by Jackson Ford
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Jackson Ford
Excerpt from The Last Smile in Sunder City copyright © 2020 by Luke Arnold
Excerpt from Tracer copyright © 2015 by Rob Boffard
Cover design by Emily Courdelle and Steve Panton – LBBG
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
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First Edition: April 2021
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949820
ISBNs: 978-0-316-70277-5 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-70272-0 (ebook)
E3-20210320-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
One: Teagan
Two: Teagan
Three: Teagan
Four: Teagan
Five: Teagan
Six: Reggie
Seven: Teagan
Eight: Reggie
Nine: Teagan
Ten: Teagan
Eleven: Teagan
Twelve: Teagan
Thirteen: Reggie
Fourteen: Teagan
Fifteen: Teagan
Sixteen: Teagan
Seventeen: Reggie
Eighteen: Teagan
Nineteen: Teagan
Twenty: Teagan
Twenty-One: Teagan
Twenty-Two: Teagan
Twenty-Three: Teagan
Twenty-Four: Reggie
Twenty-Five: Teagan
Twenty-Six: Teagan
Twenty-Seven: Teagan
Twenty-Eight: Teagan
Twenty-Nine: Reggie
Thirty: Teagan
Thirty-One: Teagan
Thirty-Two: Teagan
Thirty-Three: Teagan
Thirty-Four: Teagan
Thirty-Five: Teagan
Thirty-Six: Reggie
Thirty-Seven: Teagan
Thirty-Eight: Teagan
Thirty-Nine: Teagan
Forty: Teagan
Forty-One: Reggie
Forty-Two: Teagan
Forty-Three: Teagan
Forty-Four: Teagan
Forty-Five: Reggie
Forty-Six: Teagan
Forty-Seven: Teagan
Forty-Eight: Teagan
Forty-Nine: Reggie
Fifty: Teagan
Fifty-One: Teagan
Fifty-Two: Teagan
Fifty-Three: Reggie
Fifty-Four: Teagan
Fifty-Five: Teagan
Fifty-Six: Reggie
Fifty-Seven: Reggie
Fifty-Eight: Teagan
Acknowledgements
Discover More
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of The Last Smile in Sunder City
A Preview of Tracer
Also by Jackson Ford
Praise for Jackson Ford and the Frost Files
Dedicated to Xzibit, Glendale
and Howlin’ Rays hot chicken
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
ONE
Teagan
Oh please, like you’ve never wanted to drive at high speed down a Los Angeles storm drain.
Although I’m guessing your fantasy doesn’t involve being chased by a gang of outlaw bikers. Who are shooting automatic weapons at you. And I’m a hundred per cent sure you would prefer not to be in a car holding forty pounds of stolen, high-grade methamphetamine.
It doesn’t help that we don’t actually have that much room to manoeuvre. The storm drain is three hundred feet wide, but the – let’s see – six bikes chasing us make it seem a lot smaller. The sides of the drain are steeply sloped – not too steep to drive down, but a bitch to get back up – and there’s a channel of water running right down the middle, too deep to cross.
Heat from the late morning sun bakes off the concrete in shimmering waves as Africa goes foot to floor, swerving to avoid a bike that’s gotten a little too close. I flinch back, white-knuckling the edges of the van’s passenger seat.
“This was a terrible idea!” I shout.
“It was your idea!” Annie Cruz roars from the back seat.
“Bullshit! I just wanted to steal their meth. It was you two who thought it would be fun to drop into the storm drain and— Fuck!”
A bullet takes out the side mirror, inches from me. Africa reaches across and pulls me down, spitting an angry curse in French.
Another bike comes up alongside us, straddled by a thick-necked goon with bad facial tats. He’s carefully aiming a handgun the size of a prime rib roast and clearly hoping to get more than just the wing mirror this time. How the hell does he even stay on the bike with the recoil?
“Buh-bye,” I say, reaching out with my mind and jerking the gun out of his hands.
Didn’t I mention? I can move things with my mind. It’s called psychokinesis – PK for short. The rushing air whips the gun out of sight.
Technically, I’m not supposed to use my ability in public – or in ways that might reveal it to others. My scary government handler doesn’t like it. But what is this biker asshole going to do? No guys, really, she pulled it out of my hands with her mind, I swear! I totally don’t have butterfingers… Why are you laughing? Stop it!
“Teggan,” Africa’s Senegalese-inflected roar fills the car. “There’s too many. Use your dëma powers, huh?”
“I just did! Why do you think we’re not getting shot at more?”
“Stop their motorbikes. Break the engines.”
“Already tried that!”
When they first started chasing us, I used my PK to crunch the engine internals of one of the bikes, and the result was horrifying. The bike didn’t stop neatly, as I’d hoped. Instead, it wobbled and skidded and dumped its driver onto the tarmac at high speed, scraping him to a bloody, comatose pulp. And it’s not like these people stopped to put on helmets.
