The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

“Shaw!” Droon was shouting.

  Shaw sprinted harder. At the side street, Morrison Lane, he turned to the right again.

  And learned he’d made a mistake. Morrison did end at a park, but it was filled with people, who’d be in the direct path of any shots.

  Then Shaw noted ahead of him an alley, on his left. He knew from the map that it would lead him to several parking garages, which he could weave through, giving him the chance to shake Droon and Blond. Shaw could then emerge and circle around to his bike—and his weapon.

  Thirty yards until the alley.

  Twenty, fifteen . . .

  A glance back. No pursuers in sight yet.

  Ten.

  Five.

  Before he got to the alley, he stopped and ducked behind a dumpster. He looked back at Droon and Blond moving in his direction. They were alone. The black-suited security people would have continued along the street on which the library was located.

  Okay, into the alley . . .

  He sprinted around the corner.

  And stopped fast.

  A dead end.

  The alley was completely blocked by a construction site wall, ten feet high, plywood. The paint job—dark blue—was relatively new; only a few graffitied obscenities and gang tags marred the surface. This explained why the barricade had not been depicted on the map he’d examined in the safe house.

  Shaw didn’t bother to look for alternative forms of escape. The alley was doorless and windowless and though his father had taught him how to ascend walls of various heights and configurations, the technique for surmounting a ten-foot sheer surface was not part of the repertoire, not without rope or timber.

  He’d no more than turned around when Droon and Blond stepped into the mouth of the alleyway.

  Both were breathing hard and Blond winced with an apparent stitch in his side. He wasn’t happy for the exercise.

  Droon might have had a pain somewhere but he was also smiling broadly, as if Shaw’s irritating attempt to escape had given the crazy man license to be particularly hearty—and creative—when it came to the torture that would follow.

  12

  Noting the absence of doors and windows opening onto the alley, Droon returned to the mouth and peered out. He looked up and down the street. His face revealed a hint of satisfaction, which meant no traffic, no pedestrians.

  No witnesses.

  He joined Blond once more. The two stood about twenty feet from Shaw. Neither was holding a weapon. They knew Shaw wasn’t armed; he’d been through the metal detector. Blond now drew a silenced pistol. The SIG Sauer—a big, expensive and accurate gun—was pointed at the ground.

  Blond: “We need a car.”

  Droon: “I’ll text the Men in Black. They’ll get one.”

  “Soon. Out in the open here. Don’t like it.”

  Droon sent the message. He was grinning. “But maybe he’ll cooperate ’fore they get here. And we’ll just leave him be.” He gestured toward Blond. They rolled the dumpster into the mouth of the alley, largely protecting them from view. Blond used only his left hand and kept the gun trained near Shaw. The safety was off, the finger outside the trigger guard. He knew what he was doing.

  Shaw’s impression was that neither man reported to the other. Blond, a facilitator like Droon, would also work for Braxton.

  “Now, son, let’s have ourselves a confab, don’tcha know?” He reached under his jacket and withdrew a knife from a camo scabbard. Shaw recognized it. Long, serrated. It was a SOG SEAL Team Elite fixed blade.

  Looking around, Shaw judged angles and distances.

  No good defensive solution presented itself, let alone an offensive one.

  “Number one, that manuscript of your daddy’s you so kindly let me have down in Silicon Valley coupla weeks ago, that was just a waste of good tree, wasn’t it?”

  Not for Colter Shaw, it wasn’t. The four-hundred-some-odd-page stack of notes, maps, drawings and articles that Ashton had assembled was ninety-nine percent misdirection. But it contained the code that had directed Shaw to Echo Ridge, where he found the map and the letter that led to the Alvarez Street safe house and started Shaw on his mission here.

  “I wouldn’t know. You stole that from me too, didn’t you? I never had a chance to read it. Did it have anything interesting in it?”

  Shaw wondered if a passerby, someone in a window or on a rooftop, seeing a man with a gun, would call the police.

