Coit Tower (Abby Kane FBI Thriller - Chasing Chinatown Trilogy Book 3)
Page 20
The Mustang inched up closer behind us, the barrel of the shotgun sticking out of the passenger window. I pressed harder on the accelerator, and the Charger exploded off the road at the top of the hill, clearing at least a foot and a half and remaining airborne for what seemed like minutes. We hit the ground almost evenly on all four wheels, the front left side taking the initial brunt of the landing. The vehicle bounced and swerved toward the right. I quickly countered and corrected. I looked into the rearview mirror just as the Mustang touched down behind us.
Ahead of us, a Toyota Prius had just started to enter the intersection of a four-way stop. I leaned on my horn, hoping to grab the driver’s attention. I had but not quickly enough. I was forced to turn sharply to the left, the wheels gripping and screeching as we swerved around the Prius, narrowly missing it. The Mustang wasn’t so lucky. It clipped the front end of the Prius, taking its bumper with it. But the Mustang hadn’t slowed down one bit.
The flat hilltop would come to an end soon. The road ahead looked like the edge of a cliff. I was blind as to whether there was another car in front of us. I let off the accelerator a tiny bit but quickly realized that I’d allowed the Mustang to creep up along my side.
Bam! The shotgun blast caught the rear side panel of the Charger. A few of the pellets had caught the rear window. House didn’t have a shot from the passenger side without sticking her body out the window and shooting over the roof of the car. That would have left her completely vulnerable to a shotgun blast to the face. Not ideal.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I had no option but to press ahead. “Hang on!” I shouted.
Five seconds later, we were airborne, soaring over the downward slope of the hill as if it were a ski jump. Nearly a quarter of the way down the hill, we touched down, front wheels first, followed by the front of the chassis. The jarring landing forced my grip to break from the steering wheel for a few seconds.
The Mustang slammed into the road with the same amount of force, bouncing up and down as the wheels struggled to retain traction. From there on, it was a straight shot back into the Presidio. The road ahead was clear of traffic, and I accelerated.
Into the wooded park we went, driving on a narrow two-lane. I had to lower our speed on the winding road, but still our tires hugged the turns loudly. Not long after, we heard the first of SFPD’s sirens. Two units had come up behind the Mustang with blue and red lights flashing.
“Should we try to slow, sandwich them?” I shouted to House.
“We could try.” House got back on the radio and worked with the dispatcher to coordinate with SFPD. One of the patrol cars sped up alongside the Mustang in an effort to block it in so we could execute a controlled stop. But no sooner had it gotten in position than the shotgun was turned on the patrol car, and two shots were fired, sending it swerving away, jumping the curb into the brush.
We needed a better plan. We would be exiting the secluded park soon and be back in the quiet streets of a residential area. That was the last place I wanted to lead our high-speed chase.
SFPD had radioed that a corridor had been cleared on Geary Boulevard. If we could steer ourselves there, they had more vehicles waiting and could try another controlled stop. Geary was a straight, four-lane highway. The conditions wouldn’t get any better than that. A roadblock was out of the question, I told them. Whoever was behind the wheel was on a kamikaze mission.
We exited the Presidio and got onto Highway 1. The road had been cleared, and more SFPD units and as well as a few bureau cars joined the chase. I turned right onto Geary, leading the Mustang. From behind, a patrol car passed the Mustang until it drove even with us. Together we could seal off both lanes and start to slow down. But that didn’t work. The Mustang accelerated and approached the rear of the patrol car and executed a perfect PIT maneuver, steering into the left rear corner of the vehicle and sending it spinning into the oncoming lane. No one had seen that coming.
More fire from the shotgun had me pressing harder on the accelerator. The throaty growl of the engine rumbled up through my seat. SFPD tried once more to box the car and even tried a PIT maneuver themselves, but both times, the Mustang avoided the trap with the help of numerous shotgun blasts.
The Mustang moved up behind us and tapped our rear. If I had slowed just a bit, that tap would have turned into something much more. Geary had turned back into a two-lane highway, and we were fast approaching the cliffs that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. We had looped completely back around toward the Cliff House restaurant. A single metal guardrail to the right of us was all that separated us from the edge and a hundred-foot drop to the rocky remains of the Sutro Baths below.
The Mustang approached us once again.
“Abby, watch out!” House shouted. “They could bump us right over the cliff.”
