Russell looked for about ten seconds. He nodded.
Was it memorized, or discarded?
Shaw thought once more: Confess now. Tell him that I was wrong to accuse him of murder . . .
But no. This connection with his sibling might grow into something in the future—maybe Russell had indeed tucked the phone number away. But right here, right now, it was so very fragile. Gram for gram, the strands of a spider’s web are stronger than steel. But it takes no more than a gust of wind, not even one so fierce, or the transit of a broom in the hands of a busy housekeeper to bring the creature’s home, world and perhaps life to an abrupt end.
Shaw said, “It’s good to see you’re okay. I’ll tell Mary Dove.”
“Do that.” His brother walked to the door and let himself out.
17
Shaw fished in his backpack. He left his personal iPhone there and pulled out a burner. If he was concerned that his calls might be monitored, he used this one—an Android with some Linux kernel modifications for added encryption and security.
The call he was making now had nothing to do with BlackBridge or the UIP or Amos Gahl. Still, under the circumstances he wanted all the security he could get.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Colt.” The woman’s voice was, as always, low, steady. “You’re at the house?”
“That’s right. It’s a safe house. Ash had a hidey-hole in the basement. I found more relevant material. Haven’t made too much headway yet.”
There was a pause. His mother was in effect saying: What else? Because there was obviously something else.
“I wanted to let you know. I saw him today. Russell.”
“My God . . .” Mary Dove’s whisper tapered to silence. She was a woman to whom the word surprised could rarely be applied. “He’s all right?”
“Yes.” Shaw was sipping coffee, tamed with milk, slowly. It was very hot.
“That answers the big question. He’s alive.”
All these years the family had not known whether Russell was still of this earth.
“How’d that come about?”
He explained that his older brother too had known about the house on Alvarez and used it occasionally.
“Yes, that’s right. Ash mentioned he’d seen Russell in San Francisco once or twice.”
“He’s with the government, it looks like. CIA sort of operation, though not them.”
“What does he do for them?”
“Intelligence of some sort.”
He did not tell his mother about Blond’s fate.
Her lack of response might have been a hum of skepticism about his answer.
“It’s called the group. Not a formal name.” Silence again. Then: “He seemed . . . okay. Good at his job.”
“And he’s—”
“Gone. An assignment. Couldn’t tell me what.”
A very rare sigh. “That boy . . . I never knew exactly what was going on in his mind. Remember? He’d spend days in the woods? And not part of Ash’s training. I’d wake up, get the coffee and biscuits going and find that he’d left before first light, with rations and his weapon.”
Her resonant voice was painted with discontent and for a moment Shaw regretted telling her about crossing paths with his brother. Maybe her hopes had been up momentarily that he’d return for a visit. “Well. He’s who he is. But . . . did he say why he vanished, all these years?”
In honesty Colter Shaw could tell his mother, “No, he didn’t.” Because Russell had not spoken of his profound disappointment that the younger brother had silently accused the older of murder.
“It’s going well, the search?”
“Good.”
“A mother’s got to say, ‘Be careful.’”
Shaw chuckled.
Then Mary Dove said, “Glad you told me about your brother. Imagine you were debating letting me know. But it was the right thing.” Then her tone changed and she said, “Anybody else you want to say hey to?”
“Matter of fact . . .”
“Hold on.”
18
Hi.” Victoria Lesston’s voice was also low, and there was a particular tone about it. Shaw tried to think of what the analogy to describe it might be. Then it occurred to him: a musical instrument. In particular, he refined: a cello, rich and resonant. In the middle strings range only.
“Tacoma was interesting. Got robbed and I’m responsible for a Nissan Pathfinder burning down to the rims. No injuries.”
“Never dull with you, is it, Colt? What’d they get?”
“I’ll go into it later. In person.”
She laughed airily. “Sooner, not later, I hope.”
Shaw pictured her deep-gray eyes and her ringlets of hair, which morphed from pale brunette to dark blond according to the whim of the sun or moon.
“The big news: my brother surfaced.”
“Really? You said you weren’t even sure he was alive.”
“He’s doing some kind of clandestine work. Think he needed to stay undercover.”
“Like those KGB agents.”
“Maybe something like that.”
“When you’re finished, will he come down here with you to see your mother?”
Thinking no, he said, “Maybe.”
Her voice lowered. “How are you dealing with it?”
Not a question he was prepared to respond to. “Still surprised.” He asked how she was feeling.
The beat told him she recognized, and respected, the deflection. “All good here. Your mother is pretty much amazing.”
He had met Victoria a week ago, on a mission he’d had to the wilds of Washington State. The incident had started as a reward assignment but had soon turned into an undercover operation, which he’d undertaken, in part, to save Victoria from an enigmatic organization that might or might not have been a dangerous cult.
She’d been injured in a fall from a cliff’s edge into a lake. A former Delta Force officer, Victoria was in fit shape and while the fall might have killed another person, she survived with only minor harm. Shaw had suggested she might want to return to the Compound where his mother, a general practitioner MD, as well as a psychiatrist, could help her with physical therapy.
