headed for the door, blowing a kiss to her sister as she left. Evan took a breath, excited, and her stomach pinched.
Who had put Jo in contact with her?
The door opened and the wind whispered in, teasing her, hinting at his name.
But she hadn’t told him about the feature story. She hadn’t told him because she hadn’t spoken to him—though he was the man who knew her better than anyone. He was the man she loved, and who had left her inconsolable, struggling through emotional wreckage after her father went missing. The man she didn’t know how to face, the man she had promised to marry.
She slung her pack over her shoulder and walked out.
Jo jumped off the cable car near the top of Russian Hill. The tracks rang with the sound of gears and cables beneath the road, a bright noise that echoed the humming of her nerves. In the park across the street from her house, a basketball hit the backboard and sluiced through the net. Sophie Quintana grabbed the rebound, and saw her.
She hopped and waved. “Jo, you be on Dad’s team.”
Gabe stood beneath the basket, hands on his hips, catching his breath. “That was a quick meeting.”
Jo jogged to the court. “Hurried back to be your point guard, Sergeant.”
He looked good in the October sunlight. Ripped and smiling and welling with energy.
“What’s that gleam in your eye?” he said.
Sophie turned and charged the lane, ten years old and confident that her agility would outgun the grown-ups. Her brown ponytail flicked in the breeze. Her cheeks were bright. Her smile, Jo was happy to see, looked unburdened.
She dodged around Jo and took the layup. The shot hit the rim.
Jo caught the rebound. “The campout with your cousins is this weekend, right?”
The little girl nodded. “Friday.”
Gabe said, “What kind of plan are you hatching?”
Jo passed him the ball. “I’m going to the Sierras.”
“And you want a pararescueman to ride shotgun?”
A whistle from the backcourt caught her attention. The man on the far side of the court raised his hands and called time-out.
“You no longer look like you want to take this day out back and shoot it,” he called to her. “So I’m guessing your meeting went well.”
She excused herself from the game and walked toward him. “You were right. Evan was the one I needed to talk to.”
Jesse Blackburn smiled, short and sharp—a slice. “Glad to hear it.”
His jeans had a hole in the knee. His T-shirt said FIND YOURSELF IN PARADISE and hung loose from his swimmer’s shoulders. His eyes were blue and keen with questions.
Jo gave him the answers. “Yes, she wanted to know who gave me her name. And, no, I didn’t tell her it was you.”
He spun the wheelchair and coasted toward her. “Thank you.”
“But, Jesse, she knows you crossed swords with Phelps Wylie in court. Of course she suspects. She can easily find out I was at UCLA with you. And that you’re in San Francisco to argue a case before the Ninth Circuit.”
An undertow seemed to pull at him. He and Evan had promised their futures to each other—and then they were assaulted by a cascade of Bad. He thought he had brought it down on them and couldn’t see how to swim out from under. Now Jo had spent time with Evan, while he had not. The hurt showed on his face.
He lived with plenty of pain. He had survived more. And he would survive this. But merely surviving would be a waste. Evan was clearly his match. Together, Jo had no doubt, they sparked heat and light. For them to lose that connection would be heartbreaking.
She said, “If Evan asks me again, I still won’t tell her. But you should.”
He looked away, at the sun jumping off the blue waters of the bay. “Not yet.”
“What will waiting accomplish?”
He pushed to the fence that bordered the park, hung his arms on top, and stared toward Alcatraz.
Jo leaned on the fence beside him. After a moment, she said, “I never thanked you for coming to Daniel’s funeral.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“You drove three hundred miles that day. I appreciate it.”
“It was the least I could do.” He paused. “Is that your way of reminding me that none of us has unlimited time?”
“You know what it’s like to live a suddenly changed life. I appreciate that too.”
Jo had become a young widow in the time it took to blow out a match. She knew all about being stared at. About being That Girl. That Guy. The one who lost . . . the ability to walk. A lover. The future that they’d never have. Jesse’s friendship, the fact that he understood what she had gone through, meant a lot to her.
He stared at the water. “This cut is deep.”
“When did wounds ever stop you? What did you tell me once?” His smile was thin. “When you can’t change a situation, and can’t get out of it, you have to go forward. It’s a fucking fact of life.”
“I tattooed that statement on my rear end. Thanks for confirming I got the wording right.”
His smile turned wry. “You and Evan are definitely going to hit it off.” He laughed and shook his head.
Gabe called to them. “Guys, I need help on defense. Sophie’s killing me here.”
They headed back toward the basketball court. Sophie was dribbling the ball, bobbing and weaving in a circle around him. Her laugh sounded silvery.
Jo said, “I also remember the second half of that statement, Jesse.”
“The important thing is not to be afraid. Even when you know what’s coming.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t forget it.”
Chapter 3 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Friday, October 12
Limo didn’t begin to cover it. They drove south down 101 in a sick beast of a vehicle: a stretch Hummer, black with honest-to-God flames painted on the sides. As if Autumn truly were the queen of a trashy, flashy drug cartel and this was her monster ride. She stretched on the plush bench seat and watched San Francisco rush by.
Dustin pulled a bottle of champagne from the Hummer’s mini-fridge. “Time to toast the birthday girl.”
Lark Sobieski shook her head. “Not a good idea. We need to stay sharp.”
Lark’s punkish black hair swooped over one eye, nearly covering her glasses. Her ouroburos tattoo rolled over the pudge of baby fat above the top of her jeans. The dragon swallowing its own tail was red and sumptuous against her brown skin.
Dustin unwrapped gold foil from around the cork. “Maybe you need to stay sharp. But this is how the narcotraficantes do it down in Juarez.”
Grinning, he shook the bottle and popped the cork. It ricocheted off the driver’s headrest.
Lark ducked. “Careful.”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Watch it, bucko.”
Dustin laughed. “I don’t own this ride. It wrecks, Edge Adventures pays.”
He tilted the gushing bottle to his lips. Champagne poured across his chin. He wiped it off and made a face at the label: VEUVE CLICQUOT.
“Not half as good as the stuff my dad serves on his boat. But Edge didn’t stock Colt Forty-five”—he raised his voice at the driver—“so it’ll have to do.”
He held out the bottle to his housemate. Noah Holloway put up his hands.
“I work for the G. No drinking on duty.”
Noah had a sunny smile and laid-back manner. From across the limo, Lark admired his bed-head hair and uncomplicated surfer’s calm. She seemed unaware that everybody could see her cheeks flush.
Peyton Mackie grabbed the bottle. “I’ll drink on duty. Under-cover agents have to practice holding their booze.” She keeled back on the seat and coughed down a huge swallow.
Laughing, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “And speaking of law enforcement . . .” She raised her hand like a gun, two fingers for the barrel, thumb cocked. “Got you in my sights, Reiniger.”
“Screw you, Fed,” Autumn said.
Peyton’s blond hair slid over her shoulder. She was wearing raspberry velour Juicy Couture track bottoms and a pink cami. She made a ridiculous federal agent.
Autumn snapped her fingers. “Sobieski. Take down Agent Pretty-in-Pink.”
Lark sighted at Peyton down the length of her arm, as if it were a sniper rifle. “Pow. You’ve got no head, Fed.”
Peyton wilted, eyes crossed, tongue hanging out. Lark blew on her fingers.
Autumn ran her hands across the crushed red velvet of the bench seat. The limo had been a surprise, a definite five-star stunner. When her doorbell rang, she’d found a man in sunglasses and a black Edge Adventures baseball cap on the porch.
“I’m the game runner. The clock is now ticking on your scenario,” he said.
She paused, bemused. “We still have an hour to drive to the rendezvous point.”
“Not anymore. Your father sent me.”
Now her stomach fluttered. Her dad had told Edge to pick her up because he didn’t trust her to arrive at the crime spree on time. The game runner, Kyle, was at the wheel of the limo, eyeing her and her friends in the mirror from behind his shades.
Peyton grabbed the champagne bottle and crawled along the bench seat to Cody Grier. She curled herself around him. “Share.”
Grier’s eyes widened in surprise. “The bottle? You trying to bribe me to turn against the syndicate?”
In honor of playing Autumn’s consigliere, Grier had come dressed like a member of the Rat Pack. He adjusted his straw trilby and pulled Peyton against his side.
Lark continued to gaze at Noah, until she sensed Autumn watching. She turned to the window.
“Keeping an eye on the opposition,” she said, and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“Good. Tell me if anybody follows us.” Outside, beyond the traffic, Autumn saw weeds and run-down wooden houses slumped against one another by the freeway. Her stomach tightened. “I’m serious about that.”
Lark gave her a funny look. “What’s wrong?”
Autumn gestured at rusting trash cans and busted cars parked on a crumbling hillside. “This is not five-star.”
Get me to the Mandarin Oriental, she thought. Edge had reserved a cluster of rooms at the end of a hall, to emulate a summit being held by a crime syndicate. And all at once she didn’t want to be stuck at the end of a hall. Cornered.
“Autumn?” Lark said.
“Over the past couple of weeks, have you had the feeling some-body’s watching you?” she said.
“Like who?”
“Like somebody who moves away when I look out the window. Or steps behind trees on campus when I pass by.” She waited for Lark to agree, but her friend stared with skepticism. “Never mind.”
“Are you serious?”
“Maybe it’s Edge, doing reconnaissance. They do, you know— they research all their clients.”
“They spy on you?”
“They generate dossiers.” She nodded at the driver, Kyle, and lowered her voice. “He probably knows all about us. Don’t you get that feeling? That he’s . . . seen us?”
Lark watched as Kyle changed lanes. “He looks like he’s trying to get us there smack on the dot.”
“Right.”
Lark’s mouth turned down. “Autumn, are you okay?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
Autumn folded her arms across her chest. Dustin and Peyton were swapping turns with the champagne bottle. Grier was texting—God, let it not be his dope dealer. They didn’t need that complication this weekend. Noah was glancing at Lark from the corner of his eye.
Her father didn’t believe any of them could drive across town on schedule. So he had rounded them up like sheep. The pellet in her gut grew hotter.
What, she wondered, had her father told Edge Adventures about her?
At the Emery Cove Marina, Terry Coates scanned the checklist. His brother and two other game runners were prepping the speedboat. Fuel. Life jackets. First-aid kit. Check. Phone call to the SFPD, alerting them that a scenario was about to run: Check.
“Looking good,” Coates said.
The wind was stiff, the sun dazzling on the water. Across the bay, San Francisco spilled across the hills, white as chalk in the autumn light. Coates savored the view.
