by Meg Gardiner
They identified twenty-one specific sites to start with. Lieutenant Kogara arrived and coordinated with the ATF and law enforcement agencies from Oakland, Richmond, and Contra Costa County.
Guthrie alerted Alameda’s Special Response Unit. Six of the likely sites lay in the sheriff’s office’s jurisdiction. Caitlin eyed the clock.
Guthrie assembled his people. “Three teams. Detectives accompanied by uniforms.”
“Tactical?” Shanklin said.
“Are on alert, ready to roll if one of us gets a hit on Rawlins. They won’t deploy unless we confirm we’ve found him. They can’t risk being caught out of range if they’re needed.”
He pointed around the room. “Martinez, you lead the team to Lake Merritt. I’ll take Twelfth Street.”
He turned to Caitlin. His eyes welled with misgiving.
She stepped toward him. “I’m going. You’re not pulling me out of the field.”
“Hendrix. It’s Sean.”
“That’s why you need me. I put two and two together. I know this case better than anybody. I know Sean. I can recognize his voice, I can—”
Guthrie held up a hand. “Okay. You take the waterfront.”
Caitlin nodded. Adrenaline ran through her.
Shanklin said, “What about me?”
“You’re with Hendrix,” Guthrie said. “The Prophet has put a target on her back. You’re—”
“A bodyguard?” Shanklin said.
“Reinforcement. Nobody has eyes in the back of their head.”
Mack was crouched against the wall, hands hanging off his knees. He stood up. “I’m going too.”
“No.”
“You need extra eyes, extra hands, and someone who understands what to look for. That’s me.”
Guthrie paused. His expression said, I should have seen this coming. “Very well.” He shot a look at Mack’s shaking hands. “But unarmed.”
“Understood.”
Guthrie looked at each of them. “Saddle up.”
Caitlin’s heart thundered. She headed for the door. Her father fell in at her side. As they passed the windows, he slowed. The sun was low on the western horizon, sinking toward a golden sunset.
Mack stared at it. “Is Mercury visible in the sky tonight?”
“No idea.”
Martinez and Guthrie went past them. Guthrie said, “Mack, you’ll wear a vest. Come to the locker room. Martinez, Caitlin—patrol units will accompany you.”
Caitlin gestured for Mack to head for the locker room. Mack continued to stare at the western sky.
“Is it visible?”
He turned to her. Alarm filled his eyes. She stopped. At the door, Guthrie and Martinez turned back.
“Hang on,” she said.
She grabbed a laptop and bent over the keyboard. A minute later she found the information. It felt like the blood had drained from her limbs.
“Mercury’s visible tonight at dusk. We’ll be able to see it after sunset,” she said.
“For how long?”
“It sets at eight thirty-four P.M.,” she said.
She and Mack looked at each other, and out the window.
“Holy God,” she said, and ran for the door. “It’s a countdown.”
53
They swung off the freeway near the Port of Oakland and raced along a surface street toward an industrial park built above the BART lines. Caitlin drove the first car. Mack sat in the passenger seat. Behind them were the headlights of a Charger driven by a uniformed deputy, with Shanklin riding shotgun.
Caitlin’s watch pinged: 8:04 P.M.
Half an hour and counting down.
She pressed her foot on the gas. Streetlights swept past. The radio chattered. Mack glared out the windshield, a dark coil of energy. He adjusted the department-issue ballistic vest again.
“Never gone into a potential firefight unarmed.” He clenched his fists to stop the noticeable tremor.
Caitlin cut a glance at him. “You’re my eyes and ears, not my gun.”
“So you’re not going to let me cover you with that Remington in the trunk?”
“I’ll cover you. So will they.” She nodded at the car behind them. “Got it?”
“Drive,” he said.
They rounded a corner into an alley, a dim and dusty wasteland where broken glass clicked beneath their tires. They rolled past darkened warehouses and factories—two cars, lights on, side spotlights sweeping the street and buildings. Night was falling, sunset a crimson smear of light evaporating on the western horizon.
Between buildings, Caitlin caught sight of stars in the sky. Low, and sinking toward the ocean, was a single white point. Mercury.
Mack had a copy of the BART map and the subterranean tunnel blueprints. “The train line runs at an angle below us—another hundred yards, approximately.”
“Approximately?” she said.
“Best I can do.”
Caitlin drove the hundred yards, to a darkened warehouse. “High windows. Let’s go.”
They stopped and got out. The patrol car pulled up behind them. Shanklin and Deputy Lyle emerged. Earlier that day at the barricade outside Rhone’s house, Lyle had been calm and low-key. Tonight he moved like a firecracker about to go off.
“I lead,” Caitlin said. “Single column. Me, Lyle, my dad, then Shanklin. Observe noise discipline.”
She and the two officers checked their shoulder-mounted radios. Mack grabbed a flashlight. Caitlin chambered a round in her SIG Sauer, reholstered it, opened the trunk of the car, and pulled out the shotgun.
She mounted her Maglite on top of the Remington 870. She eyed them each and got nods in turn. She signaled Go.