I’d had the same thought. It would be deadly if we were sent into an uncontrollable spin.
A loud thunk sounded as the Mustang rammed us from behind. I remained in control, swerving once. Up ahead, the road veered to the right. I knew I couldn’t hug that curve with the speed I had the Charger traveling at.
“He’s planning on running us straight off the road!” I screamed at House.
“Not if I can help it.” House unbuckled her seatbelt.
“What are you doing?”
“Ending this!” House stuck herself out the window, her waistline resting on the window frame. She held her Glock with both hands and fired. The Mustang swerved behind us, crossing the lane before righting itself back behind us. House fired again, shattering the front window.
“The turn. I have to slow.” I eased off the gas, but the Mustang maintained its speed. He was going to ram our vehicle right through the guardrail, even if it meant taking the plunge with us.
“Keep us steady!” House shouted. She fired twice more.
There was a loud popping noise followed by more screeching. The Mustang swerved from side to side. Each time, the driver overcorrected. The arcs widened. The Mustang fought to regain control. House had shot out the front right tire. It flapped around, sending chunks of rubber into the air and leaving only the rim. Sparks flew forth as the rim itself began to disintegrate.
I hooked the wheel to the left. Come on, baby. Hold it. Hold it! The car turned, the centrifugal force pulling my body to the right. House was still halfway out of the car and hanging on for dear life. I swear I felt the car lift a bit off the road.
My eyes shot to the rearview mirror. The Mustang couldn’t hold the turn. I watched it slide across the road, the front right rim unable to provide any sort of traction. The vehicle slammed into the guardrail, uprooting a chunk of it and taking it with it as it drove off the cliff.
I hit the brakes, and the Charger slid to a screeching stop. I turned back to see the Mustang in midair, soaring like a seagull heading out to sea.
It continued its arced trajectory downward toward the large, rocky formations that jutted upward through the crashing surf. It was on a path of collision with a towering mass of jagged rock that stuck out of the churn of whitewash like an exclamation point.
The front of the vehicle slammed into the hardened mass and crumpled like a metal accordion upon impact before the gas tank exploded, emitting a loud booming sound that reverberated inside my chest. A fiery ball shot up into the sky with thick, black, billowing smoke trailing behind it. The Mustang teetered on its front, almost vertical, before tilting to the side and tumbling off the rock and into the frothy waves.
The flames disappeared, and the column of black smoke turned gray and then white. House and I exited the car and ran to the edge of the road in time to see the bubbling ocean swallow the car whole.
Chapter 58
I couldn’t prove beyond a doubt that the two women in the car were a team from the game, but when a recovery crew retrieved the car and bodies, there were telling signs. GoPro cameras were found. One actually survived the fiery crash, and we were able to review the footage. It had been attached to the driver’s side
. Most of the footage came from the POV from the driver’s seat looking out except for a small snippet at the beginning. A redhead spoke into the camera and said, “I’m coming for you.”
At the time, we were unable to identify the driver. The car wreck had removed most of her face, so we used a video grab from the camera to conduct a facial-recognition match. It came up empty. So did a search for a fingerprint match in our database. She was clean. No personal identification was found, though we were able to recover a smartphone. Unfortunately, saltwater had damaged it, making its contents irretrievable.
We were, however, able to identify the other woman. Her name was Alexis Cannon. We tracked down an address for her in the Castro neighborhood, where she worked part time at a small bookstore. Her employer had nothing good or terrible to say about her. Her coworkers said they hadn’t known her that well, that she had kept to herself. The only information I had been able to pry from them was that they said Alexis, or Alex, had a new girlfriend. They didn’t know any more than that. I suspect they had conveniently forgotten.
A week later, we received a tip from the manager of a hotel in the financial district. We had circulated information about the redhead along with a description and video grab of her face to all the hotels. We weren’t sure if she was from out of town, but we took a chance.
The manager said he remembered seeing a guest fitting the description and had surveillance footage of her entering the lobby that we could review. The video wasn’t the best quality and in black and white. We had to take his word that she had red hair. With that said, she certainly appeared to have the same body characteristics: tall, pale skin, similar length in hair. The passport information she had provided belonged to a deceased woman in the UK. Again, we were left without closure.
In my heart, I knew these women had been playing the game. My take was that Alex was a hired gun and the redhead was the actual player or at least the one spearheading things. I couldn’t prove it, but at that point, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the mastermind was dead, and the game had been shut down. So why had she still come after me? Had she not gotten the memo? More importantly, were there others like her who would make an attempt?