Running Edge Adventures was a sweet gig. It was Disneyland for the rich and adrenaline deprived. It was Self-Discovery a la carte and Phobias, Inc. rolled into one. And it was a whole lot more fun than driving a patrol car in downtown Oakland.
With his graying hair and the Edge Adventures polo shirt tucked into his jeans, Coates thought he looked exactly like a former cop. But he had a halfback’s build, and people sometimes took him for a retired ballplayer. Didn’t you used to play for the Raiders?
Maybe in another life he would have played pro ball. But in this life, he had found a niche—a profitable niche—helping others live out their sometimes-twisted fantasies. He had just one hard rule: In an Edge Adventures game, crime would never pay.
Anybody but him, that is.
He never let clients play a game in which criminals got away with murder. Scenarios designed around a sting were cool. An outlaw-with-a-code-of-honor thing was okay with him. Robin Hood. Butch and Sundance. But no scenarios where serial killers took victims or street gangs gunned down the cops. He wanted his games to end with exhilaration, and edification—thus endeth the lesson—that sent clients back to their boardrooms with some speck of insight into living a wholehearted life.
But today, he suspected, he would be playing ringmaster to a sorority food fight. Autumn Reiniger, according to her father, needed some severe excitement to wake her up to the realities of adulthood.
This scenario had a lot of unknowns. His research into the six kids who were going on the weekend had been cursory, because they had almost no history. Their answers on the Edge questionnaire told him only that they were green, protected college students. Autumn Reiniger and Dustin Cameron came from highly privileged backgrounds, which raised flags with him. The children of super-wealthy parents frequently thought that every crisis could be solved by having Daddy write a check.
The other kids—Peyton Mackie, Lark Sobieski, Noah Holloway, and Cody Grier—were question marks. They’d never been in trouble with the law. There were a couple of medical issues going on with—
“Terry?”
Coates turned. His brother stood at the controls of the speedboat.
“We’re ready to rock.”
“Outstanding,” he said.
Coates prepared to cast off from the dock. As he untied the boat’s mooring lines, his phone beeped with an incoming text.
6 POB.
The message was from Kyle Ritter, driving the limo. Six passengers on board. They were headed to the assembly point.
Coates glanced again across the bay. At the southern tip of San Francisco, barely visible, was Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Beyond it was the barren scrubland of Candlestick Point, where the speedboat would rendezvous with Autumn’s party.
The boat fired up. The engine sounded like a throaty lion.
Coates hoped the twist he’d designed into Autumn’s scenario wasn’t too far out of bounds. Nothing was dangerous, simply— unpredictable.
Happy Birthday from Red Rattler. That little gift was going to light her up like a roman candle. Set her whole weekend on fire.
He tossed the mooring lines aboard the boat, and his phone rang. He glanced at the display and answered with deliberate, jaunty assurance.
“Mr. Reiniger. Autumn’s group is on the way. I just received confirmation.”
“Good. Keep the rest of the weekend to schedule this tightly and I’ll be pleased,” Reiniger said.
Schedule? Reiniger kept changing it. Edge had scrambled to meet this morning’s last-minute request to pick up the kids, and with a limo, no less. It was lucky they could spare a team member to drive.
“I’m boarding a flight,” Reiniger said. “I’ll be five hours en route, then I’m headed directly to a meeting. But phone me this evening. I want a status update.”
“Will do.”
Coates put a hand over his ear. It was windy, and people were approaching on the dock, laughing, swinging a picnic basket between them.
“Remember,” Reiniger said, “Autumn may act assertive, but inside she’s scared. If she tries to hide from her fears, make her hold her ground. Don’t let her retreat.”
“So she defeats the Bad Cowboy and crosses the Rubicon.”
“And be sure her boyfriend comes off in a good light.”
Reiniger ended the call. Coates stared at the phone, feeling vaguely uneasy. His brother said, “Terry?”
He looked up. The man and woman carrying the picnic basket had stopped beside the speedboat. They were wearing floppy hats and sunglasses. They had semiautomatic pistols in their hands.
Coates reached automatically to his hip for the Oakland PD service weapon he no longer carried.
“Don’t.” The man raised his pistol and centered it on Coates’s chest. “Hands behind your head.”
Chapter 4 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The limo pulled off the freeway into a sketchy industrial area of warehouses and machine shops. Autumn saw cracked asphalt, rusting cars, trash, men in dirty clothes. They passed a vast parking depot for empty big rigs: truck after truck after truck.
“So not five-star,” she said.
Kyle glanced in the rearview mirror. “This ain’t the destination.”
His voice twanged around the limo. It had an unpleasant echo. I’m driving, and that’s that. Peyton took another swig of champagne. Grier turned up the stereo. Sinatra, “Come Fly with Me”— he was taking the Rat Pack theme to extremes.
Autumn knew the contours of the game. Terry Coates had outlined it and sent her forms to fill out, on everything from medical conditions to nut allergies. She’d had to sign on every dotted line. She hadn’t been told that adulthood would involve so much paperwork. She didn’t like it.
But she did like the crime spree scenario: She was the head of an international criminal enterprise that trafficked in pleasure. She was on the run after breaking out of prison. Running with her were Lark, her enforcer; Grier, her consigliere; and Dustin, her deputy and prime piece of beef. They would attempt to escape Peyton and Noah, the federal agents hunting her down.
And she wasn’t just going to escape from federal custody. She was going to take down the enemies who had betrayed her and sent her to prison. She was going to destroy their centers of power, rob them blind, and collect booty. Loot, swag, pillage. Because it was her birthday.
She felt nervous and excited and—hungry. She couldn’t wait to get going.
But she didn’t know why the scenario had to start in such a dismal neighborhood. The Hummer sped by a huge parking lot, a sloping black prairie of asphalt, and she saw stadium lights. Candlestick Park came into view. It was a grimy concrete Frisbee plastered with billboards for the ’49ers. An endless line of aqua blue Porta-Potties bordered the whole empty, sagging affair.
Then Autumn spotted golden fields dotted with stubby pines and caught the sparkle of sunlight off the bay. Kyle swung the Hummer through a gate. He gunned it through a long, empty parking lot and stopped sideways across four slots. The engine coughed and hacked until he shut it down.
He turned. “Okay, kiddies. We’re here. Sack up.”
Dustin squinted against the sunlight. “This is Candlestick Point?”
Kyle got out, opened the passenger door, and beckoned the group out. Noah held out his hand for Lark. She shook her head. “Opposite teams, Noah. I let you grab my hand, next thing you’re slapping a pair of cuffs on me.”
“You take that risk.” Smiling, he gripped her hand and got out.
Peyton followed, tugging Grier along. “Hey, I’m a U.S. Marshal. If anybody plays with handcuffs, it’ll be me.” She tucked a finger under Grier’s belt. “And I’m talking to you.”
Grier popped the collar of his shirt. “You won’t get me. I pay people off. That’s my job. If I can’t, I run.”
Kyle looked like he was trying to keep a straight face. “If you like shackling prisoners, Miss Mackie, shouldn’t you be wearing a police uniform?”
She smiled, patently coy. “You like handcuffs?”
He smirked and poked up the brim of his cap. “Knots are more my style.”
Autumn pushed Peyton forward and climbed out. “Move, Mackie.” Before you start doing a pole dance.
Candlestick Point State Recreation Area was virtually deserted. The grass was unmown. The trees were gnarled by the wind. On the sand at the water’s edge, a man was performing tai chi. In the distance an elderly couple ambled along, pushing a baby stroller that held their tiny white poodle.
Past the glittering water, on a spit of land that protruded into the bay, giant loading gantries and cranes stood idle at the abandoned Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. On the bay, a container ship steamed toward Oakland, its wake as white and frothy as cake icing. The wind battered Autumn’s hair away from her face. She pulled on a Marine Corps utility cap and smoothed down her gold cashmere sweater.
She inhaled the strong sea air and shivered. All at once she felt great.
Dustin came up behind her and nuzzled her neck. “Last kiss before battle?”
She leaned her head back. “Last kiss till one of us takes the other as a prize.”
On the asphalt next to the limo, Grier and Noah shadowboxed. Lark’s phone rang, and she answered, “Reiniger Cartel World Headquarters, Sobieski the Assassin speaking. How may I direct your call?” Then, giggling, “Hi, Mom.”
Kyle scanned the parking lot, one hand steepled over his brow. After a minute he reached inside the Hummer and took out a walkie-talkie.
“Ritter calling base.”
Static.
“Ritter calling base, come in.”
More static. He got his phone, made a call, and frowned. Autumn knew that look. It was the one she got when she called her father. Voice mail.
She tugged on Dustin’s sleeve. “All that crap from my dad about getting here on time, and we have to stand around waiting for the game to start?”
Dustin shrugged. His smile was slippery, like it had been oiled. “They’re going to spring things on us. It’s cool.”
“Ask the driver what’s going on.” She pinched him. “Dustin. This is boring.”
Dustin raised his hands in submission and walked toward Kyle. “Hey, man, thought your team was supposed to be waiting for us here. What’s going on?”
Kyle looked up, sheepish behind his sunglasses. “Coordinating with HQ.” He frowned again at his phone. “It’s just . . .” His lips, full and red, had constricted. He looked baffled.
Autumn crossed her arms. “Where are the other game runners?”
Ritter raised his hands, a mollifying gesture. “Guys, I’m as new to this as you. Let’s just ride it and see what happens.”
“New?” Autumn said.
He smiled, greasy and uncertain, trying to play it. “I’m Edge’s most recent addition to the team.”
“You’re brand-new on the gig?” Dustin said.
“First time for everybody, man. It’s no biggie. And I’m sure this delay is just a glitch.” Kyle gave one more beseeching glance at his silent cell phone.
“Are you telling us we came to the wrong place?” Dustin looked around, weaving.
Autumn’s voice rose. “This has been planned for months. And you came in at the last minute?”
The others stopped horsing around and walked over. Noah said, “What’s going on?”
Autumn pointed at Kyle. “Did you screw up? Because if you did, my dad will have your ass on a skewer.”
Kyle’s expression dried, like a chunk of Sheetrock. “I did not screw up. We changed plans at the last second, thanks to a specific request by your father for Edge to provide this limo. My boss called me at seven A.M. We had to scramble to get this Hummer and pick you all up,” he said. “So no offense, Miss Reiniger, but if there’s a problem, it’s your dad . . .”
Autumn stiffened, but Kyle caught himself.
“Let’s all cool down.” He forced a smile. “It’s just a hiccup. I’m sure the rest of the team will be right along.”
Peyton grabbed the champagne bottle from Dustin. She took Grier’s hand and pulled him toward the Hummer.
