The Final Twist Page 3

  She shook her head, apparently at her own behavior. “Stupid, stupid . . .”

  Shaw said, “Find a better quality of dealer. Or don’t use at all.” But he shrugged. “Easy for me to say.”

  Her lips tightened; she looked down. “I know. I try. This program, that program. Maybe this’s a wake-up call.” She offered him a wan smile. “Thank you, really.”

  And, in the opposite direction of the creature from Middle-earth, she walked off.

  6

  Shaw returned to the safe house, headed for the kitchen and the documents, but he got no farther than the living room.

  He stopped, staring at a shelf on which sat a six-inch statuette, a bronze bald eagle. Wings spread, talons out, predator’s eyes focused downward.

  Shaw picked it up and turned it over in his hand, righted it once more.

  To the casual observer, what he was holding looked to be a competently sculpted souvenir from a wildlife preserve gift shop, one of the more expensive behind-the-counter items.

  But it was significantly more than that to Colter Shaw.

  He had last seen it on a shelf in his bedroom in the Compound many years ago. Before it went missing. He had from time to time wondered where it had ended up. Had he stored it away himself when he’d cleaned his room to make space for gear or weapons he’d made or discoveries from his endless hikes through the mountains surrounding the Compound: rocks, pinecones, arrowheads, bones?

  Finding it here gave him considerable pleasure, at last understanding the artwork’s fate. His father must have brought it with him here as a reminder of his middle child. Shaw was thankful too it was not lost forever; how he’d come into possession of the sculpture was an important aspect of his childhood, a memento of an incident that had undoubtedly launched him into his present career and lifestyle.

  The Restless Man . . .

  But this icon of a bird in muscular flight brought sorrow too. It resurrected other memories of his childhood: specifically of his older brother, Russell.

  Years ago, during a bad spell, Ashton Shaw had insisted that Dorion, then thirteen, make a one-hundred-foot free-climb up a sheer rock face in the middle of the night. This was a test. All of his children had to make the ascent when they became teenagers.

  Russell and Colter already had done so. But had come to believe that the rite of passage was pointless, especially for their sister. Dorie was as talented athletically as her brothers with chalk and rope, and more so than Ashton himself. She’d already proved her ascent skills, including night climbs.

  With a mind of her own even then, Dorion had simply decided she didn’t need to . . . or want to. “Ash. No.” The girl never shied.

  But her father wouldn’t let it go. He grew more and more riled and persistent.

  The older brother intervened. Russell also said no.

  The confrontation turned ugly. A knife was involved—on Ashton’s part. And Russell, using skills his father himself had taught, prepared to defend his sister and take the weapon away from the wild-eyed man.

  Mary Dove, her husband’s psychiatrist and med-dispenser in chief—had been away on a family emergency, so there was no adult present to defuse the situation.

  After a boilingly tense moment their father backed down and retreated to his bedroom, muttering to himself.

  Not long after, Ashton had died in a fall from Echo Ridge.

  The circumstances were suspicious, and more troubling, Shaw learned that his brother had lied about his whereabouts at the time of Ashton’s death. He was, in fact, not far from Echo Ridge. Shaw believed that Russell had murdered the man. He was sure it had been agonizing, an impossible decision on his brother’s part. But he guessed that at some point Russell had come to believe it was Dorie’s life or Ashton’s, and Russell made his choice. By then Ashton Shaw had become someone very different from the kind and witty man and teacher the children had known growing up.

  Shaw had made his own impossible decision: accepting that his brother was guilty of patricide. The thought tore at him for years, and tore him and Russell apart.

  Then, just weeks ago, the truth: Russell had had nothing to do with Ashton’s death. It was a BlackBridge operative responsible, trailing their father to Echo Ridge on that cold, cold night in October.

  Ebbitt Droon himself had told Shaw the story. “Your father . . . Braxton wanted him dead—but not yet, not till she had what she wanted. She sent somebody to, well, talk to him about the documents.”

