Crosscut

by Meg Gardiner

  “My life,” she whispered.

  Groaning with exertion, she brought up her left arm. The Glock came into view. She had wedged her index finger deep into the trigger guard so that she had a secure grip.

  “You took.”

  She aimed the Glock at my face. I grabbed her hand. She was still strong, but with her arm broken she had only the barest ability to resist. I pushed and bent her broken bones and twisted her hand around to an angle it could never naturally have reached, and I shoved the gun against her temple.

  Her gaze cleared. It seemed to burn with startled recognition. “Woman. You.”

  Staring her in the eyes, I squeezed her trigger finger. The roar was deafening.

  Everything flew. The gun, Coyote, and me. The recoil slammed me sideways and the scaffold shuddered again and though I grabbed for the platform, the whole thing went over like an animal brought down. I rolled off the side, over and over in the air, spinning with Kai Torrance to the floor below.

  38

  Fragments remain. Memories like shards of colored glass, flashing with light every now and then.

  The fall. Air and darkness, the clear thought: Fuck, this is going to hurt.

  Lying on the marble. Still, broken somewhere, Kai Torrance’s body underneath me. Hearing Mom’s voice. Seeing Jesse bump backward down the stairs, hanging onto the rail, calling my name over and over.

  Spinning lights, blue and red. LAPD commandos breaking the front window with a battering ram.

  Jesse’s face next to mine after he dropped onto the floor beside me, his hand on my cheek. Mom on the other side, holding me.

  Reaching up, my fingers touching her, hearing her say she was all right. Shock and pain.

  The rest of the night, and the next two days, are nothing but shadow. I spent them under heavy sedation at UCLA Medical Center. When I regained coherence, Mom was standing at the window in my room with her arm in a sling, looking pale and seraphic, her spiky hair a halo in the afternoon sun. Dad was dozing in a hard chair with HMS Surprise open on his lap. By my bedside Jesse was frayed and silent, his head and shoulders resting on the bed, his hand clasping mine. He had spent one night in jail before Captain McCracken and Special Agent Dan Heaney combined their leverage to convince the Los Angeles authorities that he was one of the just. No charges had been filed against him.

  Kai Torrance was dead before we hit the ground.

  Maureen Swayze was on a ventilator in the ICU. The doctors didn’t know if she would survive. The poison in the syringe was a genetically engineered variant of tetrodotoxin, the neurotoxin found in puffer fish. Primacon was researching its potential as a Parkinson’s and epilepsy treatment. She was cardiac and nerve damaged, partially paralyzed, and in excruciating pain. And cogent. When they asked her if she could write down the name of her next of kin, she took the pen and scrawled, Kill me. Mom sounded calm when she described it.

  After that, I slept like a baby.

  The next week, after I was released from the hospital and the truck came home from the body shop, Jesse and I drove up to the high desert. My left arm was in a cast. My pelvis had a hairline crack, but there was nothing for that except rest. I’d had an MRI and a dozen blood tests that all indicated I was free from infection by South Star. Jesse rested his elbow on the window frame. Trisha Yearwood was on the stereo, true aching country music, a generous offering on his part and yet another reason why I loved the man so much. The sky was lacquered blue. A hawk soared overhead, riding the thermals, searching for prey.

  Far north of China Lake, he turned off the highway and followed the old road up the slope into the sage and scrub. It was late afternoon and the sun was angling down. Thunderheads boiled above the mountains. He stopped and we worked our way across the rocky ground to the overlook. Across the valley the Sierras soared to meet the blue.

  In my hands I held an armful of white roses. I chose one.

  “For Kelly.”

  I tossed it to the wind.

  I chose another. “For Ceci.”

  And so it went, one for each of them. I felt calm, until the last few.

  “For Valerie.”

  I flung the rose in the air. Seven remained. I bunched three and raised my hand. My voice had a fissure in it.

  “For Tommy.”

  They arced out over the rugged terrain. Three more. Her name wouldn’t come easily, and so I breathed and said it in a whisper.