  Droon was pointing the wicked blade Shaw’s way. “How’d you find our library? Your daddy knew about it, did he?”

  “Think he mentioned it.”

  “And you remembered that? From all those years ago?”

  Blond said nothing. He was a block of wood, if wood could be attentive, suspicious and deadly.

  Shaw told Droon, “I have a good memory. I’m lucky that way.”

  “Naw, naw. There’s someplace here. Your daddy’d have a buddy in town you’re staying with.” He looked him over closely. “Or maybe a safe house all his own. Yep, betcha.”

  Somebody must have seen the pursuit and called 911.

  But not a siren to be heard.

  Not a ripple of flashing light to be seen.

  Shaw was watching Blond. The big man’s face was completely placid, as if were he to have any emotion that might distract him, that would lower his defenses. The eyes scanned constantly, the coal-black dots complementing the swarthy face, jarring with the sunburst of yellow hair.

  Droon was a wild card. Blond was a pro.

  Blond asked, “Where should we take him? The basement?”

  “Library’s compromised. I’d say the Tannery.”

  Not, of course, a place where you morphed into a beach bum under UV rays.

  Droon sent another text and read the reply. He told Blond: “Irena’ll meet us.”

  Shaw leaned toward the scrawny man. “Will Helms be there too? I hope so.”

  Droon was silent for a moment, unmoving, as if trying to process Shaw’s interest and intent. “He went back to the hotel.”

  Not getting his hands dirty in sports like torture.

  “But Irena’s lookin’ forward to our chat. As much as I am. Probably more. I do assure you, friend, that you will not like what’s going to happen.” He mimicked stabbing and twisting motions with the blade.

  Shaw shrugged.

  Droon thumbed the steel. “Everybody breaks, don’tcha know? Tell us what you’ve found out about Gahl and what he stole from us. You do that, and you’re free to go. Get yourself a gelato.”

  “I don’t like it,” Blond said.

  The rattish man glanced not toward his companion but toward Shaw.

  “His eyes. He’s working something. Doesn’t look that bothered.”

  Droon said, “Checking stuff out, is all. He does that. The first time we met . . . Remember that, Shaw? I was having a laugh with a harmless little firebomb and you were sizing me up—and down and sideways. Every whichaway.”

  Blond muttered: “He’s planning a move.” He removed something from his inside jacket pocket. It appeared to be a thick rod of black metal, about a foot long. He said, “I cover him. You break something. Take him out of commission.” He offered the bludgeon to Droon.

  The man took it and slipped the knife back in its sheath. He nodded to the gun that Blond was holding. “Why not?”

  “You need him alive. Don’t want to risk a bleeder.”

  A pro’s pro . . .

  Droon seemed to agree. He hefted the rod and his expression reported that he liked the idea of breaking bones.

  “Shaw, sorry t’have to do this. But, fact is, you just don’t look desperate. You know what I’m saying? My word, you are the least desperate-looking person I have ever seen on this earth. You’re not wasting time on worry; you’re running through a big list. What can I do with this, what
can I do with that?”

  Pretty much.

  There’s not a lot an unarmed man can do in combat against two opponents when one of them is holding a gun and the other a bone-breaking rod with a knife on his belt.

  With some cheer, Droon said, “Man up. Hold your hand out and let’s do this fast . . .” He cocked his head and gave an odd grin, which pinched his face. “Or, better idea, you can tell us what you know. And waltz around an icky bout of pain now followed by the main course—a trip to the Tannery with my knife.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay, hand out.”

  Shaw held his right arm out.

  “Nup. Other one. You may need to write down your ABCs for us, draw a pretty map, or some such.”

  Shaw did as instructed.

  He now incrementally shifted his balance, so that most of his weight was on his right leg. When Droon swung the bar, Shaw’s right hand would move in an arc and clamp down on the man’s wrist. The mass of the heavy rod meant the slim man’s arm would be driven toward the ground and he’d be off-kilter. Shaw would then spin him sideways, turning him into a shield against Blond’s weapon and executing a choke hold, rendering Droon largely nonresponsive.

