Blake set off in that direction but immediately came up short. The way was blocked by a door with a keypad and a STAFF ONLY sign. He was about to turn back when he thought of the key card for the parking lot entrance. Blake swiped it through the card reader and smiled at the familiar words that appeared. ENTER CODE. He paused for a moment, forgetting what it was. A cross, that’s what Hanson said. He punched in 2046 and the door popped open. The three of them entered a narrow corridor and began to move rapidly along it. Rough, unfinished concrete on either side. Strip lights in wire cages were screwed onto the wall, wiring protected by steel pipe. It was basic and industrial. The public weren't meant to see this, so it didn’t matter how it looked.
Another scenario came to mind. After gaining access to the building, the guard might’ve opened the security office and activated the monitors to bring up the feeds from the cameras. They would’ve seen five serious-looking individuals, three of them armed. That would be pretty much it, he figured. They’d pull back and secure a hard perimeter, bring in more cops.
A huge explosion shook the building. Blake felt the ground shake and a ripple move through the air. He felt the force of it against his chest, his heart. He came to a halt and braced himself between the walls with his hands. Dust floated down from the ceiling like snow.
“Stockton, report!”
Outside, multiple car alarms sounded.
“Nothing at the front. Moving to the back.”
The audio was bad, scratchy. Too much concrete between them. He looked at Porter and saw his eyes wide in alarm.
“Blake, man. We gotta split.”
Reluctantly, he nodded. The cops would definitely call in the explosion. More would be on their way. SWAT, every patrol car on shift, a helicopter. Explosions were big ticket items, they brought in everybody. The window for their escape was narrowing. They continued their interrupted run down the passage. It came to him what the explosion was and rage tightened his chest.
“Foster, you copy?”
No response. Had the explosion taken out his comms?
“Foster!”
Instead, Stockton came back.
“There’s a fifteen-freaking-foot hole in the west wall! Broken cinder blocks and drywall cover half the parking lot and smoke is coming out from inside.”
Blake heard his own breathing through the earpiece.
“Anything else?”
There was a pause while Stockton took in the scene below with the rifle scope.
“Front door of the van is open about an inch. Nobody visible.”
Blake didn’t know what to do with that information.
Ahead, the passage came to an end at another door. From what he recalled from the blueprints, the room housing the Picasso was close. Next to the door was a normal switch like a light switch. A door release. Blake pressed it and the door silently opened. He gave it a hard shove. A cop stood, back toward him, head tilted as if staring at something on the floor a little ways away. The door swung freely on lubricated hinges until the handle on the other side bit into the wall. The cop jumped and turned sharply toward him, gun coming up. Instinctively, Blake fired three times. Only then seeing the cop’s face. A woman. The shots lifted her off her feet and dumped her onto the hard, polished floor. He looked at the object that had been in her hand as it rolled across the floor and nudged against his boot.
Not a gun, a flashlight.
Blake knelt down next to her. Dust from the explosion had fallen against her dark skin like freckles. She was young, barely out of the academy. Looked like she took care of herself. Clean living, hours in a gym. She was lean and athletic, the kind of look he liked. But fate had put her directly in his path and her pretty face was now contorted with pain. He held her hand and squeezed it. He hadn’t always been a monster, it was still a new thing for him.
Porter and Lynch exited the doorway behind him, guns raised, like they were clearing a helicopter and taking fire.
“Find Foster and Thorne,” he said, eyes fixed on the cop.
When they left, he spoke again.
“Sorry, kid. I should’ve listened to my friend.”
A moment later, she was dead.
He glanced around and saw Porter and Lynch standing next to another body. He got to his feet and walked over to join them. Beyond, a square shape was recessed into the wall. It was a dull silver color, with a vertical line up the middle like huge elevator doors. But it was no elevator, it was the security doors to the room where the Picasso was hanging. The gallery was in lockdown. His eyes came to rest on the second body. Foster.
“Dead?”