  “For Abbie.”

  The wind caught them and they soared for a second, and were gone. Jesse took the final rose from my hand. His voice was quiet.

  “For the baby.”

  Heat ran through me and the wind brushed my back. Above the Sierras lightning rippled, flashes in the clouds so far distant that the thunder died before it reached us. Emptiness didn’t begin to explain how I felt.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “No.” His face was grave. “That’s not what you say to me. Not ever.”

  I felt pain behind my eyes. I blinked, trying to hide my tears and confusion. But he pulled me onto his lap and took my face in his hands.

  “I’m in this with you. All the way.”

  “I only wish . . .” I closed my eyes. “If only—”

  Fingers against my lips. “If is a word that will eat you alive. Believe me, I know.”

  He smoothed my hair out of my eyes and kissed my forehead. We held each other and watched the daylight sail away.

  “You ready?” I said.

  Dad nodded. He squared his shoulders and smoothed down his bristling white hair. I straightened his tie. My hand lingered.

  “There’s no turning back,” I said.

  “This day has been far too long in coming. It’s time.” Mom stepped up and took his hand. We walked through the courthouse archway. Jesse was waiting outside.

  The day was sunny and the television cameras were gathered on the sidewalk. Lavonne Marks was reading to them from a prepared statement. Reporters were taking notes. Dad shook Jesse’s hand.

  “You don’t have to do this, Phil,” Jesse said. “Not for me.”

  “Yes, I do. Not just because I took the coward’s road with you.”

  I could hardly bear to look at my father’s face. I was already frightened over what was coming. Seeing the regret in his eyes when he looked at Jesse was almost more than I could bear. Dad knew he was wrong for asking him to have me terminate the pregnancy. He wanted to undo things, make up for this, redeem himself.

  But it was more than that.

  He wanted to atone for twenty years when people from my class were suffering and dying because of the explosion at China Lake. He couldn’t have prevented the blast or stopped us from being exposed. But, he had come to believe, he could have done more. Pressed harder. Taken chances and dug deeper. But he hadn’t, and my friends had died.

  He stepped to the microphone.

  “My name is Philip Delaney. I’m a retired captain in the U.S. Navy, a veteran with twenty-five years of military service. I’m here today to talk about an operation called Project South Star, and how agencies working supposedly to protect this nation instead hired an assassin to murder a group of civilians from China Lake, California.”

  He was falling on his sword.

  “You in the media have been covering the Coyote killings. What you don’t know is that this killer was made, not born. And she was set loose to execute classmates from the high school in China Lake, my daughter among them.”

  I watched the reporters and cameramen. They were attentive. Did they understand what he was doing? He was blowing it all away. He was going to lose his security clearance, his job, his reputation. He would be discredited, shamed within the military and intelligence communities to which he had dedicated his life. He would probably be prosecuted. He was betraying his oath of secrecy for the sake of me, my classmates, and the idea that the nation deserved better than what Maureen Swayze and the black world of government ops had given them.

  I was proud of him.

 
He spoke with dignity and assurance. Beyond the reporters, a small crowd of onlookers was gathering on the sidewalk. I wanted to make sure they listened, closely, and appreciated. I tried to make eye contact with each of them, willing them all to stay and hear him out.

  Abruptly, my vision prismed. At the back of the crowd, still, hard, and conspicuous as hell, stood Jakarta Rivera. Her face was somber. I shot a glance at Dad.

  He didn’t stop talking or break the rhythm of his statement, but his eyes settled on her and his voice slowed for a moment. He lifted his head, just an inch. In the back of the crowd, Jax did the same. Their eyes held for a second. She turned and walked away.

  It took me the whole drive home to work up the courage. Swinging the Mustang around the corner onto my street, I finally turned to Dad.

  “I saw Jax.”

  He gazed at the live oaks and oleander, the kids playing basketball across the street, the leaves in the gutter, everywhere but at me.

  “Dad.”

