The Nightmare Thief

by Meg Gardiner

  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.”

  3

  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 honestto-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 minifridge. “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. Undercover 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 somebody’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 superwealthy 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 Francisc
o, 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.