Hendricks forced himself to back his browser up and search for any fallout from the Salty Dog.
“Anything?” Cameron asked.
“Nothing but a headline: ‘Reports of Shots Fired at Local Eatery.’ When you click through, there’s no story-just a note saying the page will be updated as more facts are available.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“Could be. At the very least, it’s not bad news. If I had to guess, I’d say local PD is distracted, their attentions elsewhere. Probably every cop from coast to coast is tracking down known militants. I hate to say it, but what happened in San Francisco helped us. It means we should be able to crash here tonight without much worry and then head out first thing in the morning.”
“That’s ghoulish.”
“That’s life-my life, at least. And it’d be yours, too, if I were to take you on.”
“If?” she said hopefully.
“Poor choice of words,” he said, “because it’s never gonna happen.”
Cameron sighed and returned to her vestigial kitchen to set the water boiling again. She unwrapped two packets of ramen and dropped the tangled noodle-bricks into two bowls. While she was otherwise occupied, Hendricks opened an incognito window in her browser and pulled up Twitter. He typed in his user name, j_rambo1972, and his password, 3v31yn, and hit enter.
His account was protected; a little lock icon beside the user name indicated that only those to whom he’d given permission could see his feed, and he had only one follower. That account was also protected. Neither of them had ever tweeted. Both their avatars were Twitter’s default egg.
The accounts were set up years ago by Lester as a way for them to communicate if their usual channels were compromised or otherwise rendered inaccessible. To the outside world, the accounts appeared inactive-two of the literally millions of abandoned handles on the platform. But they could be used to communicate via direct message without affecting their perfect-zero tweet count.
For the longest time, the other account had belonged to Lester. But last year-just after Lester died-Hendricks briefly saw his ex, Evie, and he’d slipped her the user name and password on a piece of paper as she squeezed his hand in good-bye. The account was intended only for emergencies, and it had sat dormant for months, but Hendricks still checked it every day.
Today, when the page loaded, he sat up ramrod straight. His stitches strained, though he hardly noticed.
Over the envelope icon in the toolbar, there was a 1.
Hendricks had a message.
He clicked on it, pulse thrumming in his ears. A window opened.
We need to talk, it said.
Hendricks replied, Where/when? Then he held his breath, although he had no reason to expect the reply to be immediate.
The reply was immediate. Roadhouse Truck Stop, I-76, PA. ASAP.
He Googled the place. It was in the middle of nowhere. Open twenty-four hours. Approachable from the highway and two rural routes. A good place for someone on the run. A good place to spring a trap too.
As if it mattered. If it wasn’t a trap, then Evie was in trouble. And if it was a trap, then Evie was in trouble.
He typed a quick reply as Cameron wandered over. She handed him a bowl of ramen and a spoon. Cocked an eyebrow as he hastily closed the browser window.
“Change of plans,” he said, taking the bowl. “We’re getting out of here tonight.”
13.
FRANK CROUCHED IN the underbrush and watched the Park Police go door to door down Funston Avenue. They worked in teams of two, one conferring briefly with the residents, the other idling in a cruiser at the curb. He’d seen dozens of them doing the same throughout the Presidio as he fled inland through the woods, running parallel to the Battery East Trail until it intersected with Lincoln Boulevard and then following Lincoln southeast.
He’d hoped to leave the Presidio before they locked down the perimeter, but the park was lousy with coppers, and the scrutiny given to everyone they came across was too intense. His forged ID was convincing enough for everyday use, but it would never stand up to a database search, and although he was thought dead, his prints were doubtless still on file.
Best to hole up for a while until the investigation shifted away from the park, he thought, and then slip out unnoticed. But finding a decent hiding place was proving harder than anticipated.
He’d spent half an hour casing the Lendrum Court town houses. They were bland midcentury beige boxes with taupe accents, situated on a terraced slope bisected by a winding drive. In most cities, units like these would be low-income housing. On the Presidio, they ran nearly five grand a month.
But as exorbitant as their rents were, the buildings were among the cheapest housing in the park, which meant they wouldn’t have as much security as the luxury properties overseen by the Presidio Trust. Trees towered over the Lendrum Court complex on all sides, isolating it from the outside world, and its parking lot was half empty, which meant some units were temporarily unoccupied thanks to the lockdown.
In short, the place looked perfect-at least until a neighbor had spotted Frank prying open a corner unit’s sliding-glass window and chased him off.
That was over an hour ago. He’d attempted to put some distance between himself and the angry neighbor in case the guy reported him, and he worried the Park Police might now be on the lookout for him. His progress was slowed by his injuries. His punctured palm bled every time he flexed it wrong; his bum knee crunched like gravel with every step.
Frank stuck to the woods whenever possible. It wasn’t always. To cross beneath the Presidio Parkway, he’d had no choice but to take the sidewalk for a few excruciatingly exposed minutes-there wasn’t cover enough beside the road to hide him until Lincoln jagged away from Highway 1.
As Frank pressed eastward through the pines, their thick canopy enclosed him. Nestled in this copse of trees, he could almost believe that the world of fire, chaos, and destruction he was fleeing was a thousand miles away. But what little of the sky he could see between the branches was ambered by the noxious smoke that continued to pour out of the wreckage of the tugboat, and the air-which scratched at Segreti’s throat with his every breath, and made him cough-tasted of oil and ash. Even the peppery scent of pine resin was no match for it.
Eventually, Frank came to a break in the trees and found himself at one end of a large cemetery. He rested for a moment in the shadow of a stone obelisk, catching his breath and attempting to get his bearings. The headstones all around made somber dotted lines that seemed, by a trick of perspective, to converge on his position. The implication troubled him. When he ducked back into the forest, he left behind a bloody handprint on the granite where he’d leaned.
When he hit the edge of the Main Post, he froze. The Main Post was essentially the Presidio’s downtown. From Mexico’s handoff of the base to the U.S. Army in 1848 until its closure by Congress in 1989, the Main Post had been the center of the Presidio’s administrative and social life. Now its historic brick buildings were home to museums, businesses, and tourist attractions.
Today, its massive central lawn was set up as a staging area-tents, personnel, and heavy equipment everywhere. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of police and first responders flitted back and forth across it, their clothes and faces blackened with soot. Armed men in riot gear stood guard at regular intervals. Frank felt like he’d just put his foot through the papery scrim of a wasp’s nest.
He hunkered down and watched awhile as afternoon marched toward evening. He was trying to discern pattern, logic, strategy, but the scene was too chaotic. He gave up and slowly made his way around the perimeter of the Main Post-always watchful, always just inside the tree line. That’s when he spotted the perfect house in which to hide.