“Knock on the window if anybody shows up,” she said.
Autumn swallowed. The hot pellet in her stomach had returned. How could this turn bad, so quick? It was her day.
Lark looked around: at the empty, wind-bitten park, the flying saucer stadium, the bay. Then she stood straighter. “Oh. Look.”
Dustin’s gaze swerved around. “Whoa.”
Lark jogged toward the bay. Noah ran after her. “All right.” Autumn blinked, fighting the sting in her eyes. On the water, arcing around the abandoned cranes at Hunters Point, was a white speedboat.
Kyle let out a breath, half laugh, half sigh. “There you go.”
“That’s them?”
He waved her forward. “Let’s hit it.” He banged on the window of the Hummer. “Peyton. Grier. Out. We got bogeys incoming.”
Autumn’s anger let go and a bright stripe of excitement painted the view. She grabbed Dustin’s hand and pulled him toward the beach.
Chapter 5 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
The speedboat razored through the chop past the cranes at Hunters Point and skipped across the bay toward Candlestick Point. Dane Haugen held the throttle wide open.
“Masks on,” he said.
Von Nordlinger pulled a black ski mask over his face. Haugen did likewise. Over the mask he put on the wraparound sunglasses he had purchased that morning. His hands were already covered by black calfskin gloves.
He picked up his walkie-talkie and clicked Transmit. “This is Viking. We are three hundred meters from the beach and closing.”
The boat bounced on the whitecapped water. Over the walkie-talkie, a woman’s voice scratched at him.
“This is Ran. We are thirty seconds from the rec area parking lot.”
Haugen smirked. Ran. How apropos of Sabine to employ a Norse goddess as a cover name, one that meant theft. “Masks on. Hold position.”
“Roger,” she said.
He had to wear the mask. He was fair, tall, well built, and so handsome that a Hollywood producer had once told him that he could have opened feature films. The word chiseled, he had decided, fit him best. And his presence was magnetic—almost bewitching to women. He saw himself as a classic figure, perhaps Spartan. Nobody who saw him could forget him. He was too striking.
He raised his binoculars from the strap that hung around his neck. At Candlestick Point, the trees bent beneath the wind. The park’s sad picnic tables were empty. On the muddy beach, a group of young people jogged into sight.
“It’s them.”
Von slipped the pistol from the small of his back and chambered a round. Behind the ski mask, his watery blue eyes were eager.
“Clear the round,” Haugen said.
Von glanced sharply at him.
“Do it now,” Haugen said. “We will not damage the merchandise.”
“But if they run—”
Haugen clipped him in the side of the head with the walkie-talkie. Von lurched and grabbed his ear. “Christ, you—”
“Clear the chamber, and safety your weapon. Now. Before I dump you overboard.”
Struggling to hold himself steady against the chop, Von cleared the chamber and safetied the pistol. He wouldn’t look at Haugen.
“If they run?” Haugen said. “Of course they’re going to run. They’re young and fit and pumped up, and they think this is a game. We want them to think it’s a game. Our plan depends on them thinking so.”
He shouted over the roar of the engine, enunciating each word carefully, as if lecturing a cognitively challenged janitor. Von stared at the prow of the boat. His lips were pressed white, his nostrils flaring beneath the ski mask, but he kept his mouth shut this time.
Haugen aimed the speedboat directly at the beach. The boat was a fine piece of machinery. And the drug runner’s vehicle of choice. Credit Terry Coates—the ex-cop knew his stuff. Too bad for Edge Adventures that the boat had been so easy to steal.
Haugen breathed in the sharp salt air. So far, so perfect. His team had taken control of the Edge game runners without a fight. Coates had thought briefly about resisting, but the sight of Von’s Glock had stopped him in his tracks. Coates didn’t want to die over a bunch of spoiled college kids.
No, the Edge game runners had gone down on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Von and Sabine had needed mere seconds to cuff their hands with zip ties and march them to their SUV. Then Haugen and Von took the boat and headed for the rendezvous. Sabine and the other men on her team had driven away with the Edge game runners, transporting them to the leased big rig parked in the middle of the huge truck depot near Candlestick Park.
The fact that Sabine was now on scene, and in position at the recreation area, meant she and her team had stuffed the game runners inside the big rig—gagged and zip tied in a circle with their feet chained to a ring in the center of the trailer. The game runners couldn’t lie down, couldn’t turn around, couldn’t even kiss one another, much less scream for help or kick the walls to draw attention. And the walls of the trailer were draped with heavy padding, the kind used by moving companies to protect grand pianos in shipment. The padding would deaden any noise. Nobody was going to miss the game runners for at least forty-eight hours. Just like nobody was going to miss Autumn and her friends.
And that was all the time Haugen needed.
He finally glanced at Von. “Do you think there’s the slightest chance I’ll risk shooting Autumn Reiniger here, at a public park?”
Von stared at the beach. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
Haugen smiled thinly. “Is that wit? A bon mot?” Intellectual gymnastics from the man—Von had just earned back a point or two. “You’re right. I was using a rhetorical device. We will not, I repeat, not risk damaging our investment by injuring Ms. Reiniger.”
“I think I got it now, boss.” Von looked at the beach. “Just one question.”
“Yes?”
“Six people in her party, right?”
“Correct.”
“So why are there seven of them there on the sand?”
Chapter 6 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Jo paused at the crest of the ridge. The sun was a gold needle in a deep blue sky. She leaned back against a boulder spackled red with lichen. A moment later, Gabe joined her.
She swept back curls that had escaped her ponytail. “Thirty seconds. Gotta catch my breath.”
Gabe shrugged off his backpack and got out a canteen. He took a swig and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” She drank and wiped her lips. “You have an altimeter?”
He shook his head. But the rise and fall of his chest told her they were at significant altitude.
Her truck was parked two miles back and probably a thousand feet below them on a narrow logging road. She and Gabe had been hiking for ninety minutes. According to her Stanislaus National Forest trail guide and the map Evan Delaney had given her, they were still a mile from the abandoned gold mine where Phelps Wylie had been found dead.
Gabe scanned the crown of the forest. All around, covering the mountainside, were lodgepole pine, white fir, and dogwoods turning crimson. He pointed at a soaring conifer whose dusty green boughs spread above them.
“That’s Jeffrey pine. It only grows above six thousand feet.” He smiled at her, a challenge. “Still way too low to worry about supplemental oxygen.”
“Yeah, sure—you could have HALO jumped and beaten me here. No need to brag.”
“Nah. The government gets annoyed when a PJ uses Air National Guard resources to meet his girlfriend for a date.”
He set his Oakley sunglasses on top of his head. He looked like he was in fighting trim, and he was talking like it too, as a deflective mechanism. But he couldn’t keep Jo from surreptitiously doing a visual sweep of his vital signs.
His skin tone was good: bronze, with a ruddy glow from the hike. Respirations were rapid, but that could be expected because of the altitude. His pulse was strong. She could see it beating in his neck, where it met the line of his jaw. His eyes were clear, dark, and focused. On her.
She slid her arms around him and kissed that beating pulse point. Wordlessly he pulled her tight against him and held her. She felt him breathing. He kissed the top of her head and then she tilted her face up and he kissed her right, on the lips. Twice.
Then he smiled, patted her backside, and picked up his pack again. “Wasting daylight, campers.”
Jo saluted. Don’t make a big deal out of it.
But she couldn’t stop herself from keeping an eye on him. Tough cookie didn’t begin to describe Gabe, even on his worst day. And today was far from his worst.
He was strong and young and resilient. But he hadn’t fully recuperated from being shot in the chest with a 9 mm bullet.
He had only recently returned to work with the California Air National Guard, and to grad school at the University of San Francisco. He had not yet received medical clearance to return to active military duty. He hadn’t put back on all the weight he’d lost in the hospital or recovered his stamina. A patch of sweat darkened his USF T-shirt between the shoulder blades. He still had a considerable amount of pain, which he refused to dampen with medication.
That, Jo knew, stemmed from pride and machismo and the determination to provide a clean and sober example to Sophie. And it stemmed from being a PJ, a pararescueman, with the Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. Gabe worked search and rescue on land, sea, and air. And when on active duty, he performed CSAR, combat search and rescue, sometimes leaping into firefights from thirty thousand feet, using HALO parachute jumps—high altitude, low opening—designed to maximize stealth and speed and a PJ’s chances of reaching the scene of the rescue alive.
Jo followed him along the crest of the ridge, through slices of sunlight in the cool air. The terrain was dry and spare and wild, beautiful and incredibly quiet. Looking up, past the green tops of the pines, she saw only sere blue. Her footfalls landed softly on dirt and pine needles. Beyond them she heard the rustle of the breeze through the boughs of the trees. The only signs of human encroachment were power lines strung from metal pylons that towered atop nearby ridges in the mountain range. The lines skimmed high above gorges and rivers, and for a moment Jo wished she could simply hang a zip line from one and slide directly toward the mine.
Gabe followed her gaze. “No way.”
She laughed. Ahead, the trail switchbacked to the bottom of a ravine before crossing a rocky stream and climbing up the other side. But upstream, where the slope steepened and began its climb to the timberline and snowcapped crags of the high Sierra, power pylons stood on opposite ridges of the ravine, linked by an aluminum catwalk.
“It would cut three miles off our trip. Save us a couple of hours and hundreds of feet of climbing,” she said.
Gabe leaned toward her. “Bzz.”
“Okay, there’s high voltage, and the danger that the bridge would collapse.”
“If it’s thrills you want, let’s get out of here and get a room. So come on and examine this mine, pronto.”
“Right.”
They had a reservation for the night at the Lodge at the Falls in Yosemite. That meant a couple of hours driving still to come, after the hike out. The wind sent a shiver through the trees. It sent a shiver through her as well.
Phelps Wylie would never have chosen this as an afternoon’s recreation.
Maybe he had taken a joyride in his warm, luxurious Mercedes, listening to Madama Butterfly on his German stereo system. But he never would have driven two hundred miles from home into a mountain range where, not much more than a century earlier, the Donner Party had become trapped for the winter and ended up eating each other.
Wylie’s death was no accident.
“Wylie had a map. Or he had a guide. He had some reason for being up here.”
Gabe glanced over his shoulder. “Not a good one.”
“Got that right, Sergeant.” A gust lifted her hair from her collar. “Okay, let’s pick it up. This wind is only going to get stronger. And we’re going to lose the sun.”
Gabe nodded. “Weather’s coming.”
She felt a cold thread skim past her, like a hundred pinhead snakes. Bad vibe about covered it. “Let’s move.”
