by Mg Gardiner
His jaw tightened and his lips pressed tight. He continued to gaze at Nolan’s body.
Sarah said, “You can hunt Fell down and try to bust the entire Worthe family, but Zoe and I are out of it.”
“I can’t guarantee that,” he said.
“You can and you will. Because every sheriff’s deputy and FBI agent within five hundred miles knows what happened last night at the Rio Sacado Sheriff’s Station. You dragged Zoe there to lure the clan into attacking—and because of that people are dead.” She stepped closer. “Now you’re going to ensure that I am publicly cleared of any charge that I abducted Zoe. I’m her only family now. You know that. You know why I rescued her that day.”
“Every war has its casualties,” he said.
“You know. Say it.”
He finally looked at her. “I know. You didn’t abduct Zoe. You rescued her. But you put yourself in the middle of something far bigger than yourself.”
“And now you’re going to extricate me. You know I am completely innocent. Don’t you.”
He sighed. “Yes. What’s your point?”
“I want an affidavit of my innocence filed in Federal Court. You can do that. People who have their identities stolen get it done all the time. Well, I’m getting my identity returned.” She felt a lump in her throat. “Beth can’t have her life back, but you can make it possible for Zoe to live a normal life.”
He hesitated.
“Harker,” she said.
He stared at the scene, the chaos, the quiet, the end of everything he’d been trying to capture for so long. He hadn’t been the one to finish it. She sensed that he felt robbed.
“It’s not closure. Closure doesn’t exist,” she said. “But you’re going to let me go.”
He stared past her shoulder. Sand scraped along the ground on a gust of wind. It whispered like static, ghostly.
Harker said, “There’s no such thing as letting go. But there’s looking away. You want an affidavit? Fine. I’ll sign it.”
She nodded. “I’ll e-mail you the readout from the microchip. It includes names, initials, and birthdates. I think it’s a list of the children the clan has taken from their parents as hostage. You can get to work on it.”
She walked away.
It didn’t matter whether he acceded to her demand or not. The FBI wouldn’t bother her again, ever. Harker could hang on to his grief and rage, and try to build himself a future out of ashes. But he couldn’t have her and he couldn’t have Zoe.
She felt the wire she was wearing, taped to her midriff beneath her shirt. It had recorded everything.
Standing at Sarah’s side, Zoe waved at the ambulance when it pulled away. Sarah glanced around for a ride. She wanted to get to the hospital. Danisha looked like she was going to be okay. Sarah wanted to get to Lawless.
Zoe said, “Can we go home now?”
Sarah nodded. “I think so.”
“Then we need to find Mousie.”
She almost broke down then, almost laughed and cried all at once. “Mousie’s in the plane, honey. I think he may have to stay there.”
The phone rang again. On emotional autopilot, she answered it.
“Mr. Briggs?”
It was a woman’s voice. Sarah looked at the phone. She’d picked it up in the 747, but it wasn’t hers. She shuddered, repulsed. It was Grissom’s.
The woman said, “Hello. Mr. Briggs?”
The voice was familiar. It had a lilt. Sarah stared at the broken jet on the white desert floor and put the phone back to her ear.
She said, “Mr. Briggs has already boarded his flight. Your call’s been forwarded to the office—this is his P.A. Is this Lucinda from the First Royal Bank of Antigua?”
“It is, miss.”
“Excellent.” She looked up at blue sky. “If you’re calling to confirm the funds transfer, I can verify all the information for you.”
71
The sand under her bare feet was hard and wet. The waves broke with a roar and rushed toward them in barreling foam. Up the beach, the Golden Gate Bridge shone in the sun. Zoe raced sandpipers along the waterline, laughing.
Sarah tilted her head to the sky and let the wind lift her hair from her neck. The breakers ran over her feet and receded with a hush. The water was cold. Her jeans were rolled up to her knees but got splashed anyway. She didn’t mind.
Zoe skipped up, surrounded by birds taking flight. She wrapped her arms around Sarah’s waist.
“I think there are dolphins in the water,” she said.
“Definitely.”
“And sharks?”
Surfers in wet suits sat beyond the break line, rising and falling, waiting for the right curl. It had been ten years since Sarah had come to this beach. More than a lifetime. Forever since she’d stood here and gazed past the Marin Headlands at the blue horizon.
For too long she’d thought this edge of the continent would be the jumping-off point. This would be where she lifted Zoe into her arms and disappeared, westward, vanishing into clouds and nothingness, becoming vapor.
Instead, she enjoyed the feeling of solid earth beneath her feet, the rugged cliffs of the Presidio behind her back, the city beyond. Loved the sun on her face, Zoe’s smile and ricocheting energy. It had been six weeks since the fight in the airplane graveyard. Six weeks since Danisha had gotten the all clear. Six weeks since Sarah had given a copy of the wire recording to the FBI, since an affidavit of her innocence had been filed, since Harker had disappeared from her life.