  Shaw’s right hand would dip into the jacket for the pistol he hoped the man still had on him and draw. He wouldn’t threaten Blond, tell him to drop the SIG. He’d just fire away. He’d aim for the gun arm and hand. He recalled where the safety was located on Droon’s Beretta.

  If Droon didn’t have the gun, or if Shaw couldn’t get to it instantly, he’d rip the bar from Droon’s hand and fling it toward Blond’s face, then break a wrist and pull the knife.

  He and his siblings had been taught the art of knife throwing by Ashton. It was hard to hit your target with the point, but you could count on your enemy to be distracted by a spiraling razor-sharp blade. Shaw would charge Blond when he ducked and try to wrestle the SIG from his hand.

  If not, as a last resort, he’d vault the dumpster. The other men didn’t look like they could follow him in a leap. It would take some seconds to push the unit out of the way. He would turn back toward the library—the direction they would least expect him to run, and the one with the fewest innocents on the street.

  Shaw plastered an expression of dread on his face as Droon stepped forward, hefting the metal. The facilitator’s gaze was one of pleasant anticipation.

  Four feet away, three feet . . .

  Playacting again, Shaw said, “Look, let’s work this out, can’t we? Money. You want money?”

  Droon was drawing back with the bar.

  “Wait.”

  Droon was beaming. “Don’t you go whining, there, boy.”

  Shaw was perfectly balanced, ready to move, awash with the exhilaration that comes just before combat. Irrational, mad, intoxicating.

  Which is when Blond said, “Stop.”

  Pausing, Droon turned.

  “Get back. He’s going to move on you. We’ll do it this way.” He looked down at his pistol.

  13

  Droon frowned. He clearly didn’t see what Blond saw. “He’d take you,” the big man offered.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, my friend.” But Droon stepped away from Shaw.

  Blond said, “I’d risk a bullet. Top of the foot shouldn’t be much bleeding.”

  Shaw sighed.

  Droon walked back to Blond, who lifted the gun and pointed it at Shaw’s foot. Now, he really meant it when he said, “We can work something out. You want information. I’ll get you information.”

  Blond aimed carefully.

  Even if he survived the Tannery, what would a bullet wound do to his foot? Shattering the complex bones of the appendage would render the Restless Man disabled for a very long time.

  Silencers do not, in fact, make a weapon completely mute. There’s a distinctive phhhht, followed by the click of the gun’s slide snapping back and then returning into position. Often you can hear the ring of the spent shell jittering on the floor or concrete or cobblestone, like what the men were standing on now.

  Colter Shaw heard the first two of these, the muted gunshot and the click of the pistol as the gun reloaded for a second shot. He did not hear the dancing of the spent brass.

  He did, however, hear another sound. The wet, smacking snap of a bullet hitting Blond’s forehead. The big man gave no facial reaction to the impact. He simply dropped.

  Shaw crouched. The gunshot had come from above and behind him—the shooter was in the air, maybe on some scaffolding on the other side of the wooden construction fence.

  Droon’s sense of survival kicked in. Not waiting to parse the situation he tore back to the street—and proving Shaw wrong—easily vaulted the dumpster. He landed and rolled, then righted himself and sprinted back toward the library.

  Shaw immediately thought of the green Honda Accord, his shadow. Had the driver followed him here and been aiming at Shaw, but hit Blond by mistake? He leapt forward and rolled through the grimy alley, snatching up Blond’s SIG Sauer pistol.

  Rising, in a crouch, Shaw glanced at Blond—he was dead—and drew back the slide of the SIG a quarter inch to make sure a round was chambered, something you always did with a weapon not your own.

  He went prone behind the man’s body—the only cover in the alley—and trained the weapon on the plywood construction site wall.

  A man’s voice called, “I’m not a hostile.” Then to Shaw’s surprise, the caller added, “Colter, I’m coming over the fence. Don’t shoot.”