  “Talk” meant torturing Ashton into giving up what he knew about Amos Gahl’s theft of company secrets and evidence.

  Droon had explained, “Near as we can piece it together, your father knew Braxton’s man was on his way to your Compound. Ashton tipped to him and led him off, was going to kill him somewhere in the woods. The ambush didn’t work. They fought. Your father fell.”

  But until that revelation, Shaw had indeed believed in his heart that Russell was their father’s murderer. Devastated by false accusation, even if unspoken, Russell had vanished from the family’s life. No one had heard from him since Ashton’s funeral, more than a decade ago.

  Colter Shaw made his living finding people—good ones and bad, those lost because of fate and circumstance and those lost because they chose to be lost. He had devoted considerable time and money and effort to tracking down his brother. What he would say when he found him, Shaw had no idea. He’d practiced a script of one brother talking to the other, explaining, seeking forgiveness, trying to find a path out of estrangement.

  But all his efforts had come to nothing. Russell Shaw had vanished, and he’d vanished very, very well.

  Shaw recalled discussing this very subject with someone just last week, describing the impact.

  The man had asked, “What would you say was the greatest minus regarding your brother? What hurts the most?”

  Shaw had answered, “He’d been my friend. I was his. And I ruined it.”

  Seeing this eagle now made him feel Russell’s absence all the more.

  He set the statue on the kitchen table and returned to the stack of his father’s materials. For an hour he pored over the documents. He found two notes in his father’s fine hand. They didn’t relate to the eighteen locations, which meant he’d discovered these spots after completing the scavenger hunt of the map.

  One note was about a commercial building in the Embarcadero, the district along the eastern waterfront of San Francisco: the Hayward Brothers Warehouse.

  The other was an address in Burlingame, a suburb south of the city, 3884 Camino.

  Shaw now texted his private eye, requesting information. Mack McKenzie soon replied that she could find little more about the warehouse beyond that it was a historic building dating to the late 1800s, was not open for business to the public, and was presently for sale. The Burlingame address was a private home, owned by a man named Morton T. Nadler.

  Shaw also found a business card, which represented a third possible location as well, the Stanford Library of Business and Commerce.

  The library was located not in Palo Alto, where the university was situated, but in a part of town known as South of Market. Maybe it had nothing to do with Gahl’s stolen evidence; it would be an odd place to hide a courier bag. Possibly Ashton Shaw had used it for research. He had never owned a computer, and certainly had never allowed one in any residence of his, so maybe he’d gone to the library to use one of its public workstations.

  Shaw decided the library would be his first stop. It was the closest to the safe house. If that didn’t pan out he would try the house in Burlingame and then the warehouse.

  First, though, some security measures.

  San Francisco was BlackBridge’s turf. Odds were ninety percent that they didn’t know he was here. But that dark ten percent required some due diligence.

  He called up an app on his phone.

  It happe
ned to be tracing the whereabouts of Irena Braxton and Ebbitt Droon at that very moment.

  Just the other day—under a fake identity—Braxton had talked her way into Shaw’s camper and stolen what she thought was Ashton’s map marking the places were Gahl’s evidence was hidden and other materials.

  Shaw had tipped to who she really was. What he’d intentionally left for her to steal was a map with eighteen phony locations marked and a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, filled with code-like gibberish in the margins. A GPS tracker was hidden in the book’s spine.

  In the past two days the tracker had meandered over various locations he’d marked on the map and spent time in a commercial skyscraper in downtown San Francisco, on Sutter Street, probably BlackBridge’s satellite office. This was its present location.

  He now shifted to Google Maps and examined the neighborhood in which the Stanford library was located. He hardly expected trouble but it was a procedure he followed with every reward job. Information was the best weapon a survivalist could have.

  Which didn’t mean hardware should be neglected.

  Shaw checked his gun once more.

  Never assume your weapon is loaded and hasn’t been damaged or sabotaged since the last time you used it.