Chapter 7 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Haugen eased off the throttle. As the speedboat settled lower in the water he counted the people on the shore ahead, running toward the beach.
Three women, four men. What was an extra man doing there?
“Maybe it’s a random picnicker,” Von said.
Haugen’s jaw tightened. “Who runs toward a boat driven by men in ski masks?”
Von didn’t reply.
The boat crept forward. The wind raised spray on the water. Haugen tented a hand over his forehead to cut the glare, then adjusted his sunglasses to get a clearer view of the extra man on the beach. With a start, he was reminded that these weren’t his prescription pair. He had purchased these sunglasses this morning with cash, just as he had purchased his black work boots and gloves and pants with cash, all at separate stores, and had bought his black tactical gear online through a corporate account that couldn’t be linked to him. Should anybody report his description to the police, nothing he wore could tie Viking, the kidnapper, to Dane Haugen.
But as a consequence, he couldn’t get a crisp view of the people on the sand. He grimaced and covered. “We’ll find out who it is in sixty seconds. We play it by the book, until we have to play it by ear. Follow my lead.”
“No shooting,” Von said. The black mask, stretched across his basketball of a head, rendered his expression unreadable. But complaint was in his voice.
Haugen turned his head toward the man. Haugen’s dead-eyed glare was hidden, but Von still cringed, intimidated. Good.
Haugen got the walkie-talkie. “Ran, come in.”
Sabine came back, staticky. “We’re on site. Ready to egress. But our numbers are—”
“Extra man in the picture. Repeat, extra man in the picture. Possibly a bystander.”
She paused. “Possibly not?”
“Don’t know,” Haugen said.
Another pause. “Understood.”
He shoved the throttles to full power. The engine snarled. The stern of the boat dug into the bay, the bow rose, and they bounded across the whitecaps toward the beach. Haugen put the walkie-talkie to his lips again.
“Going in. Follow my lead.”
Autumn ran behind Dustin toward the beach. The speedboat, white and sleek, knifed through the glinting water straight at them. Ahead, Lark and Noah jogged to a stop at the water’s edge. Peyton was walking behind Grier, raspberry velour hips swaying, champagne bottle swinging in her hand. Up the sand in the distance, the tai chi practitioner stopped to watch.
Autumn caught up with her friends. The limo driver, Kyle, ran up behind her.
“All right, you all. Time to separate.” He pointed at the boat. “They’re coming to pick up Ms. Reiniger and her muscle.” He nudged Lark, Dustin, and Grier toward her. Then he pointed at Peyton and Noah. “You two federal agents—you best get lost, if you don’t want to get taken down in a firefight.”
The boat drew nearer.
“Or captured and interrogated,” Kyle said.
Grier adjusted his straw hat. “Listen to the man—he knows the score. If you can’t deny the charges or buy ’em off, you’d better split.”
Peyton worried the charm bracelet on her wrist. Grier took off his smiling skull ring and handed it to her. “My marker, Marshal. You want to change teams, you call me.”
Autumn rubbed her palms against her jeans. “The boat—they’re picking me up after my prison break?”
“That’s right. We are now on the clock.”
Kyle reached beneath his Edge Adventures windbreaker and pulled out a handgun that looked like something Colonel Quaritch would fire at aliens in Avatar. Matte silver, with a huge telescopic sight atop the barrel.
He smiled, a cool leer. “And I, Ms. Reiniger, am your nemesis. U.S. Marshal Kyle Ritter, tasked with apprehending you and preventing your crime spree. If I was you, I’d run before I got brought down like a deer.”
Autumn blinked. Then she turned and sprinted toward the water.
Twenty meters from shore Haugen slewed the boat sideways and brought it to a halt. Von leapt over the side, gun out, and splashed through the shallow water toward the beach.
The Reiniger girl was running toward him. Excellent. Her friends seemed confused. In the distance, sprinting over the park’s low hills, came the first members of Sabine’s team.
Up the beach, a man in drawstring pants was doing tai chi. Haugen catalogued him. Bystander. Along the path, toward the fishing pier, an elderly couple ambled out from behind the trees. The woman was rotund. She was pushing a baby stroller that held a white poodle. Every few seconds she leaned over to pet and coo at it.
Bystanders. Their presence was not a problem. Haugen had planned on having to take Autumn Reiniger’s group with people watching. That was the whole point of the way he had designed the operation.
They had waited to ambush the Edge Adventures crew until after the boss, Coates, had phoned the SFPD. So the cops now knew a scenario was running at Candlestick Point. They didn’t have to like it. They just had to believe that, whatever happened from this point on, it was all a game.
Sabine sprinted into sight. A ski mask covered her face. A very real SIG Sauer was gripped in her right hand. She pulled herself to a stop. Walkie-talkie to her mouth.
“Seventh person in Autumn’s group has a gun. Do we back off?”
Haugen raised his walkie-talkie and hesitated. Who was the man in the baseball cap, waving a toy science fiction cannon at Autumn Reiniger?
Chapter 8 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)
Autumn saw the alien-killer gun in Ritter’s hand, heard the “let’s play” snicker in his voice, and ran. The non-smile lingered on Kyle’s face. The speedboat bobbed in the cove, engine rumbling. A man in a ski mask was at the controls. Another was over the side and splashing through the water toward her. He was short and stout, with a huge round head covered by the mask. He too had some kind of gun in his hand, not as flashy as Kyle’s, and was holding it high so as not to get it wet.
He waved. “Autumn. This way. I’ll cover you.”
She dashed for the water, her heart racing. She realized she was smiling. Grinning. She yelled, joyful.
The stout gunman pointed at Dustin. “You too.” He reached shore and swung into a stance: arms straight, gun pointed at the other people on the sand.
Autumn heard Peyton shout. Noah cried, “Come on.”
She looked over her shoulder. Three more masked people, swathed in black, had appeared behind them, armed, charging toward the beach.
The stout gunman beckoned to her. “Hurry.”
She hesitated. Her boots were brand-new Stuart Weitzman black leather, buckled, gleaming, top-bitch riding boots. “I can’t get these wet.”
Peyton squealed. Autumn saw a masked attacker descend on her roomie, grab her around the waist, and sweep her off her feet. One of her little bow-covered ballet slippers flew off. Peyton threw her head back, squealing like a piglet.
Dustin splashed into the water.
“Wait—give me a piggyback,” Autumn said.
Dustin slowed, unsure. The stout gunman charged past him to the beach, crying, “Get in the boat.”
The man grabbed Autumn, hefted her into a fireman’s carry, and began trudging back toward the boat. She heard the water sluice around his feet.
“Careful.” She bounced up and down, her stomach thumping against his shoulder. “This is undignified. I’m the Queen of the Underworld.”
She raised her head. On the beach, Peyton lay facedown on the sand, a raspberry velour prisoner with her hands laced behind her head. Nearby, an attacker marched Grier and Noah toward her, gun aimed at their backs.
Lark was farther down the beach. She was waving at the elderly couple with the poodle. The woman, chubby and black with a foam of white hair, had a cell phone in her hand. Lark was undoubtedly explaining to her that this was all a joke.
With a grunt the stout gunman heaved Autumn onto the speedboat. She clattered awkwardly over the side and Dustin pulled her in. The gunman clambered aboard. A tall man stood at the throttles, completely sheathed in black, from his ski mask to his wraparound shades to his tactical clothing to his gloves.
Using sign language, he told the stout gunman to take the helm. Then he leapt over the side of the boat into knee-deep water and forged toward the beach.
“Awesome,” Dustin said. “Freakin’ awesome, man.”
The boat bobbed. Autumn grabbed the side of the hull to steady herself. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
The man at the throttles turned and glared at her.
“Come on . . .”
Why didn’t he say anything?
Haugen splashed through the water to the beach. The situation on shore looked like kindling, ready to ignite. Sabine’s team had three of the college students under control but the fourth, a crow-haired girl who had the earnestness of a librarian, was trying to soothe the old lady with the poodle. Lark Sobieski—Haugen recognized her from surveillance photos. Sabine was headed toward her.
The seventh man on the beach—the stranger—stood gripping a ludicrous toy gun in both hands. From seventy meters away his face was just a blur, but even so Haugen could see who the man was.
He was a damned Edge Adventures employee.
Haugen ran toward the tête-ê-tête with the poodle couple.
“. . . a role-playing game,” Lark was saying. “Honest. It’s a birthday party.”
Sabine reached Lark. “Get in the speedboat, quickly. Your principal is unprotected.”
Lark gestured to the poodle woman. “I’m explaining to them.”
“My responsibility, not yours. And I have the business cards.” Sabine put a calming hand on Lark’s shoulder. “Get going.”
With a final look at the elderly couple, Lark ran toward the boat. Young Ms. Sobieski, Haugen thought, was going to be an irritant. She had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
But right then she wasn’t the main problem.
The elderly couple glared at Sabine. From the baby stroller, their dog whimpered. Sabine lifted the mask from her face. Her expression was calm. With the blue contact lenses, dramatic makeup, and a blond wig, she was well-enough disguised. She handed the old woman a card.
“Sorry to alarm you. This is just a game,” she said.
The woman pointed at Sabine’s handgun. “Doesn’t look like fun to me.”
“Fake. It’s from Toys 'R’ Us. Listen, this was cleared with the parks department and the SFPD. The rangers should have posted signs. I’ll speak with them about the oversight.” She got out her phone. “Could I have your name, so I can tell them whom they’ve inconvenienced?”
She had it under control. Haugen stepped away and beckoned to Pat Stringer, one of Sabine’s team. He was a black-clad little weasel of a man. Haugen drew him out of the others’ earshot.
“We have a problem,” Haugen said.
“Tell me about it.” Stringer glanced up the beach at the Edge employee who was guarding Peyton and Noah with his toy gun. “Edge changed the scenario at the last second. They brought in an extra man. And I think I know why.”
He nodded at the parking lot. Parked across four slots was the crassest, biggest Hummer Haugen had ever seen.
“Peter Reiniger asked Edge to pick up the kids,” Stringer said.
Haugen eyed the Edge man from afar. Black baseball cap, sunglasses, Edge windbreaker, that absurd toy weapon. “Have you seen him before?”
“No. He’s new. This is his first scenario.”
Haugen’s acid reflux flared. This should not have happened. This was not part of the plan. And it posed several difficulties.
His whole enterprise depended on keeping everybody in the dark—the public, the police, and of course the kids whose weekend was being hijacked. Perpetuating the illusion that the game was still in progress could not have been more vital.