Shaw had another reason to ask her to the homestead, and she apparently had a similar motive in accepting his invitation; he remembered their lengthy kiss outside her bedroom the night before he left on the drive that ultimately led him here to the safe house.
“Where are you?”
“The Western Hemisphere. Maybe.”
Even with the encryption, he was reluctant to be too specific.
Never assume your conversations are private . . .
“You’re a stitch, Colter. Your mother sometimes calls you ‘Colt.’ Which do you like?”
Their courtship, if you could call it that, had been intense (a knife fight—between them—had figured) but they really hadn’t known each other all that long.
“Either’s good.”
“Any excitement yet?”
“Not so much.”
“Keep me posted on that.”
“Most definitely.”
“How do you like your pheasant?” Victoria asked.
“Never been asked that before.” This was true. He considered. “Probably rarer than weller.”
“I agree. Mary Dove and I’re cooking tonight. A bird she got last season.”
“You hunt?”
“I have but the last time I got pheasant was a couple years ago.”
“What’s your scattergun?” He was thinking of his father’s wonderful Benelli Pacific Flyway, with a chrome receiver. An elegant weapon.
“I don’t have one.”
“What’d you borrow?”
“I didn’t use a shotgun,” she s
aid.
“I don’t think you can legally use a rifle on birds. Not in California.”
“It wasn’t in California and I didn’t use a rifle.”
“You didn’t use a rifle?”
“Colter, how many times are you going to keep asking me questions I’ve already answered.”
“Well, what did you use?”
“My Glock. The seventeen.”
“In the air?”
“Of course, you can’t shoot a bird on the ground. And it wasn’t quick-draw Annie Oakley or anything like that. I was already holding the weapon.”
“How many . . .” His voice faded.
“Rounds did I use, you were going to ask?”
He’d stifled the insulting question, but yes, that was what he was going to ask. Her Glock would hold seventeen rounds and you could probably get off three a second, aiming carefully.
Then he noticed she was silent once again.
Finally Victoria said, “It was one.”
He reminded himself not to ask: A single shot?
Shaw was talented with sidearms but he didn’t think he could hit a flying bird with either of his pistols and never with one shot.
“I mean, I aimed. I wasn’t firing from the hip. Anyway, I agree: rare is best. Pheasant’s lean. Dries out when you cook it too long. When are you back?”
“Hope it’s not more than a couple of days.”
“You need any help, I’m feeling better.”
Victoria ran her own security consulting firm, based out of Southern California.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You know, Colt, there are two kinds of people in the world.”
Living/dead. Blond/brunette. Short/tall. Liberal/Conservative. Sexy/not so much. He did not, of course, say this, but replied with: “Okay?”
“Those who keep something in mind when they say they’re going to keep something in mind. And those who have no intention of keeping something in mind when they say they’re keeping something in mind.”
“I’m the first type.”
“I had a feeling you were. But I liked hearing you say so.”
They made conversation for ten minutes or so, then he was eager to get on the trail of the BlackBridge evidence. He told her he’d better go. “I’ll call you soon.”
“You know, Colt, there are two types of people in the world . . .”
He laughed and said goodbye and they disconnected.
The two of them were similar in many ways. She was nearly as itinerant as he was, and as much of a calculated risk-taker. They shared a wry humor and an intolerance for bullying and stupidity. They’d certainly developed a rapport in Washington State and it didn’t hurt that not only had he saved her life, but that she’d saved his.
And that kiss . . .
The relationship had a way to progress on that slippery, serpentine road on which matters of the heart pace before certain things could be said and asked.
This was fine with him. He was in no hurry. Velocity in love, like velocity on the motocross course, had in the past occasionally gotten Colter Shaw into trouble.
Best for restless men to take things slowly.
19
Shaw told himself: assess.
He was in the kitchen of the safe house. He’d supplemented Mack’s research on the two leads as to where Amos Gahl might have hidden the BlackBridge evidence. Morton Nadler, who owned the house in Burlingame that his father had been interested in, was retired. He had spent most of his working life as a management-level employee at San Francisco airport. What was his connection to Gahl? Would he have left Nadler the evidence to keep safe? Or was Nadler the source for incriminating information about BlackBridge, maybe because of his connection to the airlines and private aircraft?
The other spot, the Haywood Brothers Warehouse in the Embarcadero, had survived the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. It had not been a functioning warehouse for some years, which did not bode well for Shaw’s mission. Probably the building had been emptied out and if Gahl had hidden anything there the evidence would likely be in some other facility or, more likely, a landfill. Because the building was for sale, there was a representative on-site, from whom Shaw might learn something.
His Android hummed. He pressed answer and before he could say a word there came: “You into coincidences, Colt?”
