by Meg Gardiner
“Faster. Sixteenth Street,” she said. “Your car.”
Sweat was rolling down Shepard’s face into his salt-and-copper beard. “That puts us back at square one.”
But surrounded by a solid German frame and four hundred horsepower. She pounded along the sidewalk. This street offered no cover, just locked apartment buildings and glass-fronted businesses and budding trees along the curb. Ahead at the intersection with Sixteenth, the light was green. Horns honked behind them.
Jo looked back. The Navigator was stuck at the corner, blocked by cross traffic.
She pumped her arms. Ahead at the intersection, the light turned yellow. Pedestrians in the crosswalk jogged for the curbs.
“Go for it,” she said.
They ran into the crosswalk as the light turned red. Another horn honked, loud, in her ear, and Shepard danced out of the path of a rusty Honda Civic.
Jo belted across the street to the sidewalk. Up the block the Navigator was weaving through traffic, heading for the red light. She and Shepard had about thirty seconds to get out of his sight.
“Where’s your car?” she said.
Shepard shook his head. “No. Split up.”
“Alec—”
“He’ll follow me.”
He cast a look at her, hot and determined and somehow ruthless. Then he ran out into the middle of Valencia Street. He stopped in the crosswalk and turned to face the Navigator.
He spread his arms. She couldn’t tell whether the gesture meant surrender, Come and get me, or Just try it, man. The Navigator’s engine revved. Shepard turned and fled toward the far side of the street.
Jo stood rooted to the sidewalk. The Navigator approached the red light. With barely a pause, Kanan put the pedal down and accelerated toward the intersection, toward cross traffic, straight at her.
19
The Navigator’s engine swelled in Jo’s ears. Its red paint flashed in the bright sunlight as the SUV veered toward her. Cars in the intersection and people on the sidewalk swerved like crazed fish scattering at the approach of a shark. She turned and ran.
She crashed into a cluster of trash cans by the curb. She went down amid a clatter like steel drums falling over, hands out, and pitched to the sidewalk.
“Look out,” a woman shouted.
Over the shining barrel of the trash can, Jo saw the Navigator bearing down on her.
Get your butt up off this sidewalk, Beckett. She scrambled to her feet and aimed for the door of a Chinese restaurant. All around her on the sidewalk, she saw fleeing backs. She heard distant sirens. Through the window of the restaurant, people stared at her with alarm, eyes wide, chopsticks frozen halfway to their mouths.
A cry escaped her throat. If she ran into the restaurant, the Navigator would ram the window.
She jinked left and pitched along the sidewalk at a flat, crazed sprint. Her hands were clenched, her hair falling from the claw clip into her face. Behind her the engine revved. The street streamed by, trees and cars and shops painted with throbbing murals in rain forest colors.
She needed a cement wall to dive over. A bank with an open vault. A crack. A dime edge, a fire escape, a drainpipe to climb. Her feet pounded the sidewalk.
Ahead she saw a parking garage. She pinned her gaze to it. Reinforced concrete, tight turns, and a hundred metal chassis she could put between her and the Navigator—she aimed for the entrance.
In her peripheral vision she saw a black vehicle on the street ahead. It was barreling in her direction. She heard the Navigator, seemingly right between her shoulders. She swerved into the entrance of the parking garage, toward the ticket machine.
On the street, tires squealed. She heard the Navigator’s brakes engage, hard. She glanced back.
Gabe’s black 4Runner had skidded to a stop, half askew, blocking the entrance to the garage. The Navigator was stopped in the street beyond it. Kanan honked, a solid insistent blast. The 4Runner didn’t move. The sirens grew louder.
Kanan spun the wheel. With sunlight flashing off his tinted windows, he roared away.
Jo stood for a second. She couldn’t seem to move, could barely inhale. The world was throbbing in sync with her heartbeat.
Gabe climbed out of the 4Runner and strode toward her. She ran and threw herself against him. Without breaking stride he swept an arm around her shoulder and shepherded her toward the 4Runner.
“You okay?” he said.
She nodded tightly.
Eyes sweeping the street, he led her to the passenger side and opened the door. She jumped in. He jogged around, hopped behind the wheel, and pulled sharply back into traffic.
“How did . . . ?” She grabbed his shoulder. “Thank you.” Her hand was shaking. “How did you find me?”
“The phone. You never hung up. I heard you tell Shepard to head for Sixteenth Street.” He checked the mirrors and panned the street. His face was grim. “You hurt?”
She fumbled her seat belt into the buckle and scraped her hair back from her forehead. “Fine, Sergeant.”
He looked at her palms. They were scraped and black with grit from her fall over the trash cans. As she stared at them, the shaking in her hand spread up her arms and across her shoulders. Then her whole body began chattering.
“Shit, that was scary.”
He took her hand and held on tight. Anxiety fizzed behind her eyes, bright and bubbly. No—it was tears. She blinked and they fell to her cheeks. She wiped them roughly away.
She couldn’t believe she had admitted her fear to him. She could only recall confessing fear to her parents when she was five, and once to Daniel when they were four hundred feet above the valley floor in Yosemite, and to her sister Tina one desperate empty night after Daniel died. But it had just poured out of her mouth to Gabe. Yet she didn’t feel embarrassed or weak for having done it. Maybe she was in shock.