He couldn’t let this Edge newbie—“What’s his name?”
“Ritter.”
He couldn’t let Ritter ruin his finely tuned scheme. But he couldn’t leave him here. Nor could he beat the man unconscious and throw him in the back of the Hummer—the beach was crawling with witnesses. And he couldn’t spare the time or the manpower to subdue Ritter and deliver him to the big rig in the truck depot.
And he could not possibly leave the garish Hummer parked there for the weekend. The vehicle couldn’t draw more attention if he put a giant ice cream cone on the top and played tinkling children’s music. The dog-stroller granny would talk about it. The rangers would investigate.
And every second they lingered on the beach bent his exquisitely tuned timeline further out of shape.
Tick-tock.
“Has Ritter asked questions?” Haugen said.
“He asked why we were late.”
Haugen turned slowly. “He thinks we’re the real Edge team?”
“Like I said, he’s brand-new. He was hired by Terry Coates and hasn’t met anybody else from the company.” Stringer looked at the ground. “But Ritter’s asking where Coates is—which brings up a third problem.”
“What?”
With a jerk of his head, Stringer led Haugen to Sabine’s Volvo SUV. He popped the tailgate.
The back of the Volvo contained their gear, including a six-foot army duffel bag with canvas tarps inside. One of the tarps had been removed and spread across a large lump in the back.
Haugen’s jaw tightened. “Coates . . .”
“Fought back when we tried to load him in the big rig. He grabbed for Max’s weapon and—”
“I warned you he was an ex-cop. I specifically told you—”
“That if anybody tried to attack it would be Coates. I know. It happened too fast.”
Haugen lifted the edge of the tarp. The man’s dead eyes stared through him.
It was not the first freshly killed body he had seen. But Haugen wanted to throttle Stringer, right there.
“You couldn’t have loaded this in the big rig?”
“People were coming. We had no time. And it’s too hot to leave him in the back of that truck. After three days . . .”
“Shut up.”
Sabine ran over. “Got Ma and Pa mollified. But we have to get out of here or we’re screwed.”
Haugen kept his voice flat. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I tried. You interrupted me.”
He held still for a cold moment, staring at the corpse. Then he looked down the beach at Ritter and at the Hummer.
He took Sabine by the arm. “You’re coming with me in the speedboat. We’ll ride herd on Autumn.” He pointed to Stringer. “You drive the Volvo to the dock. Von and Friedrich will take that Hummer, and Ritter, and follow you. We’re going to turn this to our advantage.”
“Extra man—Ritter’s a loose wheel,” Stringer said.
“We’ll decide what to do with him later. Right now, we need to get all these people and that limo off this beach and get out of San Francisco.”
Stringer slammed the tailgate and sprinted back to the beach, shouting, “Into the Hummer. Let’s go, kiddies.”
Noah Holloway, Peyton Mackie, and Ritter eagerly followed him back to the flame-riddled attention magnet.
Sabine faced Haugen, expressionless. She knew they were committed now. She pulled the mask back down.
Together they ran across the beach and splashed through the water to the speedboat. Von lugged them aboard. Autumn, Lark, Cody Grier, and a tipsy-looking Dustin Cameron turned toward Haugen eagerly.
“Ready to run?” he said.
“Finally. I have stealin’ to do,” Autumn said.
“Don’t we all.” Haugen slammed the throttles forward, spun the wheel, and sent the boat flying across the bay.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_4e4970b6-606e-5fe3-9805-701896423b92)
The entrance to the abandoned mine gaped in the mountain-side. Jo held back. The mine’s wooden support beams were weathered and rotting. Inside was a void: gloom and mystery.
“It’s all wrong,” she said. “Everything about this.”
The idea that Phelps Wylie had randomly hiked here, or that he had committed suicide by pitching himself down the mine shaft, struck her as absurd.
Gabe took a Maglite from his backpack and crouched in the entrance. The flashlight’s hard white beam shone on rubble, animal droppings, an empty plastic water bottle. The mine tunnel looked like a throat.
“Do you want to go in?” he said.
She put a hand against one of the support beams. “Not without roping up.”
She turned and examined the pine-stabbed mountainside. A fresh gash had been torn in the slope; a raw wound where the ravine had eroded violently under the force of fast-flowing, debris-strewn water.
“The flood channel certainly runs into the mine. I can understand why the sheriffs thought Wylie was swept to his death. Without having access to the satellite photos, it’s a logical conclusion.” She wiped her palms on her jeans. “I need to see the drop-off where his body was found.”
She put on her climbing harness, tied the end of a rope to it, and handed the rope to Gabe. He slung it behind his hips and held on, ready to anchor her if the floor inside the mine gave way.
“Shout if you run into mummies,” he said. “Or a mutant with a chain saw.”
“Jackass.”
“At your service, chica.” He handed her the flashlight and secured his grip on the rope. He was smiling, which almost allayed her fears.
Cautiously, sweeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, Jo walked into the mine. Though the roof was several inches above her head, she ducked. A rivulet of cold warning ran down her back. Her throat constricted and the old, desperate dread threaded through her, hissing, Small spaces collapse. The wind moaned like a ghostly pipe organ.
Stop it. Calm down. She forced herself to breathe. The walls were cool rock. Thousands of chisel marks were hammered into them. She wondered if anybody, ever, had gotten rich out of this hole.
Or if Wylie had thought he might.
Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.
Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?
She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fif-teen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.
Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam— a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.
“You all right?” Gabe said.
She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.
“Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”
She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”
Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”
“I’ll hurry.”
She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.
She looked at the trail.
Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.
It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.
Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.
“Gabe.”
He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”
Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.
“Yeah. I need gloves.”
She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.
“It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.
She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”
“You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”
“Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”
She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.
Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”
“You never know.”
“And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”
“Let’s check.”
She pressed the Power key. Nothing happened.
Gabe took his own phone from his pocket. It was the same, extremely popular brand.
“Got any more gloves?” he said.
She handed him a pair. He got his key chain—a carabiner on which hung a Swiss Army knife. From the knife he slid a straight pin. He used it to eject the SIM card from the dead phone. He swapped the SIM into his phone and turned it on. The phone lit up.
“Yes,” Jo said.
The SIM was damaged. Only portions of the display showed up— if it had been a piece of paper, sections would have looked washed out from water damage. The entire display was weak and faded.
“It won’t be stable,” Gabe said.
Quickly she scrolled through the controls. She found the damaged SIM’s phone number.
“Write this down.” She rattled it off and Gabe scrawled it on his wrist. “The cops can get started with that.”
With increasing excitement, she checked the call register. The damaged SIM displayed only partial phone numbers. And there was no identifying information on any of the callers. But the numbers were all in the Bay Area. That strongly suggested to her that it was Wylie’s phone.
The screen flickered. “I’m going to lose it.”
She got her own phone. As quickly as she could, she sent it data from the damaged unit. Then she looked again at outgoing calls. A series of three-digit phone numbers had been called in rapid sequence. 6-2-2. 9-4-4. 8-2-1.
She felt chilly. “I think somebody was trying to dial nine-one-one.”
“Trying repeatedly to dial nine-one-one, and missing?”
The wind gusted around them. Gabe’s expression sobered.
“Yeah,” she said.
Somebody would miss if he was trying to dial 9-1-1 without looking at the display. If he was dialing for help surreptitiously— because the phone was in his pocket or behind his back. If he was in deep trouble.
The display faded briefly to white. It came back dimmer than before.
She needed to find everything she could before the SIM died. The sheriffs probably had tech experts who could revive it, but she couldn’t take the chance. Hurriedly she scrolled through the phone’s apps and found a dictation function.
She tapped Play.
She heard sounds. Noises. Scratching, muffled—the sound of the phone’s microphone recording from inside in somebody’s pocket.
She heard a man’s voice. “Where are we going?”
She glanced at Gabe. His eyes were dark.
The man’s voice again: “Just tell me that much. How far should I plan to drive? Do I need to stop for gas?”
Jo closed her eyes. Her heart was beating hard. “It’s him. It’s Wylie.”
On the phone, a long pause. “Well?”
Finally, more distant, another voice answered. “Drive.”
“Please, I just want—”
“Shut up.”
The second voice was swaddled in ambient sound.
“Man or woman?” Jo said.
Gabe shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
They listened for another minute. They could hear Wylie breathing heavily.
“He’s scared,” Jo said.
Engine noise. Wylie spoke: “Stay on Five-eighty? We’re going to be at Altamont in a minute. How far—”
A sound like a dull slap.
Jo clenched her jaw. “Wylie’s driving someplace against his will. And he’s trying to leave a trail, to tell people where he’s headed.”
Wylie’s voice came through again, shaky now: “Why are you doing this?”
The other voice, distant, more muffled than before. Words too hard to make out. Jo held the phone closer to her ear.
“You know what the score is,” the voice said.
Who was in the car with Wylie? A man, or a woman with a deep voice . . . was it a jealous husband? A former lover? Because the voice sounded on the edge.
“Shut up. Or”—noise—“punishment.”
The recording cut out.
“Damn,” she said.
Punishment.
“We have to get this to the sheriff’s department.”
She ejected the SIM from Gabe’s phone and sealed it in the Ziploc baggie. They hurriedly gathered their gear, and Gabe shouldered his pack.
“Hang on,” she said.
They were too deep in the wilderness to get a signal strong enough for a phone call. But sending a text message required only a weak signal and only for a few seconds. She typed a message to Evan, headed: URGENT. She queued up all the data she’d pulled from the damaged SIM, and pressed Send.
Message failed.
She tried again. Messages placed in queue. Will be sent as soon as possible.
Jo hefted her backpack. The voice on the phone had unnerved her.
And she knew that Phelps Wylie had not been hiking the mountainside when the floods swept down. He had been dragged to the mine at the mercy of a human tormentor.
The speedboat tied up at a harbor on Treasure Island. The men in ski masks shut down the engine and leapt onto the dock. In the abrupt silence, the boat bobbed, water lapping against the hull.
Treasure Island: good omen.
Autumn climbed onto the dock. The ride had been thrilling. It had rattled her teeth. Lark climbed out behind her, followed by Grier and Dustin. A minute later the Hummer came tearing up, followed by a black Volvo SUV. At the sound of the engines a seagull took flight, squawking.
The tall man pointed at the Hummer. “Inside, on the double.”
They ran along the dock and piled in. Inside were Peyton, Noah, and Autumn’s “nemesis,” U.S. Marshal Ritter, aka Kyle the Edge Adventures guy.
Autumn hesitated. “I thought we were broken into separate teams.”