  The .380 was indeed loaded, one in the bedroom and six in the mag. It was a good dependable pistol—as long as you held it firmly while firing. The model had a reputation for limp wrist failure to eject: spent brass hanging in the receiver. Colter Shaw had never had this problem.

  He seated the gun in his gray plastic inside-the-waistband holster and made sure it was hidden. The rule was that if you’re carrying concealed, you should keep it concealed, lest a concerned citizen spot the weapon, panic and call the cops.

  There was another reason too.

  Never let the enemy know the strength of your defenses . . .

  7

  Anew threat.

  As he stood beside his bike Shaw was aware that someone was watching him.

  Slight build, leather jacket, baseball cap.

  The giveaway was the sunglasses. Hardly necessary this morning. The day was typically foggy—sometimes the cloak burned off, sometimes it remained, sluggish and dull, like an irritating houseguest. Now the haze hung thickly in air redolent of damp pavement, exhaust, a hint of trash and the sea. In San Francisco, you were never far from water.

  Shaw had examined the street subtly after leaving and locking the safe house. At first he saw no one other than the bearded man he’d spotted earlier, in the thigh-length black coat and stocking cap, Oakland A’s backpack at his feet. He was at a table outside the coffee shop, sipping from a cup and texting. Then Shaw glanced into the Yamaha motorbike’s rearview mirror and spotted the spy, a block and a half away.

  Odds he was mistaken? Fifty percent.

  He casually turned, checking out the rear tire of the Yamaha and looking back while not exactly looking.

  The man disappeared behind the corner of the building where he’d been standing.

  Bringing the answer to the surveillance question to nearly one hundred percent.

  Who could it have been?

  He was built like Droon—but if it were anyone from BlackBridge, how could they have learned about the safe house? Besides, in that case, they would have been on him the instant he stepped outside. A team would have forced him back into the safe house to have a “discussion” about what he was doing here in the city and where he believed Gahl’s evidence was hidden.

  Instead, he suspected it was the Russian- and Chinese-speaking inhabitant of the safe house, the man who was so adept at loud and blinding booby traps. Make that sixty percent.

  And the odds that the man wasn’t happy Shaw was now in residence and had likely examined charts and graphs he’d gone to great lengths to keep secret? An easy ninety-nine percent on that one.

  Was it one of his father’s colleagues? Or a successor in interest, like Shaw himself?

  Possibly. No way to estimate the odds without any more information.

  Dalton Crowe? The lug of a bounty hunter had crossed paths and traded blows with Shaw over the years. He was presently under the erroneous impression that Shaw had cheated him out of tens of thousands of dollars of reward money. Crowe didn’t live anywhere near here but the man was a bully bordering on psychopathy. A drive of a thousand miles or so to collect a debt, even mistakenly, was well within his wheelhouse.

  True, Crowe sported a refrigerator’s physique, twice the size of the spy. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t recruited an underling. When you believe in your heart a man owes you $50K, you’ll spend some capital to get it back.

  Someone from a past job out for revenge? Absolutely a possibility. Just a few weeks ago, Shaw had made some enemies in Silicon Valley when a simple reward job turned into something considerably darker. The foes he’d made in the tech world of video gaming were particularly resourceful and, he had to assume, vindictive.

  He thought of the squat, broad-chested man he’d confronted earlier, Tricia’s attacker. Unlikely he’d return but people bested in a fight had been known to come back with superior firepower for a touch of revenge. It would be stupid and pointless, but those two words described more than a little slice of decisions made by the general population. He dismissed this, though, on the basis of the difference in physique.

  He turned back to the front of the bike and unhooked it from the lamppost, stowing the impressive chain and lock. As he did, he took another glance in the rearview mirror and noted that his shadow had eased back into observing position.

  Shaw tugged on his helmet and black leather gloves.