And it had been six weeks since Zoe’s RFID microchip was removed. Sarah had forwarded some of the chip’s information to the FBI. As she suspected, the chip contained more than just Zoe’s name and the clan’s bank account number. It had revealed the names of clan children who’d been taken from their parents. Many of them had now been found.
Many—but no boy matching the description of Fell’s son, Creek.
Fell remained at large. The deaths of Grissom Briggs and Reavy Worthe had been heavily reported. So had the death of Isom Worthe. His body had been found in a field in northern Arizona, picked over by vultures. He’d been shot twice in the back of the head.
Gangland war, the papers speculated. Intrafamily feud.
Eldrick’s wrath, Sarah thought. Isom had failed to protect the family’s profits, and he paid for it.
It had been six weeks since the money vanished from the clan bank account. Nobody had come after Sarah. Nobody had come for Zoe. They’d been living openly. Nobody cared anymore.
“Yeah, there are sharks in the water,” she said. “But we don’t need to worry about them today. They’re busy chasing fish for lunch.”
Zoe bounced. “Can I go in?”
“With me. Up to your knees.” She didn’t want to explain riptides yet.
They’d been in San Francisco for five days, decompressing. Zoe was edgy and prone to nightmares, but she no longer stuck to Sarah’s hip, silent and watchful. She was seeing a counselor.
And, with Sarah, she had been to see Beth’s grave, nearby in the coastal mountains. A headstone was a hard thing to show a little girl. But that cold marker of Beth’s end was also a beginning: the opening of the story Sarah was telling Zoe about the young mother who gave up her own life so that Zoe could have one. The flowers Zoe laid on the grave were a vibrant, messy bouquet she’d gathered herself. Beth would have loved them.
And Sarah had begun formal adoption proceedings.
Zoe threw her hat in the air and caught it. Sarah smiled.
A voice behind her said, “You’ll turn blue.”
She glanced back. Lawless limped toward her across the sand.
He was pale, his hair scruffy. The walking stick he was using gave him a rakish air. He was only two weeks out of the hospital. He’d lost his spleen and part of a lung. His fibula had been fractured. He was barely into physical therapy, facing a long slog in rehab. But he was alive.
He stopped at her side. His eyes, always alert and guarded, for once seemed open.
/>
“Want to catch some waves?” she said.
“Tow me on an inner tube behind a jet ski and provide me with a case of beer.”
“The time off’s doing things to your head.”
He smiled. “What’s it doing to yours?”
She brushed her hair back from her face. “I haven’t decided.”
She could continue to work for Danisha in Oklahoma City. Her desk was waiting. Her house was waiting. A jerry-rigged life was there. Lawless was here. The rest of the planet, rising and falling on the tide, was here, and beyond.
“People are going to keep disappearing, wherever I work,” she said. “Some of them need finding. And some of them need help erasing their old lives.”
The waves washed over her feet. Lawless took her hand. He ran a finger along her palm, down the scar left from falling in the forest and cutting her hand, many years earlier. It followed her lifeline.
She smiled. “I always thought mine was untraceable. But what do you know.”
She hung onto his hand. Some people needed to vanish. And some needed help to retrieve bits of their past. “Anything more come back to you?”
He eyed the horizon, where it faded to blue mist and met the sky. “Fragments.”
He had almost no memory of the final minutes at the aircraft boneyard. Shock and blood loss had stolen most of his consciousness. He didn’t recall telling her about Reavy and an angel. He didn’t even remember searching Reavy’s body.
“The key,” she said, not for the first time. “The clue. The source. The secret.”
“The Shattering Angel. Angel’s wings. Nope. Nothing,” he said.
No key had been found on Reavy. No items whatsoever had been found on her body or in the crane. Not even the Mossberg shotgun. They knew Fell must have taken that—and cleaned out Reavy’s pockets before she fled the boneyard.
They knew the trio had been in San Francisco, at least for travel. Their flight into Oklahoma City had originated at San Francisco International. The T-shirt Lawless had seen Grissom wearing in Rio Sacado turned out to come from Tank Up, a Bay Area coffee chain. There was one on Mission Street in San Francisco, but another at the airport—he could have picked up the shirt anywhere. Beyond that, nobody had yet been able to backtrace the trio’s movements. Whether Lawless’s rambling, urgent attempt to tell Sarah something had meant anything at all … no luck.
Zoe tugged on her arm. “Let’s get in the waves.”
“In a sec.” She held onto Lawless’s hand. “If anybody blew it that day, it was Reavy. Not you.”
He scanned the surf.
Zoe continued to tug. “Come on, Mommy. I want to see you turn blue.”
Her smile was beguiling. Sarah looked at her and went still.
She looked at Lawless. “Michael, I misunderstood you.”
Blew it? What? You didn’t blow anything.
No. Angel …
“You said blue.”
He glanced at her sideways. “Say again?”
“You said blue. I heard blew it, but that was wrong. Which is why you said, ‘No. Angel.’ ”
“Blue.” He looked dubious. “Blue Angel?”
A cold wave ran over their feet and retreated. Sarah said, “It’s worth a shot. Reavy had a key. For the Blue Angel Apartments. Car rental. Adult movie studio.”
