“No, I’ll get an Uber.”
He hugged her and she kissed his cheek.
“It was fun—” he started.
“’Night!” Maddie called. Then she was off, tugging at her hair and striding toward another booth — with the marauding aliens, the swords and Shaw himself completely erased, like data dumped from a hard drive’s random access memory.
24
No logical reason in the world to pay one hundred and fifty dollars to retrieve a car that should never have been held hostage in the first place.
But there you have it.
Adding insult, the charge was five percent more if you used a credit card. Colter checked his cash: one hundred and eighty-seven dollars. He handed over the Amex, paid and walked to the front gate to wait.
The pound was a sprawling yard in a seedy part of the Valley, on the east side of the 101. Some of the cars had been there for months, to judge from the grime. He counted airliners on final approach to San Francisco Airport, thinking of how the sound of the planes had unsettlingly masked the noise of any attackers when he was searching for Sophie at that old factory. Now he gave up at sixteen jets. The vehicle arrived five minutes later. Shaw examined it. No scratches or dents. His computer bag was still in the trunk and had probably been searched, yet nothing had been damaged or taken.
The crisp voice of the GPS guided him back into a tamer part of Silicon Valley, quieted in the late evening. He was headed toward his RV park in Los Altos Hills. Colter Shaw had, however, chosen a circuitous route, ignoring the electronic lady’s directives — and her patient recalculating corrections.
Because someone was following him.
When he’d left the pound, he’d been aware of car lights flicking on and the vehicle to which they were attached making a U-turn and proceeding in his direction. Maybe a coincidence? When Shaw stopped abruptly at a yellow light that he could easily have rolled through without a ticket, the car or truck behind him swerved quickly to the curb. He couldn’t tell the make, model or color.
A random carjacker or mugger? Two percent. A Chevy Malibu wasn’t worth the jail time.
Detective Dan Wiley, planning to beat the crap out of him? Four percent. Satisfying but a career ender. The man was a narcissist, not a fool.
Detective Dan Wiley, hoping to catch him score some street pot or coke? Fifteen percent. He seemed like a vindictive prick.
A felon Shaw had helped put inside or a hitman or leg breaker hired by said felon? Ten percent. No shortage of those. It would have been hard for someone to have traced him to the police pound yet not impossible. Shaw gave it double digits because he tended to skew the number higher when the consequences of what might occur were particularly painful. Or fatal.
The more likely possibility, Person X — whose plans for Sophie Mulliner had been spoiled and who’d come for revenge: sixty percent.
He muted the GPS lass, turned off the automatic braking system and steered down a quiet street. He hit the gas hard, as if trying to run, spinning tires. The pursuer sped up too. At fifty mph he crunched the brake pedal and turned into a left-hand skid. Almost lost it — the asphalt was dew-damp — then steered in the direction of the car’s veering rear end. He controlled the flamboyant maneuver just in time and the Malibu zipped neatly into the entrance of a darkened parking garage. Twenty feet inside he made a U-turn, the sound a teeth-setting squeal due to the concrete acoustics. He goosed the accelerator and sped back to the entrance.
Shaw’s phone was up, camera videoing, car lights on high beam. Ready to capture an image of the tail.
His prey never appeared. A minute later he gunned the engine and exited, turning right, expecting his pursuer to be waiting.
The street was empty.
He continued to the RV park, this time obeying Ms. GPS to the letter. He paused at the entrance to the trailer park and looked around. Traffic, but the vehicles streamed by, their drivers uninterested in him. He continued into the park, turned on Google Way and parked.
He climbed out, locked the car and walked quickly to the Winnebago door. Inside, leaving the lights off, he retrieved his Glock from the spice cabinet. For five minutes he peered through the blinds. No cars.
Shaw went into the small bathroom, where he took a hot, then ice-cold, shower. He dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and made dinner of scrambled eggs with some of the gun-cabinet herbs (tarragon, sage), buttered toast and a piece of salty country ham, along with an Anchor Steam. Eleven p.m. was often his dinnertime.
He sat at the banquette to dine and perform his nightly check of the local news feeds. Another woman had been attacked — in Daly City — the perp arrested before Shaw had rescued Sophie. Some irrelevant stories: a popular labor organizer denying corruption claims, a terrorist plot thwarted on the Oakland docks, a surge in voter registration as Californians prepared to go to the polls on some special referenda.
As for the Sophie Mulliner kidnapping, the anchors and commentators didn’t provide any news that Shaw wasn’t aware of, while still doing what they did best: ramping up the paranoia. “That’s right, Candy, my experience has been that kidnappers like this — ‘thrill kidnappers,’ we call them — often go after multiple victims.”
Shaw had made the news as well.
Detective Dan Wiley said that a concerned citizen, Colter Shaw, pursuing the reward offered by Mr. Mulliner — making him sound particularly mercenary — had provided information that proved helpful in the rescue.
He logged off and shut down computer and router.
Proved helpful...
Nearly midnight.
Shaw was ready for sleep but sleep was not on the immediate horizon. He returned to the kitchen cabinet and once more removed the envelope he’d stolen from the Cal archives, the one with the elegant penmanship emblazoned on the front: Graded Exams 5/25. Inside were the documents he’d skimmed earlier. He opened a blank notebook and uncapped his fountain pen.
A sip of beer and he began to read in earnest, wondering if in fact he’d find an answer to the question: What had actually happened in the early-morning hours of October 5, fifteen years ago, on bleak Echo Ridge?
Level 3:
The Sinking Ship
Sunday, June 9
The rock had had no effect on the windshield of the foundering Seas the Day.
Shaw tossed it back into the grim, turbulent Pacific and pulled the locking-blade knife from his pocket. He’d use it to try to remove the screws securing the window frame to the front of the cabin.
He heard, over the gutsy roar of waves colliding with rock and sand, Elizabeth Chabelle shouting something.
Probably: “Get me the fuck out of here!”
Or a variation.
Gripping a scabby railing with his left hand, he began on the screws. There were four — standard heads, not Phillips. He fitted the blade in sideways and rotated counterclockwise. Nothing for a moment. Then, with all his strength, he twisted and the hardware moved. A few minutes later the screw was out. Then the second. The third.
He was halfway through the fourth screw when a large swell smacked the side of the boat and sent Shaw over the railing backward, between the ship and a pylon.
Instinctively grabbing for a handhold, he let go of the knife and saw it vanish in a graceful spiral on its way to the ocean floor. He kicked to the surface and muscled his way once more onto the forward deck.
Back to the window, loosened but not free.
Okay. Enough. Angrily Shaw gripped it with both hands, planted his feet on the exterior side wall of the cabin and pulled — arm muscles, leg muscles, back muscles.