The train clattered and bore down on him with a hurricane of air exploding from the tunnel.
With his gun still in his hand, Frost took two steps and jumped for the platform. His heels barely cleared the sleek silver body of the train. He rolled, and his broken finger jammed into the floor like a shock of lightning. Before he even came to a stop, he passed out from the pain.
When Frost opened his eyes, half a dozen faces loomed over him. They were passengers from the train.
“I called 911, Officer,” someone said, who’d obviously spotted the badge on his belt. “The cops and the ambulance should be here soon. Just hang tight.”
He blinked, remembering where he was and what had happened. He pushed himself to his elbows, but as he did, his finger delivered another shock of pain that almost split him in half. He touched his face, which was wet with ribbons of blood. His whole body felt pummeled.
“Whoa, hang on, man,” someone else said. “You probably shouldn’t move.”
Frost turned his head sideways, feeling the effort in his neck. He looked through the legs of the people clustered around him, and the floor of the platform was empty. Fawn was gone. He scrambled to his feet and nearly collapsed, and one of the men nearby grabbed him and propped him up.
“The girl,” Frost said urgently. “Where’s the girl?”
The people around him looked at each other, and then a woman said, “The pretty one with the big bump on her forehead? She took off.”
“Where? Where did she go?”
The passenger from the train shrugged. “I don’t know. It was crazy town around here. She got up and ran for the escalator.”
Frost swung his head in the other direction, and again his knees buckled.
Fox was gone, too. The blood trail led into the elevator. Frost broke free from the crowd and followed the trail. Several of the people shouted after him, but he didn’t pay any attention. He limped, trying to stay upright, trying to stay conscious. He jabbed the elevator button again and again, as if that would make it come faster. When the doors finally opened, he piled inside. He crumpled against the far wall and closed his eyes as the car went upward. It only took a few seconds, but it felt like an hour.
The trail of blood continued into the lobby of the station. Romeo and Moreno were both gone. The Lombard presence had melted away as the emergency sirens got closer.
Frost tracked Fox all the way to the escalator leading up to the street, but when he climbed the steps to the sidewalk outside, the rain had washed away the blood trail. The ambulances were coming. So were the police. He couldn’t wait for them. He squinted into the pounding rain, which had driven away the late-night people. The streets looked empty. At first, he thought Fox had vanished again, but then he spotted a shadow near the wall of the Hyatt hotel, staggering toward the Embarcadero.
Frost took off after Fox. It was a battle to see which one could stay on their feet longer. Frost felt thunder behind his eyes with each step, but he sprinted anyway. Fox passed under a streetlight and looked back and saw Frost gaining ground behind him. The killer tried to run, but the loss of blood had caught up to him, and all he could manage were stutter steps. He made it to the empty plaza beyond the hotel, and so did Frost, only a few yards behind him.
At the edge of the street, under the palm trees, Fox stopped. He turned on his heel to face Frost. His one arm hung limply at his side. As he bled, the rain washed it away. Frost kept a wary distance, not trusting the man’s tricks, but Fox had no tricks left. Behind him, cars splashed along the southbound lane of the Embarcadero, their headlights washing over his body. The clock tower of the Ferry Building gleamed with yellow light across the street.
“You think you’ve won?” Fox called. “You’re wrong.”
Rain shined on his face, which was half in shadow. His whole body shivered as he tried to stay standing.
“This is the end,” Frost told him. “It starts with you.”
“I’m already dead,” Fox said.
Frost shook his head. “No way. You are not going to die. I’m not going to let you. The surgeons are going to fix you up, and then I’m going to put you in a room, and you’re going to tell me how it all works. You’re going to tell me everything, Fox.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Fox shouted.
The traffic roared. The rain sheeted down, and wind rocked the palm trees. The gauzy lights made the sidewalk look like a carnival.
“Get what?”
“He’s coming.”
“Who?”
Fox gave him a bloody grin. “Lombard.”
Frost twisted his neck to survey their surroundings. They were alone. He took a step closer to Fox. The man looked serene in the midst of his pain.
“No one’s here,” Frost said.
“You’re wrong. He’s always watching.”
Over the driving rain, Frost heard the muffled ping of a text message arriving on his phone. Fox heard it, too.
“You better get that,” Fox warned him.
Frost yanked the phone out of his pocket, and the screen lit up. He didn’t recognize the number. The message itself was only three words.
King takes pawn.
Frost spun, looking for a ghost. He still saw nothing and no one.
“You should duck,” Fox went on, making no attempt to run, “unless you want to die, too.”
That was when it happened.
Among the flood of cars kicking up torrents of spray on the Embarcadero, one car squealed to a stop at the curb barely ten feet away from them. It was a Bugatti, black, low, sleek, and incredibly expensive. Its passenger-side window was already down, and Frost hurled himself to the ground, knowing what came next. Gunfire erupted from inside with bursts of fire and noise. Fox shuddered like a puppet on strings as multiple bullets riddled his back, and by the time the Bugatti sped away, the young killer twitched and crumpled sideways. It all took less than ten seconds.
Frost pushed himself out of the mud and ran to Fox, but there was no hope of saving him. Fox had taken a dozen new bullet wounds. Bile and blood bubbled from his mouth. He managed a few gasping breaths but didn’t say a word, and his eyes lit up with an odd gleam of victory before they froze in place.
Then he was dead, and all the secrets died with him.
Frost slumped to the ground. The rain poured in waves over his head. His phone sang again like a taunt as he clutched it in his hand. It was another message from the same phone number as before.
He read the text as he sat next to Fox’s lifeless body.
A pleasure to finally meet you, Inspector.
Lombard.
45
Three days passed. There was no sign of Fawn.
Frost left multiple messages on her phone, but he got no reply, and he assumed that she’d long since disposed of it. He was able to get a copy of the security video from Embarcadero Station on the night of the incident, and he spotted Fawn running for the exit along with others from the Oakland train. He saw no evidence that she’d been followed from the station by anyone from Lombard.
Even so, she was still missing.
When he couldn’t reach her, he went to her sister’s house. He drove to Presidio Heights at seven in the morning and found a large moving van parked outside and a “For Sale” sign in the window. He squeezed past the moving team and discovered that the house was already empty. Everything was gone. He went up to Fawn’s bedroom on the second floor. It had been stripped clean.
Prisha Anand was standing in the foyer when he came back downstairs. She had her coat on and her purse over her shoulder. She was dressed down, in jeans and a simple cotton top, with her black hair tied behind her head. She didn’t look surprised to see him.