Sure, I’m a psychokinetic government agent, but I do not like killing people.
“You have to,” Africa snarls. “Otherwise they just chase and chase.”
“How about you drive somewhere they can’t see us, and then we’ll—”
“Watch out!” Annie screams from the back.
There’s a huge, jagged chunk of concrete jutting up from the centre of the channel, resting on a mound of black dirt. Waist-high, more enough to ruin the day for anybody who hits it at speed. The mound of dirt runs down
to a long crack, the concrete split and broken, running maybe twenty feet across the storm drain.
Oh yeah. We had an earthquake two months ago. A really big one. Most of the storm drain is fine, but concrete is concrete. Shake it, it cracks.
We only just – just – manage to miss the concrete. Africa’s driving has gotten better over the past few months, his reaction times and wheel control improving. Behind us, there’s a giant, thudding crunch as one of the bikes slams into the obstacle.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Annie says. She glances at the meth, which is in an open-top plastic box on the seat next to her. Maybe forty thin Ziploc baggies filled with off-white, greasy-looking powder.
Now it’s just four bikes chasing us, and they’re a lot further back. I don’t think they’re going to be able to catch up – and it would take one hell of a lucky shot to hit us. We’re accelerating again, approaching the next bridge up – Main Street, I think, a simple four-lane job crossing the storm drain, with thick concrete supports.
“See?” I tell Africa. “We’re fine.”
He grunts a laugh. “You bloody toubab. You nearly get us ki— Wooooahshit!”
The biggest SUV I’ve ever seen is roaring down the sloped side of the storm drain, heading right for us.
It’s a black tank, with a bull bar you could use to shift an elephant. Even inside our truck, I can hear the thundering growl of its engine. It bounces as it hits the flat, heading straight for us, thirty feet away and closing fast.
“Teggan?” Africa’s voice is high and panicky, and it fucking well should be, because that bull bar is getting very large.
“On it.”
I send out my PK in a huge wave, wrapping my mind around the SUV’s engine components like you’d close your hand around a glass of water. Then I squeeze, compacting steel and wire and gasoline.
The growling engine cuts off with a giant bang. But the truck doesn’t stop. It’s simply built up too much speed.
Africa accelerates, turning the wheel to the right, trying to get us some space. Not fast enough. Behind me, Annie sucks in a breath, the kind you make if you’re trying to squeeze past someone in a crowded room.
I reach out for the truck’s wheels, the body panels, trying to slow it down. But the truck just has too much momentum. Africa twists his body away as that black bull bar fills the window.
There’s a giant, world-obliterating bang.
The truck crunches into the metal above our vehicle’s back left wheel. The spin we go into is so violent that it snaps my head around on my shoulders. Africa is bellowing, fighting with the wheel as the storm drain spins around us, a flash of black as the SUV crosses behind our car – it spun us completely one-eighty – and then it’s gone and we’re still spinning and Annie is screaming and then another dark shape looms in my window and I have just enough time to realise it’s one of the Main Street Bridge supports and—
And then I don’t really know what happens.
An eternity of darkness and silence. Punctuated by short bursts of noise and light.
Africa ducking behind the door as a gunshot shatters the driver’s window. Broken glass nicking my cheeks.
Annie yelling that we have to get out. From somewhere behind me, there’s an odd crackling sound.
More darkness. I’m yanked out of it when Africa starts shaking me. The guy is seven feet tall with hands like dump truck scoops, so it’s hard to ignore him when he grabs hold of you. It also alerts me to just how much pain I’m in. My back, my shoulders, my neck… oh fuck me, my neck. That is going to suck later.
“They are coming,” he spits.
“Who’s coming?” I say. Or try to. It comes out as “Whsmngz?”
There’s something on my face. Something powdery. It’s on my skin, my teeth and tongue, up my nose. Jesus, it’s in my eyes. And it burns: searing, acrid, horrible. I sneeze, and it’s like an explosion going off inside my skull.
I sit up, blinking hard against the pain. There’s a bag of meth on the dashboard in front of me, split wide open. It must have flown right out of the box and through the gap in the seats when we crashed, smacking into the windshield. Popping like a balloon.
Oh fuck. That’s what’s on me. Burning my throat and nose and tongue. White powder fills the air around me. The bag that hit the windshield can’t be the only one split open, but it looks like it’s the only one that happened to explode right in my face. Annie and Africa must gotten some on them too, but I got most of it.
I claw at my skin in horror, hacking, spitting, trying to force the drug out. There’s no way you can get high from a face full of the stuff, right? No way. It doesn’t work like that… you’re supposed to snort it or smoke it or…
The bikers are riding up, holding very big guns and looking… I’m going to go with annoyed. It’s an image caught perfectly by the bright LA sunlight, their patched leather jackets highlighted just right.