“There’s been an adjustment to the itinerary,” said the boat driver. “First, you get commando training. We’re going to an assault course.”
“I didn’t sign up for training. I get a crime spree. Emphasis on spree.”
The stout gunman climbed into the Hummer, grabbed their overnight bags and purses, and tossed them onto the dock. “Give me your phones. You’re going to boot camp.”
Reluctantly they handed their phones to him. He climbed out and slammed the door. Outside, more masked people scurried around. Somebody opened the baggage compartment at the back of the Hummer and began loading gear. A heavy object landed with a thud.
Haugen watched Stringer and Friedrich shove the heavy duffel bag into the luggage compartment of the Hummer. They slammed the hatch. Autumn leaned toward the window and stared out at him.
Von came over. “What if they figure it out before we get to the compound?”
“We’ve talked about this,” Haugen said.
“They’re not as stupid as I expected, and they’re not drunk enough yet.”
“You quiet them immediately. You do it in front of the group, pour encourager les autres. You film it, so Peter Reiniger will be convinced that we’re serious.”
“And then I get rid of the evidence.”
“Yes. And make sure it’s one of the disposables.” Haugen paused, to be sure Von understood. “Not just the weapon—the one who becomes the lesson.”
The stout gunman climbed into the driver’s compartment on the passenger side. Another man, wispy and blond, pulled off his mask and got behind the wheel. He cranked the ignition, grinding it until the Hummer finally fired up. They got on the Bay Bridge and headed east, toward Oakland. Finally the stout gunman pulled off his ski mask. A head shaped like a pumpkin sat atop his chunky frame. He ran a hand over his hair.
“Greetings. I’m Von, your drill instructor.”
Autumn leaned toward him. “I don’t want an assault course. I want room service.”
“Assault course and spa,” Von said. “Honey, it’s six-star. Don’t worry.”
Dustin raised his head. “As long as there’s booze.”
“There’s always booze,” Von said. “It’s a party.”
Chapter 10 (#ulink_c7f8f7b7-43cd-5655-9ba0-f29d20b60c02)
Through the pines Jo saw, at last, the crest of the hill. They’d been hiking back toward her truck for two hours. She was thirsty, and an altitude headache was lurking. The sun darted in and out from between gathering clouds. The air had a nip.
She was itching to get Phelps Wylie’s damaged cell phone to the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, down the twisting mountain road in Sonora. She took her phone from her jeans pocket. No signal. The messages to Evan Delaney remained in the queue to be sent.
“We’re still probably forty miles from the nearest cell tower,” Gabe said.
He slowed on the trail and took a careful breath. He looked golden in the sunlight. His eyes were warm and full of life. But breathing deeply could still cause him pain, because of scar tissue, gunshot damage, and surgical work. He was trying to get a lungful of oxygen without feeling as if a spear had ripped open his side.
She ran a hand down his arm and squeezed his hand. “Home-stretch.”
The final two hundred yards of the trail zigzagged around pines and October yellow cottonwoods and lichen green rocks, to a clearing beside the logging road. Through the trees she glimpsed sunlight bouncing off the windows of her Toyota Tacoma pickup.
She heard music and voices. She and Gabe exchanged a look.
They walked into the clearing, and Jo slowed. Rock music was blaring from a car stereo, the Kings of Leon promising that your sex was on fire. A gargantuan black Hummer was parked by her truck. Red and yellow flames were painted on its sides. Its hood was up.
A motley group of young people loitered nearby. Young women with carelessly styled hair wearing tired jeans and expensive shoes. Fit young men trying to impress them. And failing—one guy sat on the dirt with his back against the Hummer, head hanging low. He was almost as green as the splotch of vomit a few feet away. A girl in pink velour lay on the backseat of the Hummer, feet sticking out the open door.
Gabe murmured, “Early in the day for so much hilarity.”
Two men were bent over the Hummer’s engine. One wore a baseball cap with EDGE ADVENTURES stitched on it. The other was dressed in black tactical gear. He was wiry and had a dark orange wisp of a mustache, like an overripe peach.
He straightened and said, “Von.”
A third man walked out from behind Jo’s truck.
Gabe didn’t slow or say a word, but as they crossed the clearing he took his hands from his pockets and stepped a foot ahead of Jo. Her internal radar began to ping.
She said, “Engine trouble?”
The man called Von nodded. He too was dressed in tactical black. He was wiping grease from his hands with a rag.
“Hope it’s just the battery, not the starter,” he said.
Peach Fuzz added, “We’re chauffeuring our young guests on their way to a weekend outing. One of them got car sick.”
The young guest in question, the green-faced boy, was, at the moment, crawling alongside the Hummer toward a ditch.
Von nodded. He had a head like a basketball. “We stopped and then couldn’t restart the engine. You got jumper cables?”
Jo’s antennae continued to twitch. Was that why he was snooping around her truck? “Yeah. I can give you a jump.”
She unlocked the truck and got the cables from the crew cab. Nearby one of the girls, a brunette wearing a gold sweater and jeans tucked into what looked like Prussian officer’s riding boots, sulked against the side of the limo.
“This is six-star?” She crossed her arms. “Where—Appalachia?”
Von said, “Gonna get back on the road in two minutes, Autumn.”
She ostentatiously checked her watch. “Two minutes max. Or you get me a helicopter and evacuate us to the Mandarin Oriental.”
One of the young men from the Hummer, who was wearing a Dean Martin–style hat and a sweatshirt with grier printed on the back, wandered near the trees, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.
“Weekend church retreat?” Jo said.
Von smiled. It looked robotic. “Twenty-first-birthday party. Daddy’s picking up the tab.”
Gabe took the jumper cables. His face was flat and his eyes alert. Jo got in the cab, fired up the engine, and maneuvered the truck grille to grille with the Hummer. Gabe raised the hood.
It took only a minute to get the Hummer started. The starter ground for a few seconds and then the big engine gunned to life, harsh and whiny in the mountain air.
The green-faced young man climbed to his feet. Swerving back across the clearing, he opened one of the Hummer’s doors and grabbed a water bottle. He sauntered over to Autumn and nuzzled her neck.
She pushed him away.
“God, Dustin. You smell like puke.” Gabe glanced inside the open door of the Hummer. Jo saw it too: a gleaming silver handgun with a telescopic sight.
Von said, “It’s a replica.”
The man in the Edge Adventures cap wiped his palm on his jeans and extended his hand. “Kyle Ritter. Don’t worry none about the guns. They’re for show.”
Gabe smiled, as robotically as Von had. “Just wondering what sort of birthday party you’re celebrating.”
Von took a business card from his shirt pocket. “Edge Adventures. The ultimate in urban reality games.”
Dustin walked over, water bottle hanging from his hand. “Yeah, we’re federal agents, guarding our prisoner. See?”
He opened the front door of the Hummer. A rifle was propped on the seat. Jo recognized the curved ammunition clip and tall front sight on the stubby barrel. It was an AK-47.
The girl whose feet were protruding from the Hummer sat up. “Badass. We are badasses.”
She pitched back on the seat again.
Jo checked the jumper leads. The Hummer’s engine was gunning. “Think you’re all set.”
Gabe disconnected the cables from the pickup’s battery. Jo caught his eye. He was wearing The Look.
Not his laid-back all-is-well look. The other one. It set Jo’s nerves on edge.
He slammed the hood of the pickup. Casually, he said, “Let’s roll.”
Von stuffed the rag in his pocket, his eyes on Gabe. “The weapons are decommissioned.” He gestured at Peach Fuzz. “Friedrich’s an ex-cop, and we have former military on staff. Everything’s cool.”
“Great.”
Gabe leaned into the crew cab and put the cables away. Under his breath he said, “Bullshit.”
He glanced at Ritter. “His gun’s patently a toy, something the guy picked up at a Battlestar Galactica convention. But the others are working firearms.”
Behind him, one of the girls turned up the music and began dancing. Ritter slammed the hood of the Hummer. Von clapped his hands. “Everybody, let’s go.”
Gabe glanced at them edgeways. “I’ve been on one of these role-playing weekends. In Finland, with a bunch of think-tank guys. Executives playing Cold War. One side gets captured by a Russian tank, then out pop the 'Soviet’ invaders—a bunch of Finnish lingerie models in Red Army hats. They had real Kalashnikovs, but it was obvious at a glance they’d been deactivated. The barrels were plugged. The firing pins had been removed. Colored tags were hanging from their muzzles to identify them as 'safe,’ ” he said. “Whatever this game is, it’s a bad one.”
“Let’s go.”
Jo was planning to drive straight down the mountain to the sheriff’s station. When she got there she’d tell the deputies about this drunken rodeo.
Behind her, Dustin stood by the door of the Hummer. “Lark, where’s Peyton?”
They looked around. The blonde in raspberry velour had wandered into the trees.
“Peyton,” Lark called.
Dustin shouted, “Mackie, get back here. We got boot camp. And after that, you got escaped felons to hunt.”
He reached into the Hummer and picked up the AK-47 from the front seat. “Peyton, come back before I come after you.”
He slung the strap over one shoulder like he was Rambo. The muzzle began to come up.
Gabe jumped at him. “Don’t.” He got his hand on the barrel and pushed it down. “Aim the barrel downrange. Never aim it at anybody.”
Dustin spun away. “What’s your problem? The gun’s fake. Fake.”
He ostentatiously swept the rifle in an arc, aimed it at the trees, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle fired. Four shots in a close burst, the sound cracking the air. Orange flame spit from the barrel, cartridge casings ejected, and the rounds hit the trunk of a pine. One two three four, splintering the wood in a rising progression.
The girls screamed. For the time it took to blink, Jo stood shocked. Then she yelled, “Get down,” and dived to the ground behind the pickup.
Gabe lunged at Dustin, twisted the rifle from Dustin’s grip, and shoved Dustin away from him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Dustin stared at the rifle with horror. “Jesus, what—? That thing . . .”
Peyton ran into the clearing. “What was that?”
Autumn clenched her fists in front of her mouth. Her eyes looked like silver dollars. Dustin gazed at her, baffled and terrified.
For a moment, the echo of gunfire stank around the clearing. Ritter looked stunned but hyperalert, as if ready to jump—in what direction, Jo couldn’t tell. Von, his face white, raised his hands calmingly.
“Sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. My fault,” he said.
Gabe spun on him. “Surprise?”
“Live-fire exercises when we get to the assault training course.” He tried to smile. “That shouldn’t a happened.”
Autumn raised both hands and said, “That’s it. I’m out.”
She stalked toward the back of the Hummer. “This entire thing is screwed. Where’s my phone? I’m calling my dad.”