Porter shook his head.
“No, but I don’t want to be here when he wakes up.”
Blake closed his eyes. “What about Thorne?”
“He's gone.”
EIGHT
Thorne stood with his back against the wall of the parking garage on North Camden Drive with a smile on his face. Sirens in the distance were rapidly closing on his position from multiple directions. The show was about to go public in a big way. He reached up to his chest with fanned open fingers. His heart was slow and steady, like a ticking clock. The more danger he was in, the more his body seemed to relax. The first phase was always like this, calm, and totally at peace. He loved this part, this was his addiction. The second phase was more normal, more pedestrian. High heart rate, bursts of energy, and, frequently, violence. But those weren’t bad guys coming, and that complicated things.
He’d heard most of what happened inside the gallery through the earpiece, including three gunshots. Thorne knew at least one of the cops was dead, he couldn’t see it the other way around. One dead, he thought. What happened to the others? Had Blake tried the handcuff routine? The shots had fallen too close together to be separate targets and it seemed unlikely that the old man had been taken out execution style.
The sirens were louder now, no more than a couple of blocks away. It was time to leave, yet still he remained. He couldn’t allow Blake to get caught, that didn't work for him. Their fates were linked now. If arrested, Blake and his gang of rejects would endeavor to see him share their misfortune. As distasteful as it was to him, he had to help them escape. Thorne risked sticking his head out of the cover of the entrance and glanced down the street. He saw two cruisers side by side racing up Camden toward him. A light appeared in the sky.
Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it now.
“Blake, how about we make a deal?”
“You got nothing I want, Thorne. You’re a dead man.”
“Yeah, well. I’m out on the street and all the cops in the world are about to arrive. How close are you to leaving?”
“That ain’t none of your business.”
Blake’s breathing was heavy, like he was carrying something heavy. Or someone. Foster was still down. The background sound of Blake’s comms changed from echo-filled hollow to soundless mute. Blake was outside. After a moment, he heard the distinctive sound of the van’s side door running along its track and hitting the end stops. Thorne reached into the large canvas sack at his feet and pulled out the second AT4. He removed the safety pin and the front and rear covers. The sights popped up.
It was surprising how quickly it all came back.
“The thing is, Blake, I’m going to give you my half of the deal whether you ask for it or not. You’re one of those guys that can’t take help when you need it. I’m going to give you a distraction, keep the cops off your back and looking the other way. For old times’ sake.”
“I’m still going to kill you.”
“Maybe.”
Thorne shifted the firing rod cocking lever into position and shouldered the weapon. He aimed at the entrance to the bank diagonally across the street, held down the safety and fired. He watched the projectile fly across the asphalt, in through a plate glass window and explode inside the building. The bank shook violently. Pulsing blue strobes lit up the interior and a piercing alarm sounded. After a ten-count, part of the second floor co
llapsed onto the first and rubble spat out across the sidewalk and into the street. Over the din of the alarm, Blake came back over the earpiece.
“What the hell was that?’
Thorne tossed the AT4 and picked up his backpack.
“Someone appears to be robbing the bank,” he said.
He ducked back through the parking garage, toward the alley, head down and the brim of his baseball cap obscuring half his vision.
“You think this makes us square, Thorne?”
The connection was crystal clear, they were less than forty feet apart and without the concrete walls of the gallery between them.
“Whatever your new plan for the painting is, you and your goons can handle it without me. If you succeed and become a millionaire, I doubt you’ll risk that coming after me. If you don’t succeed, then I figure you will probably all be dead.”
He watched them through support pillars as they piled into the van. Foster was conscious now and had one of his giant snow-shovel hands clamped to his head.
Blake got into the van and slammed the door.
“Maybe I come for you now smart guy, before I’m a millionaire.”
The word millionaire caused Thorne to flash back to the moment they found the shipping manifest for the painting. Blake had shown no interest in the information it contained. It seemed odd at the time, but it was obvious to him now. Blake already knew who the owner was, and where he lived. That was his original plan. Wait for the transfer to take place, then steal the painting where the security was at its weakest.