She looked around the street. “Did you see which way Kanan went?”
“South, out of sight. And no way are we going hunting for him.” He gripped the steering wheel. “My number one priority is to protect you. My other number one priority is to protect Sophie—she needs a father, not a hero.”
He slowed for the light at Sixteenth and signaled left.
“I’m unarmed and in no position to take the fight to Kanan. We talk to the police and get you home safe,” he said.
The sun was tipping toward the west. Lengthening shadows etched the road. She heard anger in his voice. He didn’t want her to think he was running from a confrontation.
As if. She touched his face. The light changed and he turned onto Sixteenth. Ahead, outside Ti Couz, an SFPD black-and-white was stopped, lights flashing. Gabe drove toward it.
Hearing a glass note in her own voice, she said, “What did you find out about Kanan?”
Another sidelong glance. Gabe didn’t speak, just put a hand on her arm, half to reassure her, half to see if she was clammy and about to hyperventilate. P.J.s. What could you do?
“He wasn’t a security contractor?” she said.
“It’s worse.”
20
Seth Kanan was scared. He was tired and felt alone, because nobody would tell him anything. But mostly he was scared.
Everybody wanted to keep him in the dark, it seemed—in such absolute night that he couldn’t tell whether his eyes worked anymore. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t talk to his parents. Even though he was all by himself, he felt absolutely controlled. He couldn’t do anything except worry.
He kept waiting for his dad to walk through the front door, but he hadn’t. It had been another night without him. And the men were out there.
Seth pressed the Scotch tape around the bridge of his glasses to hold them together. He’d seen the men today. He tried to keep them distant in his mind, to put them in a corner of his memory like cockroaches, but they just swelled back up and took over his thoughts. Sneering, making wet sounds, jeering, threatening him. He had a feeling that something had happened today. Vance, the rapper wannabe, ha
d followed him around. Vance had been edgy, like he had bees swarming around him.
“You’re safe,” Vance had said. “You want to stay that way, you play nice. You say please and thank you, sir.”
Safe. What did that mean? Safe as in protected? Safe as in everything else was dangerous? Seth had the feeling that bad things had happened in Vance’s world today. And the way the guy looked at him, it was like Vance thought his dad was the one behind it all, putting Seth in danger. That made no sense. That made his stomach burn.
And Murdock had stood behind Vance, staring over his shoulder at Seth like burning holes with his eyes would make Ian Kanan appear on the spot.
“Play nice,” Vance had said. “Keep quiet so Mommy doesn’t hear any complaints from you. Otherwise her and your dog could find theirselves getting the torture treatment at baby Gitmo.” Then he made pathetic barking, whimpering sounds.
Seth had turned his back on him.
Yeah, something had gone wrong for Vance and Murdock. They were all of a sudden in a big hurry. And he was a pawn they would be only too happy to sacrifice to get whatever it was they wanted.
He needed a weapon.
Something sly, something unexpected. He turned to the bed. He scooted the mattress back from the edge of the frame. He began working on the spring, bending it back and forth, back and forth.
He didn’t know how long it would take. But he did know that not all metal was the same. He knew that from shop class and chem class. And from his dad and Uncle Alec telling him about sword-making, metallurgy, scimitars and daggers. And about Damascus steel.
He kept working, back and forth. This spring wasn’t Damascus steel. But it was galvanized, and when it broke, it would be brittle and sharp.
Jo locked her front door behind her and followed Gabe down the hallway to the living room. He walked like Mr. Kicked Back, a guy without a worry in the world. But his gaze swept the living room, the hall, the stairs, the kitchen, and the view of the back yard. She turned on a table lamp, crossed to the bay window, and closed the shutters.
They had talked to the police at the scene outside Ti Couz. But Kanan had disappeared, and so had Alec Shepard. His Mercedes remained outside the restaurant and he wasn’t returning her messages.
And Gabe had held his counsel while he drove her home. She turned and faced him.
“Tell me, or forget about it and kiss me, but open your mouth, Quintana.”
His gaze finished its slow sweep of the house. He looked at her, fierce and quiet, as cool and centered as a stone in the middle of a flowing stream.
“Ian Kanan served ten years on active duty in the army. I don’t have official confirmation, but my air force contact told me some things that jibe with my own impression. Kanan was Special Forces.”
“ ‘Impression’? Does that mean rumor or hard facts?” she said.
“Off-the-record verification. Plus your description of Kanan. Lean and whippy, that’s how the Special Forces like ’em.”
If Kanan had been in special ops, his service record would be buried in a hole. “Honorable discharge?”
“Far as I know. Contact military records—maybe Amy Tang can shove through the request. You might get some information in a couple of weeks.”
She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “And after he left the army?”
“He went to work for a private security contractor.”
“Blackwater?”
“Another outfit, similar deal. Cobra.”
“Because Daisy Hill Security wouldn’t instill esprit de corps.”
“Or fear,” Gabe said. “Kanan spent four years with them. Baghdad, Ramadi, and two tours in Afghanistan.”