I discussed that possibility at length with Reilly. “Abby, I think she was an anomaly. Maybe she didn’t know the game was over, or she did but felt committed or something. There’s no way to know.” He shrugged.
I admit, I agreed with him on the reasoning. There was simply no reason for another team to come after me. It was risky with no monetary incentive. Then again, these people weren’t exactly rational individuals.
I chucked the matter into a mental file. In all the years that I have served in law enforcement, I had put countless people behind bars and, in that process, made a lot of enemies. At any moment, one of my arrests could come back to haunt me. That was just the nature of my job and something I had to live with. I couldn’t go on wondering if the next person I ran into on the street had a vendetta against me. I don’t operate that way.
With the Chasing Chinatown case closed, it was time to get on with my life. And I had. I actually met a nice man, a financial manager. He wasn’t Chinese, so Po Po didn’t approve. His name was Greg and he was originally from the Midwest—Chicago to be exact. I had met him while the family and I were out enjoying Dim Sum Sunday. He had been eating in the same restaurant with a few friends of his.
I remember him walking straight over to our table, no hesitation, and boldly introducing himself to me. Right away he had checked off two items on my ever-evolving list of requirements. He was confident. I could have been married, considering I had children. Secondly, if he had come to the conclusion I was a single mother, it didn’t deter him. I’m a package deal. No single servings.
While there seemed to be a heartbeat in my love life, I couldn’t say the same for Kang. A month and a half later, he came to see Ryan compete in his first kung fu tournament. It was small, local, and mostly kids from his dojo and another. Still, I appreciated Kang’s support. I knew it made Ryan happy to see him sitting in the bleachers with me. Kang had made good on his word and had two sparring sessions with Ryan. Twice that day, he was mistaken for Ryan’s father. We had good chuckle over it.
“We make a pretty good fake couple, don’t we?” Kang said.
“The perfect team.”
“Yeah, maybe we should make one of those ‘if we’re not married by a certain date, we marry each other’ pacts.”
“Not a bad idea.”
You’d think we’d be perfect for each other the way we get along and flirt. It’s confusing. Anyway, about his love life…
“Suzi’s moving out.”
“Wait, what?”
“Having a corpse in our living room was the turning point. She was already on edge when she found out her driver had been murdered.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems like a natural response. Most people would have freaked out had they experienced the same.”
“I think it’s over.”
“Didn’t you guys just start dating again like six months ago?”
“Something like that. But my job, it’s affecting her more than ever and not in a you’re-working-too-late kind of way.”
I threw my arm around my friend and gave him a hug. “Cheer up. You still have me,” I said, flashing my choppers at him. “Remember our pact?”
“So it’s on.” Kang slapped his palms against his thighs.
“Sure. Why not?” I laughed and flipped my hair off my neck.
“I’ll have to compete with Timothy Green for your attention. He’s about your height, so he might have an advantage.”
“I like my men tall.” I hadn’t yet told Kang about Greg and the three wonderful dates I had been on. After hearing about Suzi, I decided then wasn’t the right time. It seemed like it was never the right time for us.
Or maybe it was.
Book Description
Living a secluded life in Belgium, Sei has no thoughts of returning to her former life as an assassin until a mysterious person confronts her with a contract she can’t possibly turn down. Payment isn’t monetary; instead, it’s information leading to the whereabouts of a little girl.
Hers.
In a matter of seconds, Sei is pulled back into a world she left behind. She accepts the contract to chase the truth about her daughter, but what appears to be a routine mission turns into a fight for survival. If Sei is to have any hope of reuniting with her child, she must first save herself.
Download Contract: Snatch
A Note From Ty Hutchinson
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There’s a lot of procedure in the FBI, and I don’t always stay true to it. If I leave something out or change the way things are done, it’s because I don’t think it helps the story. A dear friend of the family is a retired FBI agent, and that person does a pretty good job of keeping me in check, both verbally and with eye rolls. But in the end, I write what makes the story better, and that’s the way it is. After all, this is fiction.
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The Novels of Ty Hutchinson
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, Ty Hutchinson.
Published by Ty Hutchinson
Copyright © 2014 by Ty Hutchinson
Cover Design: Kay Hutchison
Table of Contents
Coit Tower
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25