They found the door to the warehouse broken open and partially torn from its hinges. Caitlin swung inside. The Maglite swept the space.
“Right clear.”
“Left clear,” Lyle said.
Caitlin’s heart hammered. The warehouse was empty.
There was no hole in the concrete, no message from the Prophet.
“All clear.” Her mouth went dry. “This isn’t it.”
Her watch pinged. Twenty-five minutes.
Rage and helplessness splintered in her chest. She radioed Guthrie. “Nothing. It’s a bust.”
“Proceed to the next site,” he said.
That meant nobody had found any sign of Sean.
“Where’s air support?” she said.
“Inbound.”
She gritted her teeth and signaled the team out the door. “We move on.”
The next site on their list was three miles away, near the Oakland Coliseum. Back in their cars, they gunned it. Caitlin’s stomach was knotted. Mack’s expression was iron. Her watch pinged. Twenty minutes.
The alley was narrow, a cracked asphalt path bisected by cross alleys, driveways, even footpaths leading down to the bay. Telephone poles stood like barren trees.
I found myself within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
“What?” Mack said.
“Nothing. This is a maze.”
“That’s the point.”
They swept along a chain-link fence outside an abandoned factory. Caitlin’s knuckles were white on the wheel.
She stomped on the brake.
“Caitlin?” Mack said.
They screeched to a halt, with Lyle’s Charger inches behind them.
“What?” Mack said.
She was staring at the cyclone fence outside the abandoned factory. A sign hung from it.
CONDEMNED.
54
CONDEMNED. The sign hung crookedly in the diamonds of the cyclone fence.
“This is it,” Caitlin said.
“Are you—”
“Come on.” She jumped out and stalked towa
rd the fence.
The doors of the Charger clacked shut. Shanklin jogged to catch up with her.
“The message on the video said, ‘Betrayal condemns sinners to the darkness of the pit,’” she said.
The rolling gate to the property was open several feet.
“And that,” Caitlin said, “is an invitation.”
She brought up a satellite zoom of the alley and property. “It’s an abandoned machine-tool factory. Cyclone fence completely encloses the property. Railroad tracks run along the western side. Two buildings, each approximately a hundred yards long, joined by offices in an H configuration.” She looked through the rolling gate. “Door immediately ahead. Loading docks on the far side of both buildings, so exits there too.” She looked at them. “No intelligence on the interior layout, so we’ll be each other’s eyes.”
Lyle was wound tight. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Radio Dispatch.”
He nodded and jogged to the car.
They formed up and crossed an empty asphalt lot. The moon was rising, cold light frosting the edges of the building. Caitlin scanned the perimeter and the roofline and saw no shapes, no movement. No blinking lights, no obvious cameras. But the Prophet could lurk in the shadows, crouched like a vampire, waiting. They reached the building and stacked up on the door. Caitlin aimed her weapon-mounted Maglite at the crease between the door and the jamb. She saw no trip wires, no sign of explosives.
Still, she took no chances. She pulled out her telescoping baton. She wrapped a latex glove around the end for gripping power. She signaled the others: Go. They all nodded.
She used the baton to turn the knob and pull open the door. She waited for the click, the blast, the sound of machine-gun fire. Nothing.
Lyle’s hand squeezed her shoulder. She swung inside, gun and flashlight sweeping the interior.
It was an enormous factory floor. The building was dark, the moonlight dimmed by the grubby windows. They crossed the room, clearing it as they went, shining their lights around the pallets and fifty-five-gallon drums.
“All clear,” Caitlin said. Behind her she heard Mack’s breathing.
Her watch pinged. Fifteen minutes.
At the far end of the room, they reached a door. They swept through and cleared the next room. They then found themselves confronted with a dark hallway.
Bad stuff. No way around it. Again they stacked up. Commit, Caitlin told herself. She swung through the doorway and entered the hall with the others close behind.
At a T junction, Caitlin raised a fist. Stop. She signaled Shanklin to go around her and clear the end of the hall.
Shanklin swept past, gun held in both hands. A few seconds later she said, “Clear.”
Caitlin looked back at the rooms they’d come through. They’d cleared them, but their back felt completely exposed. She pointed at Lyle.
“Cover and surveillance. Hold at this corner.”
He nodded. He too had a Remington shotgun in his hands.
Caitlin pointed down the intersecting hallway. She led Shanklin and Mack deeper into the building.
Sean’s here. He has to be.
Halfway down the hallway was a door. They stacked up, Caitlin opened it, and they swung through.
Her breathing tightened. Inside was a long factory floor space. High windows. Dingy moonlight.
Mack swept his flashlight across the walls. Shanklin inhaled.
The walls seemed to leap at them, grasping, shrieking. Psychedelic nightmare, screaming mouths, claws, heads ripped open, bloodred paint splattered across a darkened pit. Caitlin advanced.
“Right clear.”
“Left clear.” Shanklin’s voice was dry.
“All clear.”
Mack swept his flashlight around. The beam caught a sinuous trail of stainless steel nails, pneumatically hammered into the wall. It led to the door at the far end of the room.