“So he’s a soldier of fortune.”
“Contractors earn their keep, and the military loves them for it. They handle security and logistics, they take the heat, and they take the pressure off the army.”
“They’re mercenaries who double as chauffeurs and event planners.”
“And bodyguards, marshals, private Secret Service. They even handle security at the Iraqi parliament.”
“So they’re the bigwigs behind the scenes,” she said.
“And until recently, they’ve had immunity from prosecution. There’s been absolutely no way to hold them accountable for things they do wrong.”
“What did Kanan do for Cobra?” Jo said.
“Kept visitors to Kabul alive. From the moment they touched down at the airport to the moment they were wheels-up again, he was in charge of security. At their hotels, on the road, in meetings with government and NGOs—he isn’t anything close to just a corporate babysitter.”
“Why is it worse than you thought?”
“Guy I know who was active, served in the Afghan theater, remembers a run-in with Cobra in Kabul.”
“Between U.S. air force personnel and private security?”
“Over nothing. A traffic jam. Everybody honking at some chaotic downtown intersection. The Cobra people pulled their weapons on the airmen.”
“Kanan did? Your guy saw him?” she said.
“No, but the Cobra people were Kanan’s men. Either he was there or they were following his rules of engagement.”
“So Kanan possibly has a temper and poor impulse control.”
“Jo, he’s a mercenary. He’s a full-on pro. He’s armed at the very least with a knife. If he doesn’t have guns at home, he knows plenty of people in the Bay Area who can supply him.”
“If he can remember to contact them.”
“If he assembles a posse, he won’t need to. They’ll remember for him.”
The traffic light in front of Kanan turned green. His right turn signal was blinking. The street sign swinging from the traffic standard said DOLORES. He put his foot on the gas and turned right. He was in the Mission District in San Francisco. The radio was playing. The sun was fading toward the west. A car coming the other way flashed its lights at him. He turned on his headlights.
What was he doing here?
The street was busy. On the radio a chirpy deejay said, “Welcome to Friday drive time.”
Kanan reached to turn up the radio, and as he stretched, he saw letters written on his arm. His throat caught.
He blinked and tried to breathe normally. Holy mother of God. Was he really doing this?
Yes. He was alone, and this was Alec’s Navigator. It was Friday, and evening was coming on.
He pulled over. Post-it notes were stuck to the dashboard. Check phone pics. He took out his cell and scrolled through the photos he figured he must have taken. They looked like this neighborhood, but earlier—with the sun high in the sky. A restaurant, Ti Couz.
He looked out the window. The restaurant was right across the street. As he peered through its windows, a waiter in a white apron opened the door, stepped outside, and stood staring at him.
His skin cooled. He could think of no reason for the waiter to do that, unless he’d been driving around the block, or stopping in front of the restaurant, for a while. Maybe all afternoon. Either that, or people were looking for him.
He was running out of time. Panic rilled through him, a feeling that everything was fading, sliding out of his control. On his right arm he saw the words Memory loss.
He needed help.
He thought about it for a moment and punched a search query into the GPS unit. The answer popped up within seconds. Thank God.
He got a Post-it, wrote Diaz, and stuck it to the dashboard.
Nico Diaz had been in his unit. He was the man who’d introduced him to the people who ran Cobra.
Diaz ran a sporting goods store. Friends of Diaz knew that his inventory extended beyond the basketballs and fishing rods on the shelves. He had been a scout sniper in the army. Diaz was a useful friend to have.
The GPS unit pinged. An arrow pointed straight ahead. An address in Potrero Hill popped up. Diaz’s store.
Kanan drove toward it. Get Diaz on board—Diaz would be able to hold everything in his head at
once. Diaz wouldn’t forget what was going on.
Diaz would ride shotgun when he went after Alec.
21
Jo stood for a second, facing Gabe, tension winding her up like an alarm clock. “I need to call Amy Tang. She can start digging up the names of Kanan’s contacts in the Bay Area.”
“You okay?” he said.
“Hundred percent.”
“That means no.”
They were four feet apart. She thought if she moved, she might spring like a jack-in-the-box and hit the ceiling.
“This case is driving me nuts. I can’t put it together. Kanan. The brain injury. What poisoned him? Was it a nanoparticle? Did he steal it from Chira-Sayf? Did it also contaminate Ron Gingrich? And what’s going on with his family, and that freaking company?”
Gabe shook his head. “Let it go. Let your mind work on it at another level. The answers will come to you.”
“I can’t. Kanan’s got a hit list and a deadline written on his arm. And I’m missing a huge part of the puzzle. Something is tearing Kanan up.”
“Yeah. Greed. And a lust for revenge.”
“No. Something deeper.” She ran her hands through her hair.
She got her phone, called Tang, left a message. Pacing in a circle, she called Alec Shepard and got voice mail.
“He’s not answering.” She found the television remote control. “Maybe there’s something on the news.”
She turned on the T.V. A cartoon bloomed on the screen, yellow sea creatures with eyes bugging on stalks. She switched channels. Gabe came up behind her. He put his arms around her waist, pulled her back against him, and bent his head to her ear.