Von turned. “No.”
She opened the luggage compartment. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
She froze. Then she screamed.
In the luggage compartment, a large green duffel bag had fallen partially open. A body was stuffed inside. A man’s blood-soaked shirt was visible. Autumn lurched back. Friedrich charged, grabbed her by the hair, and twisted her to her knees.
Gabe took the rifle in both hands and brought it up and got his finger on the trigger. But behind him came the sound of a slide being racked on a semiautomatic pistol. Von and Friedrich both had guns in their hands, aimed at his head.
“Put it down,” Von said.
Jo saw Gabe inhale. He was calculating. But the gunmen were too far apart to guarantee he could hit them both before they could get him. And there were too many people in the field of fire.
“On the ground,” Von said.
Gabe put the rifle down and raised his hands.
For a moment the air seemed to tremble. Then the young man with grier on the back of his shirt turned and bolted for the trees.
Friedrich swung his gun and sighted it on the kid’s back. The boy pounded toward the forest, arms flailing.
Autumn and Lark screamed, “No.”
“Friedrich,” Von yelled.
Friedrich fired. The shot blew Grier off his feet.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_6525575c-8145-5d99-95c6-bbf1baa9bf97)
Grier dropped to the dirt like a bag of sand. The shot echoed. Blood bloomed through his shirt. Autumn screamed, a loud, continuing wail.
Ritter shouted, “What are you doing?”
Jo lurched to her feet. And found a pistol pointed at her face.
“Don’t move,” Friedrich said.
A quicksilver fear rolled through her. Friedrich looked frantic. The gun was matte black. The bleak eye at the end of the barrel wandered across her face.
She struggled to keep her voice level. “I’m holding still. I’m unarmed.”
Peyton applauded. “Bravo.”
She wandered to the center of the clearing, offering a big, slow handclap. “Give Grier a hand.” She whistled. “Grier, you can get up. Take a bow.”
Autumn pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
Peyton waved, broadly, at Jo and Gabe. “And welcome our newest escaped convicts.” She laughed again. “Don’t you get it? They’re with Edge.”
Dustin looked like he’d just pissed himself. Noah stood, hands raised, blinking like a strobe light. Gabe was sweeping the scene with his gaze, checking that nobody else with a weapon was behind him. He was looking for an out.
Von aimed his pistol at Ritter. “Get Grier out of sight. Into the trees.”
Ritter cringed across the clearing. He picked up Grier’s feet and began dragging him away. Von casually took out his phone and snapped a photo of the body.
Peyton watched, swaying. Grier’s face dragged along the dirt, painting a trail with blood. Slowly, finally, understanding fired in her eyes. She gasped. Then she ran for the trees jaggedly, arms extended, hands like starfish.
Von picked up the rifle and tossed it to Friedrich. “Get them all in the Hummer.”
He racked the slide on his pistol and charged after Peyton.
Autumn screamed, “No!”
Friedrich shoved her into the Hummer, then swung the gun toward Dustin. Hacking—“Don’t shoot me”—Dustin stumbled in after her. Autumn clutched at him. Friedrich leveled the gun at Noah’s knees.
“Chill, man. I’m going.” Hands out, gesturing for calm, Noah climbed in as well. Lark was right behind.
Friedrich grabbed Jo by the biceps and beckoned Gabe. “You too. Right now.”
Gabe’s gaze was riveted on Friedrich. On Friedrich’s momentum and direction and his jittering gun hand. Jo knew what he was thinking, what he was desperate to signal to her: Don’t get in the Hummer.
If she climbed in that vehicle she was trapped. The quicksilver ran cold in her veins. She balked in Friedrich’s grip.
He shoved the gun against her side and shouted at Gabe. “In, now. Or she gets a new orifice in her rib cage.”
“Don’t,” Gabe said. “Lower the weapon. I’ll get in.”
In the trees beyond the clearing, Peyton’s screams deteriorated into sobbing. Von reappeared, hauling the girl by her hair. She was barely keeping her feet beneath her.
Gabe climbed into the Hummer. Jo stood rigid on the dirt. Friedrich rose on his toes and put his orange mustache near her ear.
“This gun has fifteen in the magazine. If you’re not in the vehicle in two seconds, I’ll start with your boyfriend.”
Jo couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. She climbed into the Hummer.
Von shoved Peyton in behind her, sobbing. The girl fell to her knees on the thick carpet. Lark grabbed her and held her tightly.
Ritter finished dragging Grier’s body to the trees and staggered back, tracked by the rifle under Friedrich’s gaze. Ritter’s eyes looked wild, spinning with shock.
“Hurry up,” Friedrich said.
Von turned to make sure Ritter was cooperating. Jo looked at Gabe. Last chance—the door on the far side of the vehicle. She scrambled across the Hummer.
Friedrich fired the pistol into the backseat. The report was shockingly loud. Fabric flew and cordite stank up the air. The screaming came from all directions.
“What the fuck?” Dustin yelled. His gaze rounded on Jo. “Hold still.”
He grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and yanked her back. She fell on her butt on the floor.
Jo sank her fingernails into his wrist. Then Gabe grabbed Dustin’s arm and twisted, quick and sharp.
Dustin let go. His eyes shone like cracked marbles. “What’s wrong with you?”
Von shoved Ritter into the passenger compartment, climbed in after him, and slammed the door. Friedrich jumped behind the wheel and put the huge vehicle in gear.
The Hummer lurched forward, tires spinning, and slewed across the dirt in a brown swirl of dust. Von braced himself on the seat, pistol raised. Dustin’s chest rose and fell. His gaze was frightened and resentful. Peyton cringed into a ball on the backseat, sobbing, fingers jammed in her mouth. Beside her, Kyle Ritter stared at Von, his face blank and hard.
Autumn sat rigid, blinking like an otter in the sunlight, fingers clenching the plush red seat. Lark and Noah had tumbled to the floor beside Jo. They looked like stunned fish.
Von held the gun steady. “Everybody lock your hands behind your head.”
They cinched their fingers behind them. The narrow road rose up the mountainside. Friedrich accelerated. The Hummer had power, but in the altitude the engine labored. The trees whipped past. Von wiped his hand under his nose.
He gestured to Jo and Gabe. “Pockets. Empty ’em.”
They threw their phones across the limo. Von scooped them up.
He nodded at Gabe. “Back pocket too, hombre.”
Reluctantly Gabe took out his folded buck knife and slid it across the carpet to him.
“Nobody move. Not a muscle.” Von climbed over the bench seat into the driver’s compartment.
Peyton’s sobs subsided to whimpers. Autumn was shaking. “Grier.” She turned to Dustin, buried her face against his shoulder, and cried. He whispered in her ear, “Quiet.”
In the driver’s compartment, Friedrich shot Von a crazed look. “What do we do?”
“We keep driving. We get there, and then we deal with it.”
“You know that Dane’s gonna flip,” Friedrich said.
“Shut up.”
“And Sabine’s gonna have your balls for breakfast.”
Jo’s stomach was cramping. Von, Friedrich, Dane, Sabine. They were being kidnapped by the damned Trapp Family Singers.
Ritter looked stunned. “My first scenario. I can’t believe it.”
Gabe said, “You work for Edge Adventures?”
“Started this week,” Ritter said.
“You see this gang before today?”
“No. Just Mr. Coates, the head guy. And I don’t know where he is.”
He’s in the luggage compartment, Jo thought.
The asphalt ran out and the road became packed gravel. It kicked under the tires, loud and insistent. The Hummer bumped over a rut and everybody jostled against one another.
Von leaned toward Friedrich. Low and hard, he said, “We can’t just dump them by the roadside.”
Ritter whispered to Jo. “I thought something was wrong when these people showed up. They seemed surprised to see me.”
They crossed a bridge. The tires droned on the concrete. Jo caught a glimpse of whitewater in the river below.
Dustin inhaled. “We gotta do something.”
Noah, the quieter of the two college boys, murmured, “What?”
Von turned and stared at them. The gun loitered in his hand. “Keep quiet.” He turned back to Friedrich. “This is a clusterfuck of major proportions. We got three people we never counted on and the kids know what’s happening. We have to keep going. All we can do is get to the location and lock everybody down.”
Friedrich shook his head. “We’re screwed.”
“We’re screwed worse if we toss them out someplace.”
Friedrich glanced in the mirror, and Jo’s stomach gripped. She was afraid he was thinking, Only if we toss them out alive.
The Hummer boated over the gravel. The road was curving up a steep gorge. The tires ran along the road’s edge, close to a drop-off.
“Just don’t slow down,” Von said. “Volvo’s two hours behind us. We get there, we lock everybody down, we think it through.”
Dustin gritted his teeth and hissed, “We should jump them.”
Gabe gave him a slow, considered look. “What are you talking about?”
“We outnumber them. We can take them by surprise. Get control of the car.”
Peyton shook her head, quick little movements. “No,” she whispered. “Grier. No, no, no.”
The road curved strongly, following the river in a hard continuous turn. Everybody slid toward the left side of the limo. The vehicle bumped over the uneven gravel surface. The trees grew thick on the right side of the road. The mountains rose behind. The gorge yawned on their left.
Jo scrambled onto a seat and buckled her seat belt. Autumn watched and did likewise.
Dustin lowered his voice to a sharp whisper. “We can swarm them.”
Gabe didn’t move. “Bad idea.”
Dustin looked at Noah. “We can take them.”
Von glanced at them, suspicious, but they were speaking too quietly to be overheard. He resumed his manic dialogue with Friedrich.
Dustin’s breathing picked up. He whispered, “They’re going to kill us all.”
“This is not the place,” Gabe said.
Dustin turned to him, pale, almost seasick. “And who are you, some guy who works at USF? Me and Noah and Ritter here, we charge. Three on one. You can sit here with your girlfriend if you want, but we have at least three men who can do this.”
Gabe’s eyes flashed, briefly, and dimmed again. “Not yet. Not here.”
His gaze slid toward the window. The Hummer was rocketing along the rutted gravel road, bouncing like a runaway covered wagon. To their left, an eroded gradient dropped into the depths of the gorge. There was no guardrail.
Jo whispered, “Dustin, look outside. Don’t be rash.”
They had no margin for error. The gorge was so deep that she couldn’t see the bottom. The light swept across the interior of the limo as they continued to bowl around the long, sweeping bend.
Friedrich’s hands jerked back and forth on the wheel like a cartoon character’s. “We are screwed. Royally.”
“Shut up.”
Von got out a cell phone and punched numbers. As he did, a chime echoed from his pocket. Jo recognized the sound: It was her phone, sending a message. Von pulled her cell out.