Our ride is totalled. One side bent and smashed from when the SUV hit us, the other mangled from the impact with the bridge support. It’s staggering that we’re all still alive – if we’d hit at another angle, we might not be.
Which isn’t much comfort, because we’re on fire.
The hood has popped open, and there are flames visible at the edge. Big flames. There’s smoke, too, thick and white.
“Don’t breathe!” Annie yells. “Just hold it in.”
Africa has the presence of mind to bury his mouth and nose in his elbow, but not me. I’m too busy trying to get the awful meth powder out of my face, so I get a big lungful of the smoke. I cough and splutter, twisting my head to one side. My throat closes to a pinhole, cutting off my air. My chest is on fire, my nostrils filling with the sick, acrid tang. The meth powder and the smoke tag team to shred my sinuses to pieces.
We have to get out. We have to get out of here right fucking now. Forget the guys with the guns – we can figure that out afterwards. All I have to do is open the door, get us away from the burning car.
Right then, the bridge above us gives a deep, horrifying groan.
I may have mentioned the big earthquake. You know what big earthquakes do? Besides knocking down buildings and cracking roads and bursting gas mains? They weaken bridge supports. Many of the bridges in LA are off limits to traffic right now, for just that reason.
Apparently, that includes this one.
Africa looks up, then back at me. Above the arm covering his nose and mouth, his eyes are as big as baseballs.
“Teagan,” Annie coughs out. “You gotta hold the bridge. You—”
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. At that moment, the support cracks, the concrete splintering in a dozen places.
I throw out my PK, all concerns about revealing my ability forgotten. But I’m not fast enough, not even close.
The bridge collapses, the weakened roadway above our heads breaking up and plummeting towards us, the noise not quite loud enough to drown out our screams.
TWO
Teagan
Maybe I should start at the beginning.
Hi. I’m Teagan Frost. I’m twenty-three years old. I live in Los Angeles, and I like good food, bad movies and terrible rap music. I work for a removals company called China Shop Movers, which is actually a government-run espionage operation. My favourite colour is purple. I drive an ’03 black Jeep, which I call the Batmobile.
Believe it or not, I don’t usually spend my time getting into vehicular gunfights. Take, for example, the situation I’m in right now. On our little timeline, it’s around forty-five minutes before I ingested meth in the middle of a car chase/gun battle/bridge collapse.
We’re on the thirtieth floor of a hotel just south of Downtown. The expansive penthouse balcony, a space of marble and granite, is bordered by a chest-high, two-feet-thick wall. Normally hotels don’t have balconies, but I guess this place decided it was worth the risk. When the hotel still had paying guests, the fee for one night in the room probably covered the insurance premiums and the serv
ices of a good PR firm if someone did decide to do a perfect-ten dive onto San Pedro Street.
It’s around ten in the morning, warm for January, with the sun already baking down out of a deep blue sky above the city. Despite the heat, the breeze is warm and gentle this high up, and the view is unreal. Blue skies all the way to the horizon in the north, where dark clouds are starting to build.
The balcony table holds an iced bucket of beers, and classic rock plays from a hidden set of speakers. It’s about the nicest situation I’ve been in for a long time. Well, if you ignore the cracked walls, the messy suite behind us and the many, many men standing around with guns.
I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but after the earthquake a few months ago, it’s gone derelict. Squatters and looters. Oh, and biker gangs. In particular, the Legends Motorcycle Club, who have taken advantage of LA’s upside-down real estate market to get themselves a nice little base of operations.
They insisted on meeting us at a designated location – in this case, the parking lot of a destroyed strip club in Mission Junction – so they could blindfold us and transport us here in one of their SUVs, even though we were able to figure out where we were the second they brought us onto the balcony. Honestly.
The man across the table is called Robert. He has an enormous, sculpted beard that hangs down over his sleeveless, patched vest. Tattooed arms as thick as my thighs – and I am not skinny. His body almost overwhelms the cute director’s chair he’s sitting in, one of about ten dotted across the balcony. Bikers occupy half the chairs, all holding gigantic assault rifles. It’s a shame he’s called Robert. He’s more of a Zeke or Luther or Big Jon. Life sucks sometimes.
Robert isn’t actually in charge. He’s running the show here, for this deal, but he isn’t the President of the Legends. That’s someone called Pop, who we haven’t met yet.
The only person bigger than Robert is Africa – China Shop’s driver and muscle. He’s as thin as Robert is thick, the head on his scrawny body so big that it looks like it might roll off. Africa’s real name is Idriss Kouamé, although he’ll only answer to his nickname.
Normally, Africa’s dress sense tends towards the colourful. Purple Lakers jackets, yellow Hammer pants, buttery Timbs. I’m kind of surprised at how subdued he is today: dark suit, slightly baggy on his lanky frame, and a red shirt open at the neck.