“You know the owner’s house will be alarmed too, right?”
Blake started the van, pulling it sharply away toward the alley exit and then out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.
“You’re not even close, Thorne. When I'm done, the owner will give me the painting himself. He'll put it straight into my hands, no alarms, no cops. Like I said before, you got nothing I want. And you’re dead wrong about what you said before. Millionaire or not, I’m going to enjoy pulling you apart.”
Thorne walked out of the parking structure into the alley, then followed the van’s route onto Santa Monica Boulevard at a fast run. He was in time to see the van take a right at the intersection, before disappearing again. Blake was about to exceed the range of the comms unit. To his surprise, he heard Blake laugh as the audio began to click.
“I can’t believe you choked out Foster, man. That's fantastic.”
The earpiece went dead. He pulled it out and tossed it into a storm drain. Thorne took off his leather gloves and tossed them in after it. He crossed over five empty lanes to the other side of the street and tucked tight into the buildings. He held there for a full minute, not moving, until three large Beverly Hills PD SUVs shot past in tight formation. They came to the corner of Camden and split apart in an orchestrated pattern, blocking the road. A dozen cops sprang out the vehicles and advanced toward the bank, which was now partially on fire.
Thorne moved off down the sidewalk.
When he came to a cross street he immediately took it. He knew he looked suspicious and wanted to get as much distance between him and the gallery. He opened his backpack that he’d taken from the van, unrolled his linen jacket, and shook it out. It didn’t look its best, but it’d recover. He pulled it on and felt some of the old Jake Vasco attitude return. There was nothing that guy couldn’t do. Thorne looked at his watch. Almost five a.m., getting late, but still not an ideal time to be on the street. Even without a dead cop in the vicinity, he would expect to be stopped and asked what he was doing. Because of people like Blake, the land of the free had opening hours. He looked about, figuring out a rough bearing. Seeing no sign of approaching vehicles, police or otherwise, he took a chance and began to run. The shape he was in, he could run like this for an hour and a half, which he estimated would be how long it would take him to get back to his apartment in Santa Monica.
But he wasn’t going back to Santa Monica, not yet.
It wasn’t hard for him to imagine what Blake had planned. He was going after the owner’s wife. Had to be. Kidnap her, force the husband to give them the Picasso. There was a certain inevitability about it. If the thing you want is protected, make that protection irrelevant. It was like a strategy from The Art of War.
He saw headlights in the distance and dropped out of his run.
Thorne estimated he was a mile clear now. When he was closer to two miles out, he’d call a cab. He didn’t want to have co-ordinates placing him anywhere near Beverly Hills by the cab company, or by police if they asked about pickups. The car slid past. A Volvo the size of an aircraft carrier with a small, worried-looking woman behind the wheel. He waited until it disappeared from view behind him before he began to run again. He’d soon be out of the residential area and there’d be a lot more traffic. He wanted to be through running by then.
His mind returned to Blake’s original plan.
Blake had been willing to change course and try a heist instead. That told him that Blake knew the plan was more dangerous, for him and for others. Now that he’d taken the easier option off the table, he’d left Blake with no choice. He’d put the owner and his wife in direct danger, not to mention anyone near them when she was taken. Nine times out of ten, people who are kidnapped are killed by their abductors. Either within the first 48 hours, or at the end, after the criminals got what they wanted. Perhaps it wasn’t the owner’s wife at all, he thought, perhaps it was a child. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t let that happen. A cop was already dead because of him, he wouldn’t let Blake kill anyone else.