  “I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands. Maybe you can come down to Key West. We’ll take the boat out and do some fishing.” He loosened his tie. “Fishing trips are an excellent time to talk.”

  He was gazing into the distance. I slowed the car. When I put my hand on his, he took his time before looking at me.

  I nodded. “It’s a deal.”

  Read on for an exciting preview of Meg Gardiner’s brand-new thriller,

  THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB

  Available wherever books are sold or at penguin.com

  Fire alarms sang through the skyscraper, piercing and relentless. Under the din people poured across the marble lobby toward the doors, dodging fallen ceiling plaster and broken glass. Outside, Montgomery Street crackled with the lights of emergency vehicles. A police officer fought upstream to get inside. The blonde was ten feet behind, struggling through the crowd.

  The man in the corner paced, head down, needing her to hurry.

  People rushed by him, jumpy. “Everything crashed off the bookshelves. I thought for sure it was the Big One.”

  The man turned, shoulders shifting. The Big One? Hardly. This earthquake had just been San Francisco’s regular kick in the butt. But it was bad enough. On the street, steam geysered from manholes. And he could smell gas. Pipes had ruptured under the building. The quake was Hell saying, Don’t forget I’m down here—you fall, I’m waiting for you.

  He checked his watch. Come on, girl, faster. They had ten minutes before this building shut down.

  A fire captain glanced at him. He was tall and young and moved like the athlete he was, but nothing clicked in the fire captain’s eyes, no suspicion, no Is that who I think it is? Out of uniform he looked ordinary, a plain vanilla all-American.

  The blonde neared the doors. She stood out from the crowd, platinum sleek, hair cinched into a tight French twist, body cinched into a tighter black suit. A cop stuck out an arm like he was going to clothesline her. She flashed an ID and slid around him.

  He smiled. Right under their noses.

  She pushed through the doors and walked up, giving him a hard blue stare. “Here? Now?”

  “It’s the ultimate test. Secrets are hardest to keep in broad daylight.”

  “I smell gas, and that steam pipe sounds like a volcano erupting. If a valve blows and causes a spark—”

  “You dared me. Do it in public, and get proof.” He wiped his palms on his jeans. “This is as public as it gets. You’ll supply my proof.”

  Her hands clenched, but her eyes shone. “Where?”

  His heart beat faster. “Top floor. My lawyer’s office.”

  Upstairs, they strode out of the express elevator to find the law firm abandoned. The fire alarm was shrieking. At the receptionist’s desk, a computer was streaming a television news feed.

  “. . . minor damage, but we’re getting reports of a ruptured gas line in the financial district . . .”

  The blonde looked around. “Security cameras?”

  “Only in the stairwells. It’s bad business for a law firm to videotape its clients.”

  She nodded at a wall of windows. The October sunset was fading to dusk, but downtown was ablaze with light. “You plan to do this stunt against the glass?”

  He crossed the lobby. “This way. The building’s going to shut down in”—he looked at a red digital clock on the wall—“six minutes.”

  “What?”

  “Emergency procedure. If there’s a gas leak the building evacuates; they shut down the elevators and seal the fire doors. We have to be out by then.”

  “You’re joking.”

  The wall clock counted down to 5:59. He started a timer on his watch.

  “Yeah. I was meeting with my lawyers when the quake hit. It limits damage from any gas explosion.” He pulled her toward a hallway. “I can’t believe you’re scared of getting caught with me. Not Hardgirl.”

  “What part of ‘secret’ do you not understand?”

  “If we’re caught, they’ll ask what we’re doing here, not what we’re hiding in our pasts.”

  “Fair point.” She hurried alongside him, eyes bright. “Were you waiting for an earthquake before you did this?”

  Good guess—this was the third minor quake in the last month. “I got lucky. I’ve been looking for the perfect opportunity for weeks. Chaos, downtown—it was karma. I figured seize the day.”

  He rounded a corner. A glass-fronted display case along the wall had cracked, spilling sports memorabilia onto the floor.