  He unzipped his jacket and lifted the sweater for easy access to his weapon. Then, in an instant, the engine clattered to life and Shaw’s boot tip tapped into first gear. He twisted the throttle hard. The rear tire swirled and smoked and he spun the bike one hundred and eighty degrees, launching into the street.

  The figure vanished.

  Shaw hit forty. As he neared the intersection where he’d turn to the right to confront the spy, he downshifted and eased off the gas, skidding to a fast stop. Shaw had to assume that the watcher was armed and targeting where he would spin around the corner, so without presenting himself as a target, he leaned the bike to the right and used the rearview mirror to view the cross street.

  There was no threat but, damn it, he could see a car speeding away.

  He gunned the engine again and pursued.

  For about thirty feet.

  Oh hell . . .

  He slammed the rear brake hard, then gripped the front, the trickier of the two, the one that could send you over the handlebars. He managed to control the skid and bring the bike to stop just in time, before he ran through the bed of nails that the spy apparently had tossed onto the cobblestones before climbing into his car and speeding away. It was a clever trick, an improvised version of the nail strip that the police use to end high-speed chases. If the watcher had more in mind than just spying, he’d return with a weapon the minute Shaw set the bike down.

  He caught a glimpse of the vehicle—a dark green Honda Accord with California plates. He couldn’t make out the number. It vanished to the left, speeding toward the entrance ramp to the freeway.

  Now that the spy had been made, would that be the end of him?

  Shaw thought: ninety-nine-point-five percent no. But he had no facts for this number, just intuition.

  He dismounted, found a piece of cardboard and swept the nails into a storm drain—concerned for fellow bikers’ safety, of course, but also because, if there was an accident, he wouldn’t want emergency vehicles in the area, their lights and sirens attracting attention and the police might go door by door to ask for witnesses.

  He couldn’t go on to the library just yet. Somebody—clearly a hostile—now knew about the safe house. He climbed onto the bike and sped back to the safe h
ouse. There he photographed every one of his father’s documents and encrypted and uploaded them to his secure cloud storage system, copying Mack.

  Returning then to the Yamaha, he fired the bike up once more and sped into the street, accelerating hard, as he headed for the main road that would take him to the Stanford library.

  Suddenly, thoughts about the spy’s identity and purpose were gone. It took only a few yards for the exhilaration to wrap its arms around him. Rock climbing was a complex, intellectual joy. Low-gear, high-throttle racing around corners on slidey tires, powering up and over hills . . . well, that was a pure, raw high.

  Shaw had seen the police thriller Bullitt, from the ’60s, in which the actor Steve McQueen—to whom, Shaw was regularly reminded, bore more than a passing resemblance—had muscled his Ford Mustang through the winding and hilly streets of San Francisco in pursuit of two hitmen in a Dodge Charger—the best car-chase scene ever filmed. When in town here, on his bike, Shaw never missed the chance to exploit the tricky and exhilarating geography of the city just like Detective Frank Bullitt, occasionally going airborne and enjoying lavish skids.

  He now plowed through the neighborhood the safe house was located in: the Mission.

  Shaw had some affection for the area, where he’d spent weeks on a reward job a few years back. The district had been sparsely populated until the infamous 1906 earthquake, which destroyed much of San Francisco. Because there was more open land and therefore less quake and fire damage in the Mission, residents began to move here to start life anew. These newcomers were Anglo—largely Polish and German—as well as Chicano and Latino. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the neighborhood was tawdry and rough-and-tumble and more than a little lawless. So it remained until the ’70s, when counterculture hit.

  The Mission was the epicenter of the punk music scene in the city, and of the gay, lesbian and trans communities as well.

  Shaw had learned too, in his search for the Benson twins, that one of the more interesting aspects of the district was the number of inhabitants whose families came from the Yucatan. In the portion of the Mission he was driving through now, the Mayan language—expressive and complex—was the main tongue of many residents. He sped past grassy In Chan Kaajal Park, which in Mayan means “My Little Town.”