NINE
Thorne woke just after five, his face sideways on the back seat of his rental and his knees pressed into the back of the passenger seat. He’d spent three days and nights hunting Blake across Santa Cruz County without success and the failure bothered him. His idea was simple. Check motel parking lots for the black van or the Audi sedan, then tip off local police about a group of heavily armed men holding a woman hostage. A SWAT unit would’ve been dispatched, and Blake and the others would have escalated the situation until they were all dead. Given time, he was certain everything would’ve fallen into place, but there were only so many motels he could cover alone. That left him with a single stark option; prevent the kidnapping before it happened. If he did that, he’d neutralize the one piece of intel that gave Blake such a high chance of success.
He swung the rear door open and stepped out the vehicle.
The forest around him was impenetrably dark, like a blindfold was tied around his head. The moon no more than a fingernail on the far horizon. Thorne rubbed his arms and legs vigorously to warm them up and get the blood flowing. Despite the hour, he felt wired, energized. There’d be no more sleep, no matter how hard he tried. It’d been the same in the Marines before a mission. He could either get up, or stare at the back of his eyelids.
Thorne took a deep breath and let it slowly out again. The forest air was cool and fresh, and made a pleasant change from the fetid air that filled the car’s cabin. It helped him think. He pushed his failure to find the gang from his mind, it was time to start over. He didn’t know where Blake had been, but he knew where he would be today.
The same place Ashcroft was, the Capitola Mall.
The idea of calling the police would not work at the mall. Blake would be gone by the time they arrived and Ashcroft’s wife along with them. The mall was a fluid environment with too many unknowns, making any form of advanced planning virtually useless. Whatever he was going to do, he would have to figure out a split second before he did it. He knew one thing for sure, Blake wouldn’t expect him to be there and that gave him a tactical advantage. Not enough to make up for the lack of weapon, but better than nothing.
He got into the car and started the engine.
Uncovering Blake’s plan had taken less than twenty minutes in a Starbucks, including ten minutes waiting in line for coffee. Googling James Ashcroft Picasso revealed that he was a US Senator seeking his party’s nomination for pres
ident at the next election. James Ashcroft was a surprisingly common name, however, and the search brought up a lot of irrelevant matches. He changed his search to James Ashcroft senator to narrow the hits but this still produced in excess of eight million results. Too much data. But he knew what Blake wanted: a time and a location where Ashcroft and his wife would be in advance. He also knew that this was in the very near future, so he searched for both their names and added the date to the end of the search, increasing the day with each new search until he found what he wanted.
The intel gave a specific day, but no time. Any way he looked at it, he was going to be several hours early. Time enough to pick up breakfast and a coffee, perhaps even lunch.
He put the car in drive and set off through the trees, the rental’s headlights picking out the narrow dirt track. He’d found the place by accident on the first day and had returned to park in the same spot every night when he’d finished his nightly hunt for Blake. It occurred to him that Blake might’ve found a similar place to dig in, but he couldn’t imagine Sara Dawson settling for anything less than a motel room with a comfortable bed, hot showers, electricity, and access to the internet.
At the end of the track he stopped the car and climbed out.
A rusty chain hung across the road blocking access. It was secured at one end to a metal post by a brand-new padlock he’d bought in town. He unlocked it and let the chain drop to the ground. Since he had no further use for the location, he decided not to secure the chain behind him. He got back behind the wheel, rolled over the chain and bumped up onto the highway toward Santa Cruz.
Foster. The giant stood towering over other shoppers like one of the redwoods he’d seen the day before. Foster stood fixed, rooted to the floor, staring off up the mall at something, his brow a heavy line across his face. Thorne followed the direction of his gaze to a beautiful woman walking toward them. He saw beautiful women every day, but something about this one caught the air in his throat. It took him a second to recognize her from a picture in his car. Lauren Ashcroft. Sure enough, her husband was right there next to her. Thorne’s eye jumped to the figure behind them. Blake. He was wearing a faded red Doors T-shirt and had his head turned to one side, talking to Porter. Lauren veered over and stood looking in one of the store windows, Blake almost tripped over her he was so close. Notice them, he thought. How can a US Senator be unaware of a threat like this?
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