There, an open door showed moonlight. A heavy flapping sound came through. Caitlin raised her weapon light to the ceiling. She saw no cameras, no microphones. But electronics could be hidden in a pinhole at the end of a piece of glass fiber. Holding the Remington tight, she led Mack and Shanklin to the doorway.
She heard only the sound of wind batting plastic sheeting. She swung through the doorway, shotgun leveled. The ragged plastic fluttered in the night wind like ghostly wings. The room was long, with a concrete floor.
She cleared her sector, as did Shanklin. Then she stopped breathing.
Dead center on the floor were bloody drag marks. They led to a gaping hole in the concrete.
The words were painted before it. All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here.
She inched toward the hole. A sense of space opened beneath her. Of endless depth. A strange breeze swirled up from within it. Humid, sour, dense with chemicals and stagnant water. She peered down.
Beneath the broken concrete, a vertical tunnel dropped about twelve feet. A ladder was propped against its dirt wall. At the bottom, support beams and metal struts gave way to another hole, cut with a blowtorch into the roof of another space—a subway tunnel.
Caitlin leaned into her shoulder-mounted radio. “Guthrie. It’s Hendrix. We found it.”
She released the TRANSMIT button, heard only static.
“Guthrie.”
More static. She looked around. The walls were sheetrock and corrugated metal, not anything that should block radio transmission.
She got out her cell phone. Fingers shaking, she punched Guthrie’s number.
Call Failed.
She pulled the radio from her shoulder and switched frequencies. Static.
Dread descended on her. “Shanklin. Call for backup from the Charger. Get SRU here ASAP.”
Shanklin hesitated. “I hate to split up.”
“Same. But we need to keep eyes on this room, and that hole, until backup gets here.”
“Roger.” Shanklin took off.
Caitlin leaned over the hole. The wind rushed through it. She tried her phone again, calling the main switchboard at the station. Couldn’t get through.
“Dammit.”
She stilled. Dialed 911.
Call Failed.
That should have been impossible. She turned up the boost on her radio and still got nothing. Mack checked his phone too. Shook his head.
“No signal.”
The phone signal was one thing. The police radio was another.
All at once she remembered how often calls had dropped.
She remembered the phone company crew working on the cell tower where Deralynn’s body was found—and where the Prophet had parked the black pickup.
“He has a radio frequency jammer.”
She and Mack looked at each other.
“He’s here,” she said.
They turned back-to-back and scanned the room. It was black, deeper than black, the dusty white light from the windows stopping halfway down the walls. The floor lay in shadow.
Mack spoke in a low murmur. “Retreat, wait for backup. Even with Lyle and Shanklin, we’re undermanned.”
Ping. Ten minutes.
“We can’t.” She turned back to the hole in the concrete. “Sean’s down there.”
“You want me to be your eyes? I’m also your second opinion. You’re not thinking tactically. We need more firepower.”
She leaned over, crouched down, aimed the Maglite into the hole again. She started to swing around to climb down the ladder.
“No.” Mack grabbed her arm and hauled her back. The strength and swiftness with which he moved surprised her.
“We’ll find him. But we’re going in with every gun we can get. Don’t get yourself killed, Caitlin. Listen to me.”
He had to drag her with him as they backtracked out of the room. She fought, staring at the hole, feeling her very life
seem to ebb with every step they retreated.
“Caitlin.” Mack’s voice was commanding.
He pulled her back through the cathedral of paintings and nails. Fuming, she shook him off and jogged to the far door. When they entered the hallway, she looked for Lyle at the corner where she’d posted him. He wasn’t there.
She stopped.
“Behind me,” she said to Mack.
They advanced to the T junction. Stopped, listened, heard nothing. No radio static, no shuffling feet, no breathing. Cold, heart pumping, Caitlin slid around the corner.
Moonlight dribbled into the hall. It illuminated the two shapes slumped on the floor. One sat against the wall, legs splayed. The second was spread-eagled across the first, arms flung overhead. The shimmering light baptized the tableau like snow.
Caitlin advanced toward them, shotgun leveled on the far doorway. Nobody came through it. The building was utterly still.
She crouched, adrenaline jacking through her. Lyle sat limp, back against the wall, hands at his sides, upturned like a beggar. His throat had been cut. His eyes stared past her, unseeing. She put two fingers to his neck, trying to find a pulse. He was dead.
“Jesus, no.”
She scrambled around him and kneeled at Shanklin’s side. She’d been stabbed in the neck, above her vest. So many times.
Caitlin stifled a scream. She grabbed Shanklin’s vest, to yank her up, slap her, scream her awake. Shake her alive. Blistering reality seemed to turn the empty hallway garish white.
Get up.
It was in her head, distant at first. Then she felt it, and heard it, in her father’s voice.
“Get up,” Mack said.
She stood, looking up and down the hallway, shotgun leveled on the exit.
Ping. Nine minutes.
“Come on,” he said. “We need backup. Right now. But before that, we need to get out. Go. Fast.”
She knew he was right. Knew that staying was suicidal. An ache, a horror, bled through her. Sean.