He got his phone. The look on his face hung between You’re nuts and What the hell. But after a minute he looked up.
“Blue Angel Hotel’s on Market Street near the Civic Center.”
“What do you know,” she said. Her smile stopped, half-formed. “How close to the Civic Center?”
He accessed the map. “Six blocks.” Pensive, he zoomed in. His face grew even more pale. “Three blocks from the San Francisco Federal Building.”
Under his breath he said, “Damn.” He zoomed in again. “Tank Up coffee, on Mission—it’s just around the corner.”
Sarah leaned in to see. The map listed a congresswoman’s office, complete with phone number and antigovernment rants. Across the street, filling the block directly between Tank Up and the Blue Angel, was an imposing granite building.
“What’s that?” she said.
Lawless zoomed in again. Sarah straightened. It was the U.S. Court of Appeals.
“That’s the Ninth Circuit Courthouse.” Her lips stayed parted. “It looks like it’s in the crosshairs.” Damn. She pulled out her own phone. “That Second Amendment case.”
“What?” Lawless said.
“You’ve been sidelined. The Ninth Circuit is hearing an appeal on a big gun control case. Every Uzi-hugger and pacifist in the continental United States has been yakking about it. Hell, Sister Teresa’s probably standing on the courthouse steps with a protest sign.”
“And?”
She typed a search. “The judge—the one who presided at the Denver trial of Eldrick Worthe.”
“Partyka.”
The search result appeared. The entire day went chilly. “He’s now a justice on the Ninth Circuit, here in San Francisco. He’s on the panel hearing oral arguments.” She looked up. “Later this week.”
Lawless punched a number and put the phone to his ear. “Jesus. They could be planning another attack.”
He pulled her against his side and rested an arm over her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around his waist. She felt his heart beat.
“It’s Lawless,” he said into the phone. “We have an emergency.”
The fourth-floor window overlooked the alley. She sat on the windowsill, watching the protesters and TV news crews down on Mission Street. Directly across the alley, the parking lot at the U.S. Courthouse was ringed by a spiked steel fence. But it exited where the patriots and hippies and reporters were gathered, on a sidewalk plaza guarded by wispy trees and concrete car-bomb protection bollards. Justice Partyka’s car was parked in the lot today. It was close, so close.
The protesters sounded energized, but they were just warming up. Later in the week, when oral arguments began, there would be more of them, and they’d be riled like hornets.
Justice Partyka deliberately varied his schedule. He never arrived at the same time in the morning or left at a predictable hour at night. He was accompanied at all times by his U.S. Marshals protective detail. But no matter what, later this week he would have to drive right past the protesters to reach the street.
Close, so close. She could feel it in her fingertips. Close, and soon.
On the bed Cinda sat cross-legged, hunched over a Sudoku book. It was the way Fell had found her when she arrived here three days earlier, after hitchhiking her way across the west from New Mexico, hiding out with cousins along the way. But apparently Cinda had been like this for the past six weeks, ever since Grissom was killed. Ever since she quit work at Tank Up and took to hiding in this room, crying, and reading Tiger Beat, then getting the guilts over that and reading the Bible.
At least Cinda didn’t know how Grissom came to die. Fell saw no need to tell her.
Over on Mission Street two police cars pulled up. Silent approach: lights flashing, no sirens. Officers jumped out and hustled into the courthouse.
She turned her head toward the hotel room door. The hallway outside had gone quiet.
The Blue Angel never went quiet. It was a fleabag dump, always noisy with European doper tourists and bums a few steps from the Tenderloin and Skid Row. Silence meant death.
She stood, grabbed her go-bag and opened the window. Cinda looked up.
“What—”
Fell put a finger to her lips.
She waited a painful moment, hoping she was wrong. She heard footsteps on the stairs.
“Move,” she said, but Cinda stared, dumbfounded. “Split, or kill yourself, but don’t sit there. Move.”
Cinda stared fearfully at the door. “What do we do?”
“Live to fight another day.”
Fell climbed onto the fire escape and ran.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Jessica Horvath, Ben S
evier, Brian Tart, Jamie McDonald, Claire Zion, Kara Welsh, Jhanteigh Kupihea, Nancy Freund Fraser, Sara Gardiner M.D., Kelly Gerrard, Adrienne Dines, Mary Albanese, David Wolfe, Tammye Huf, Justine Hess, and Paul Shreve.
Those interested in skip tracing or in methods by which, even in a hyper-connected technological society, it’s still possible to vanish, might enjoy two books I found helpful while writing this novel: How to Disappear, Frank M. Ahearn with Eileen C. Horan, and How to Be Invisible, J. J. Luna.
Those familiar with New Mexico and the Texas panhandle might wonder about a couple of towns and several highways that appear in the novel but not on any maps. I hope you’ll forgive me for altering the landscape to add fictional locales. The Southwest is a big place, and I figured there was room for them.
THE BEGINNING
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MICHAEL JOSEPH
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