  She rushed past. “Is that a Joe Montana jersey?”

  His stopwatch beeped. “Five minutes.”

  He opened a mahogany door. Across a conference room the red embers of sunset caught them in the eyes. The hills of San Francisco rose in front of them, electric with light and packed to the rafters like a stadium.

  He shrugged off his coat, took a camera from the pocket and handed it to her. “When I tell you, point and click.”

  He crossed the room and opened the doors to a rooftop terrace. Kicking off his shoes, he strode outside.

  “You complained I was using the club as a confessional. You told me I was seeking expiation for my sins, but said you couldn’t give me absolution,” he said.

  Deep below them, the building groaned. She walked outside, breathing hard.

  “Damn, Scott, this is dangerous—”

  “Your dare was—and I quote—for me ‘to offer a public display of penitence, and for Christ’s sake, get proof.’ ”

  He pulled his polo shirt over his head. Her gaze seared its way down his chest.

  Now, he thought. Before his courage and exhilaration evaporated. He unzipped and dropped his jeans.

  She gaped.

  He backed toward the waist-high brick railing at the edge of the terrace. “Turn on the camera.”

  “You came commando-style to a meeting with your lawyers?”

  Naked, he climbed onto the brick ledge and stood up, facing her. Her lips parted. Thrilled to his fingertips, he turned to face Montgomery Street.

  A salt breeze licked his bare skin. Two hundred feet below, fire and police lights flickered through steam boiling from the ruptured pipe, turning the scene an eerie red.

  He spread his arms. “Shoot.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Take the photo. Hurry.”

  “That’s not penitent.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. She was shaking her head.

  “Bad? You tattooed Bad on your tailbone?”

  His watch beeped. “Four minutes. Do it.”

  “You’re a badass?” She put her fists on her hips. “You get all torn up about a nasty thing you did in college, and want to unload it on us—fine. But you can’t tattoo some preening jock statement on your butt and call it repentance. That’s not remorse. Hell, it’s not even close to being dirty.”

  Frowning, she stormed inside.

  He turned around. “Hey!”

  Was she leaving? No, everything depended o
n her getting the photo. . . .

  She ran back out, holding a piece of sports memorabilia from the display case. It was a jockey’s riding crop. He swallowed.

  She whipped it against a potted plant with a wicked crack. “Somebody needs to take you down a notch.”

  He nearly whimpered. She wanted points, too. This was even better.

  Snapping the crop against her thigh, she crossed the terrace. Evaluating the ledge, she unzipped her ass-hugging skirt, wriggled it down, and stepped out of it.

  “It’s time to make your act of contrition,” she said.

  In the tight-fitting black jacket, she looked martial. The stilettos could have put out his eyes. The black stockings ran all the way to the tops of her thighs. All the way to—

  “What’s that garter belt made from?”

  “Iguana hide.”

  “Jesus, help me.”

  “I have a drawerful. I got them in the divorce.” She held out her hand. “Don’t let me fall.”

  “I won’t. I have perfect balance.” He felt crazed and desperate and God, he needed to get her up here, now. “I get paid four million dollars a year to catch things and never let them drop.”

  A wisp of her blond hair had escaped the perfect do. It softened her. He wanted her to put it back in place. He wanted her to put on leather gloves and maybe an eye patch. He pulled her up on the ledge beside him.

  She gripped his hand. Her smooth stocking brushed his leg.

  He could barely speak. “This is penance?”

  “Pain is just one step from paradise.”

  She looked down. Her voice dropped. “Christ. This is asking for a heart attack.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  She looked up. “No—I didn’t mean it as a crack about David.”

  But if David hadn’t dropped facedown with a coronary, they wouldn’t be here. The doctor’s death had created an opening, and Scott wanted to fill it. This was his chance to prove himself and gain admission to the top level of the club.

  The breeze kicked up. In the lighted windows of the skyscraper across the street, people gazed down at the fire trucks. Nobody was looking at them.