  He knows my name?

  Something fell to the ground with a thud. It was a backpack, Oakland A’s.

  This would have to be the man he’d seen at the coffee shop up the street from the safe house on Alvarez—the bearded man in the thigh-length black coat and stocking cap. He climbed over the fence and landed lithely on the cobblestones, his low combat boots dampening the force.

  Colter Shaw gasped. Which was something he had not done for years—since a piton gave way and he dropped twenty feet on a half-mile-high rock face before the safety rope arrested the fall.

  He was not sure which shocked him the most at the moment: That he’d been saved from the fate of being shot with only seconds to spare.

  Or that the man who’d done the saving was his long-lost brother, Russell.

  14

  Russell said, “I understand. You have questions. I do too. Later. First, this.”

  He was then on his phone, speaking in modulated yet commanding tones.

  His brother was nearly identical in appearance to the man Shaw had last seen years ago at their father’s funeral. He’d had a beard then, though it was shorter than this, as was his hair. These were two reasons Shaw hadn’t recognized him near the safe house. Also, who the hell would expect the Reclusive One to be in San Francisco at the same time Shaw was?

  The skin around the eyes was more weathered and ruddier. The beard was a uniform brown, without a touch of white or gray. The same was true for the tufts of straight hair protruding from the stocking cap.

  One other difference between then and now: his eyes were presently cold, utterly inexpressive about the fact he’d just killed someone. Remorse, or even concern, let alone guilt, did not register.

  “Help me here,” Russell said, nodding toward the dumpster. Shaw noted his brother’s voice was reminiscent of their father’s. He was startled by the near mimicry, though he supposed he shouldn’t be.

  Shaw kept the muzzle of the SIG pointed away as he clicked the safety on and slipped the gun into his waistband—Russell glancing at him as he did so, apparently taking note that his younger brother had not forgotten their father’s endless lessons and drills about weapons.

  They pushed the dumpster out of the mouth of the alley.

  Shaw was wondering why his brother had wanted to move the big co
ntraption; doing so would expose Blond’s body for any passerby to see. But the minute the dumpster was pushed aside and the alley was clear, a white van skidded to a stop in front of them and the side door slid open quickly.

  Growing cautious, Shaw lifted the gun.

  “They’re mine,” Russell said.

  Three people climbed out.

  Had the moment been less fraught—and confusing—Shaw might’ve smiled. He’d seen two of the trio earlier. One was Tricia, the woman in the street in front of the Alvarez Street safe house, and the man who’d attacked her—a verb Shaw put into mental quotation marks, since there’d been no assault at all, he now understood. Her screams for help had been merely a strategy to force Shaw outside and learn if he were a threat or not.

  The broad-chested man had cleaned up considerably from his role as Homeless Man One. Russell introduced him as Ty. He glanced at Shaw without comment or other acknowledgment.

  The third, whose name was Matt, was a slim, somber man of mixed race, with dark hair. His eyes scanned the alley and the street where the van was parked.

  All three wore dark green jogging outfits and blue latex gloves.

  A driver, whom Shaw could see only in silhouette, remained behind the wheel.

  As Russell and Matt kept an eye on the side street, hands near their hips, Ty and Tricia—introduced now as Karin—stepped quickly to Blond’s corpse.

  Shaw said, “There’re two other security people from the library. White. One heavy, one thin. Both armed. In dark suits, and—”

  Karin said, “We know. They’re in the parking garage on Harrison, picking up wheels. We have two minutes before they’re here.”

  The phony attacker unfurled a body bag and he and Karin got to work with Blond. Soon the body was inside, zipped up tight.

  “One, two . . . lift,” the man said. The pair grunted simultaneously and hefted the weighty bag by the handles and began shuffling back to the van. Shaw thought about asking if they needed help but they didn’t seem to. They were both quite strong, and—it appeared—had done this before. They got the bag to the van and muscled it inside.