The voice was a grumbling baritone. Caller ID told Shaw who the person on the other end was but even if it hadn’t he would’ve known with the first syllable. Teddy Bruin was a former Marine who—along with his wife, former soldier Velma—ran the business side of Shaw’s reward operation. They lived beside Shaw’s property in Florida, though he’d seen them just the other day; they were on a road trip out West and had spent a few days at the Compound with Shaw, Victoria and Mary Dove.
A call from the Bruins meant one of two things: He had failed to collect a reward check, which usually happened because the offeror turned out to be on hard times.
Or they’d just learned of an offer.
“Coincidences?” Shaw queried.
“Three weeks ago, give or take, that offer in Silicon Valley, that girl? Father worried about her?”
“Right.”
The reward that sent him deep into the world of the video gaming industry. A missing student had been kidnapped, it appeared, by a perp who was acting out a violent video game in real life.
“Well, we got a replay.” Teddy chuckled. A joke on the game motif, Shaw noted. Teddy looked and sounded scary but he had quite the sense of humor.
“Hi, Colter.” A woman’s voice, as melodious as her husband’s was raw.
“Velma. Where are you two?”
“Reno. I have a roll of quarters and I’m not coming home until I win back all the gas we spent on the drive here.”
The couple owned a Winnebago that was the size of Shaw’s—a thirty-footer. It would take a string of jackpots to make that miracle happen.
“She’s convinced that the odds’re better with the slots in Reno than Vegas. You know, to attract tourists. Second-city kinda thing.”
Shaw wouldn’t know. He didn’t gamble.
His eyes on his father’s documents, he said, “Replay?”
Teddy: “Single mom this time, not dad. But another missing daughter. Mother’s a widow. And the girl’s older than the one a couple weeks ago. Twenty-two or -three.”
Not only did the Bruins themselves scan social media and law enforcement posts for announcements of rewards, but they supervised a software program that sniffed out offers too. Velma had named it Algo after algorithm. “Where?”
“Why we’re a-calling. San Francisco.”
“Got a lot on the platter here.”
“I know, Colt,” Teddy said. “But a couple things. I’ll just throw ’em out there. The reward? It’s for seventeen fifty.”
“You mean seventeen thousand, five hundred.”
“No, I mean seventeen hundred and fifty buckaroos.”
Very low for a missing child. And the low sum meant the mother had scraped together every penny she could.
“The other thing?”
“The offer,” Velma told him. “Listen to what she posted online. I’m quoting: ‘Please, please, please help!!!’ A bunch of exclamations here. ‘Tessy, love of my life, has gone missing in San Francisco. I’m sick with worry over her. I’m offering a Reward. I’ve started a GoFundMe page to raise more. Please.’ More exclamation points. Then a picture of her. Sweet kid.”
Shaw’s experience was that parents rarely posted a shot of demonic-looking children. “That kind of money, nobody’ll go to the trouble to look for her.”
“Exactly.”
Shaw looked at his father’s map with the eighteen red Xs on it.
“When was it posted?”
“Couple days ago.”
Before BlackBridge knew he was in town, so it wouldn’t be a trap.
He looked at the notes in such delicate and perfect script:
Haywood Brothers Warehouse, the Embarcadero
3884 Camino, Burlingame
After a moment he said, “Send me the offer.”
They said goodbyes and a few seconds later his phone dinged with Maria Vasquez’s reward notice. He read through it once. Shaw started to read it once more and put the mobile down. He thought: Why bother? Either you’re going to do it or you’re not.
Please, please, please help
Followed by a bunch of exclamation points.
20
One question was answered.
Maria Vasquez, mother of the missing woman, lived in the heart of the TL.
This explained the low sum she was offering for information about her daughter. Very few residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin would be able to come up with a big enough reward to snag anyone’s attention.
The neighborhood, in the central part of the city, was infamous. Seedy, dilapidated, graffitied, marred by trash-filled streets and sidewalks, the TL was home to street people, those working in the sex trade—traffickers among them—gangs and those involved in all phases of drug enterprises: manufacturers, transporters, sellers and, of course, consumers. The SFPD has defined more than six hundred “plots,” small geographic areas of the city, for the purpose of analyzing crime stats. Seven of the ten most dangerous plots in San Francisco were in the TL.
Shaw hadn’t been here for years. Back then the place was filled with single-room occupancy hotels and small shabby apartments, adult bookshops, massage parlors, bodegas, Asian and Filipino grocery stores, tobacco/vaping places, cell phone card and wig shops and nail salons.
Much of that atmosphere persisted to this day but Shaw now saw a few nods toward improvement. Outreach programs operated out of storefronts, helping runaways, trafficking victims, addicts. There was even some gentrification, albeit modest. Across the street from Maria Vasquez’s walk-up was a ten-story apartment building that offered studio and one-bedroom units, which the poster described, with an inexplicable hyphen, as de-luxe. There was a Starbucks wannabe on the ground floor, along with an art gallery and a wine bar. Changing . . . but not changed: the windows on the first two floors of most buildings along this block were covered with thick iron security bars.
The Final Twist Page 8