Dustin’s breathing accelerated. “He’s distracted.”
Dustin tensed. Gabe shot out an arm to grab him, but Dustin was beyond reach and in motion. Shouting like a wild man, he threw himself at the front seat.
Von heard the disturbance and turned, phone to his ear. Dustin lunged into the driver’s compartment and tackled him.
Friedrich’s head whipped around. “Shit—”
Gabe moved too, fast as a snake. Ritter was a beat behind him.
Jo saw Dustin’s flailing legs and grunting face. He was fighting Von for control of the gun. Noah scrambled toward the melee. The pistol waved in Von’s hand. Jo watched it swing. She couldn’t possibly reach it. She couldn’t get anywhere close to helping.
Friedrich gaped and lifted his foot off the gas.
“No,” Von yelled.
“Faster—don’t let them jump out.” Friedrich slammed on the power again. The Hummer leapt forward.
With Dustin in the way, Gabe couldn’t get close enough to grab Von’s gun. Instead, he swept his right arm around the headrest, grabbed Von by the hair, and smashed his head against the door frame.
“Dustin, aim the gun away from us,” Gabe said.
Von twisted and submarined and kicked like a trapped bull. Gabe slammed his head against the door frame again. With his left hand he gouged at Von’s eyes. Von’s knees came up and his feet kicked the dash and the gearshift and the windshield. Friedrich turned his head.
Von’s boot connected with it. Hard.
Friedrich’s head snapped sideways. He jerked the wheel.
Jo had a sick, falling sensation. No, don’t. Stay on the road.
Friedrich hauled the wheel back and straightened out.
The gun in Von’s hand fired.
Jo ducked. Peyton and Lark screamed. The windshield spidered and the Hummer swerved. Von kicked furiously. The pistol waved in the air. Dustin clawed at Von’s hand, trying to grab the gun.
“No, turn the barrel away from us,” Gabe repeated. “Pin his hand against the dash and aim the gun away.”
Von’s legs muscled wildly back and forth. Ritter dived for his knees. Gabe continued battering Von’s head against the door frame. Von weakened. The Hummer veered left.
Jo yelled, “Steer. Hold the wheel and stop the car.”
Lark threw herself onto a seat and grabbed a seat belt. She wrapped her arm through the shoulder strap and gripped it like a vine. The Hummer shuddered. The left front wheel caught the lip of the hill. Friedrich jerked the wheel, fighting, foot still to the floor. Jo saw Autumn’s eyes gleaming with fright.
From the driver’s compartment came grunts and shouts. The gun boomed again. Then again. Glass shattered and Friedrich’s hands dropped from the wheel.
The Hummer straightened momentarily and tilted. The light turned in the sky, shadow overtaking the window.
“Oh my God,” Autumn said.
Then everything went sideways, fast. Jo hit whoever was next to her. She cried out. She saw Gabe, arms around the headrest, gripping Von’s head. He let go, grabbed a seat belt, and braced himself. He snapped the buckle and grabbed for Lark.
The front of the Hummer angled down, sliding, fast. Through the window Jo saw the slope, covered with trees and boulders.
They flipped.
The Hummer capsized, hard. The roof of the car hit the slope with a crunching sound. The windows shattered. People flew around the interior of the limo. Jo hung on to the shoulder strap of her seat belt like a commuter in a subway car that had just been kicked into a tumble cycle. The gorge steepened, and upside down, they slid forward down the slope. Jo saw light, shadow, felt the roof crushing. Dust blew through the shattered windows. She saw boulders and the silver glint of water at the bottom of the gorge. Her mind went firework white. They were going down, all the way.
Chapter 12 (#ulink_832cac0c-0125-554c-b853-172f80131f38)
Evan Delaney paused at the foot of the marble staircase. She wanted to look meek and inconspicuous. Luckily, in the vaulted echo chamber of San Francisco City Hall, that wasn’t hard. City Hall looked like the U.S. Capitol, but gaudier. It had a gilded dome. It flashed a little leg. She backed against the banister and watched the man in the pin-striped suit descend the stairs toward her.
The word ambush had a lovely ring to it. It was full of hope.
The man came down the stairs slowly, his white hair bouffanting like a televangelist’s. He was surrounded by minions. He was a mortgage banker who had been testifying before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He had also been a client of the dead lawyer Phelps Wylie, and he was her last hope for an interview.
He drew near. She stepped out from the banister.
“Mr. Higgins, I have some questions about Phelps Wylie,” she said.
The minions rushed to block her, like a flannel wall. She persisted, batting them away as if they were Brooks Brothers moths.
“Mr. Higgins, do you have any comment on your lawyer’s death?”
He swept past her, down the stairs, into the cavernous foyer, and out the door.
She followed him to the street. Higgins climbed into a waiting car and zoomed away. The car disappeared into traffic, followed by the minion swarm.
Ambush? Strikeout. None of Wylie’s clients wanted to speak to her. Only a few had even bothered to give her a no-comment. The rest had deflected her calls. Higgins had been her final shot.
Maybe it was time to go home. She turned and headed for the parking garage. She could already hear her credit card, shrieking in pain. And then her phone beeped.
It was a text message from Jo. She slowed. No—it was three messages. She opened the first, and stopped.
I found Wylie’s 2nd cell. He was carjacked. Drove to Sierras under DURESS.
Evan’s lips parted.
Wylie recorded conversation during drive. 2nd person in car. FORCED HIM.
“Oh my God.”
More to come.
She opened the second message. It included Wylie’s cell phone number and forwarded his call list. Data corrupted, Jo warned, and, indeed, Recent Calls turned up as incomplete phone numbers. But most had the first seven digits, including area codes.
Jo’s third message included the log-in information for her voice-mail service.
Sent Wylie’s recording to my voice mail. Log in and listen. Must take cell to Tuolumne sheriff s in Sonora. Will call when get better signal.
She smiled at her phone. “Oh, Jo. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Pulse racing, she tried to phone Jo back. She got a recording. The number you are calling is out of range. Please try again later.
A misty wind gusted. She found a seat on a nearby bench and, with trepidation, called Jo’s voice mail and logged in.
She heard Wylie’s voice. “Where are we going?”
A chill inched up her back. She closed her eyes, and listened to Wylie’s desperate attempt to save himself and to leave a trail of evidence behind.
A new voice entered the conversation. “Shut up.”
It was a creepy reply from across Wylie’s car, swaddled in engine noise. The hairs on her arms stood up.
“—punishment.”
She couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. But its tone, flat and imperative, frightened her.
The recording ended. She opened her eyes, stunned. Jo had sent her a message in a bottle—from a dead man. Wylie had tried to tell people what was happening to him, even as he was being driven into the mountains to his death. He must have feared what lay up the road. But he kept talking.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed to a Starbucks across from the Civic Center Plaza. On a legal pad she cross-referenced the corrupted data from Wylie’s Recent Calls list. Different portions of each number had been lost, almost like a glass of milk had spilled across the screen. But she quickly saw that Wylie had called only a few numbers from the second cell phone. And he had received calls from only a handful of numbers. By cross-referencing, in most cases, she could assemble the entire number.
None of them belonged to Wylie’s clients, friends, or family.
She went online, pulled up a crisscross directory, and tried to put names to the numbers she had pieced together. No luck.
Time to cold-call.
She got out her phone and dialed the first number on the list. The number rang three times, paused, and rang again with a new tone, as though the call were being forwarded. A woman picked up.
“Ragnarok Investments.”
The voice was brusque, sharp. Impatient.
Evan paused. Was Wylie using the second cell phone for sex or for bad business? “I’m calling about the charity drive—for Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow church.”
The Ragnarok woman hung up.
Evan stared at the phone. Now, wasn’t that interesting. She turned to her computer and typed Ragnarok.
Chapter 13 (#ulink_6d899a4c-f33c-5824-8f9f-91350d11c3ea)
The hissing sounded like a geyser, hot and wet. The light trickled through windows that had shattered white. Dust hung thick in the air, motes spinning.
Jo coughed. She was breathing.
The hissing continued. The radiator. Behind it she heard the sound of rushing water. She blinked. Her fingers and toes and skin were tingling, sending adrenaline distress signals: Hell was this?
The roof of the Hummer was beneath her back. She was lying on pellets of shattered safety glass. She turned her head and heard the glass crunch, like broken bottles in a Dumpster. Other sounds infiltrated her pounding head. A low drone, like a moaning animal.
Hot fear jumped through her. “Gabe?”
Oh God, the roof of the Hummer was hard beneath her back but the floor was close above her head. Too close. The Hummer had been smashed on its plunge down the side of the gorge, like a gargantuan jaw squeezing down. Her chest caught.
She put her hands up and pressed against the floor of the limo. It was crushing her. She stifled a cry. She had to get out. Where was Gabe?
“Quintana.”
Across the vehicle, behind the dust, someone moved. “Jo.”
“Gabe . . .” The rest of her words disappeared in relief and overwhelming fear.
They had to get out. The car would crush them. “Move.”
The wire of panic heated her voice. She coughed back tears. Where were the others? Were they okay?
She was bruised and cut in a dozen places, her head was thundering, her muscles tighter than if she had tried to deadlift half a ton, cold. She had gripped the shoulder harness so hard that she had nearly sent her whole body into spasm. She fumbled for the buckle, punched it, got it to release.
She tried to turn over and banged her head on the roof—the floor—of the Hummer. Dust stung her eyes.
Behind her, the moan turned to hacking. Autumn was hanging from her seat belt, like a skydiver tangled in her harness. With the Hummer smashed, her knees scraped the roof below her. She was conscious, eyes wide. She hit the buckle release.
“Get out. Come on.” Jo could barely keep from screaming.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/meg-gardiner/the-nightmare-thief/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Meg Gardiner
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: In the California wilderness no one can hear you scream.San Francisco Forensic Psychiatrist Jo Beckett doesn’t dissect the body or the crime scene – she dissects a life and a mind, recreating the victim as a person, piecing together the story of their death to get to the truth. And then she goes after the killer.Autumn Reiniger wants something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy’s bought her the car and the apartment, but now she wants excitement. And what Autumn desires, she gets.Her father signs-up her and five friends for an ultimate urban reality game. ‘Edge Adventures’ alert the SF police that a ‘crime situation’ is underway, so the authorities will ignore any squealing tires or desperate cries for help.Then – when working on a case nearby – Jo Beckett encounters a group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a wilderness adventure. Suspicious, she takes a closer look. And winds up with an invite to a birthday party she may never leave …