Mission Canyon

by Meg Gardiner

  He slowed. ‘‘This is it. Here we go.’’

  The street was dark. A single streetlight shone at the end of the block. The light in front of the warehouse was out. It looked as if it had been broken. We were only two blocks from the beach, but it felt like the middle of an urban wasteland. Around us were warehouses, all locked, many behind chain-link fencing. Adam’s pickup was parked in front of the address, the only vehicle on the street.

  Jesse coasted to a stop behind it. I phoned Van Heusen, wanting some federal muscle to know we were here. His number was busy. I pressed redial. Still busy.

  I said, ‘‘Why would Adam come down here by himself? ’’

  ‘‘He thinks he doesn’t have anybody else.’’

  ‘‘But to this neighborhood.’’

  He looked at the building, its filmy windows, the big rectangles of whitewash covering up graffiti.

  ‘‘Isaac worked here.’’

  I followed his gaze. On the building were signs for several companies that had space here. Garnett-Horner Medical. South Coast Storage.

  Mako Technologies.

  ‘‘That’s why it sounded familiar. Isaac’s company, Firedog, this was their office. Cheap space for six guys and their start-up.’’ He killed the engine, opened the door. ‘‘I didn’t know Mako kept it. Maybe they’re using it for storage.’’

  We got out. I heard a freight train clacking in the distance. Following Jesse along the sidewalk, I looked at the building. It was creepy in the darkness, three floors of gloom. Van Heusen’s phone was still busy.

  ‘‘I’m calling Lieutenant Rome,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Yeah. Good.’’

  I started dialing the police department. Jesse reached the door and pulled it open. The building was black inside. He leaned forward, trying to see in. I grabbed him by the shoulder.

  ‘‘Don’t go in. Wait for the cops.’’

  ‘‘Adam’s in there.’’

  ‘‘With how many opponents? Jesse, you can’t go in blind and unarmed.’’

  ‘‘I can’t just let it happen to him.’’

  From above us came crashing sounds, wood splintering. Jesse shrugged loose from me and went through the door. For better or worse . . . I ran through the door behind him.

  Inside, the building was half warehouse, half loft space for offices and mom-and-pop manufacturing. It was dark. The streetlight cast sharp shadows. I found a bank of switches, flipped them. No light.

  ‘‘Power’s off,’’ I said, knowing what that meant: no elevators.

  He headed for a metal staircase. It led to a series of walkways and lofts—an upstairs building within the building, where office windows overlooked the cavernous ground floor. He reached the bottom of the stairs and grabbed the rail, looking up as though he was going to try to pull himself to his feet and climb them. No way, I thought.

  He said, ‘‘Screw it, I’ll go up on my butt. You bring the chair.’’

  I was still dialing the police department. ‘‘Let me go first and look.’’

  He hitched up his jeans. ‘‘If my Levi’s fall off, bring them too.’’ He swung onto the staircase and started bumping up. ‘‘Come on.’’

  Listening to the phone ring at the police department, I started climbing behind Jesse, pulling the chair. We were noisy, and slow, and my teeth were on edge. The building was a maze, dark and sinuous and full of places to hide. Directly above, an office window reflected the streetlight.

  Finally Rome came on. ‘‘What’s the problem, Ms. Delaney?’’

  How could I phrase this without coming off as a nut, or a scaredy-cat?

  ‘‘I’m downtown, trying to stop an assault. Can you send a patrol car?’’

  Jesse climbed, working hard.

  ‘‘Assault. Could you be more descriptive?’’ Something shiny whistled past my ear, skiing through the air. It sailed over Jesse’s head and landed in the wall with a thwack. For a stupid second we both gaped at it. It was one of Adam’s fishing spears.

  Rome said, ‘‘Ms. Delaney?’’

  I spun. Below me, Cherry Lopez emerged from the shadows and started up the stairs. The spear gun gleamed in her hands. She was reloading.

  I backed up the stairs toward Jesse. He was a sitting duck. Lopez paused on the stairs, muscling the rubber bands on the spear gun into firing position.

  She looked at me. ‘‘Well, shit. Have I finally found a way to shut you up?’’

  A sound shattered the air: glass bursting, directly above us. The office window above me erupted. A mound came flying through it. A human mound, limbs flopping. It was Win Utley, plummeting toward us.

  Jesse turned his head and raised an arm against the bright spray of glass. Utley dropped like a boulder. I dove toward Jesse, trying to get out of the way, and heard Utley hit the stairs with a thud.

  Panting, gritting my teeth, I looked back down the stairs. Utley lay heaped near the base of the staircase. Beneath his body lay Cherry Lopez. I could see her leg twitching. It looked as if her snaking cable tattoo had electrocuted her. Getting to my feet, I walked down a couple of steps. Glass crunched under my shoes. I looked at Utley. My stomach kipped, bile jumping into my throat.

  Utley was dead. Blood was pouring from his head, dripping through the metal grating of the stairs, pattering on the floor below. So much blood, my God—had he landed on the spear? Beneath his gargantuan mass, Lopez stopped twitching. She looked as though she’d been crushed by a falling block of cement.

  My arms and legs felt like yarn. I turned to Jesse. ‘‘You okay?’’

  He looked up at the shattered window. ‘‘Adam, can you hear me?’’

  From somewhere above, Adam called back. ‘‘Here—’’

  I jammed the wheelchair against the wall and ran up the stairs. My heart was going like a big band in my chest.

  Jesse kept climbing, saying, ‘‘We’re coming.’’

  ‘‘Stay back,’’ Adam said.

  Top of the stairs. Adam’s voice had come from the room with the shattered window. I pressed myself against the wall and inched toward the door.

  From inside came Adam’s voice. ‘‘Jesse, no. Get out of here.’’

  ‘‘Hang on,’’ Jesse said.

  I squatted down against the wall, getting low, hoping that if anybody was in there with Adam, they’d be expecting me to show up at eye level. I leaned around the corner and peeked inside.

  It was a loft space, taking up this whole side of the building, smelling of dust and wood. Light trickling through the windows shone on disused office equipment, desks and chairs stacked in a corner. I didn’t see Adam, or anything capable of propelling Win Utley through a window. Behind me, Jesse labored up the stairs.

  In the shadowy loft I heard a scraping sound. My eyes refocused. I saw Adam on the floor, slumped against a desk. He was in trouble.

  Now what? Go in, and get hit with whatever blew Utley through the window? I pulled back from the door. Jesse was hauling his way upward, with six or seven steps to go. When he got to the top he wouldn’t wait, wouldn’t huddle at the doorway while Adam was inside. Never. Even if Adam told him to go to hell. Even if that room were hell itself. He wouldn’t leave Adam in there alone.

  He hadn’t been able to reach Isaac on the hillside in Mission Canyon. He would get to Adam or die trying.

  I leaned back against the wall. ‘‘Adam. Are you alone?’’

  ‘‘I . . . I’m . . .’’

  ‘‘Adam, where are they?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know. I don’t . . . can’t see anybody.’’

  My synapses did a quick crackle. I dove through the doorway, onto my hands and knees, and skittered toward him.

  He raised a hand. ‘‘No, go back.’’

  ‘‘Oh, God.’’

  He sat slumped against an old wooden desk. He had been shot through the shoulder with the spear gun. The back of the spear protruded from below his clavicle. From the way he hung in front of the desk, I could tell that the spear had gone clear through and
lodged in the wood, pinning him there. His shirt was dark with blood. It glistened in the dim light. I scrambled to his side. I was afraid to touch him.

  Tears shimmered in his eyes. ‘‘Get out. It’s a trap.’’

  My deepest fear. They were setting Jesse up. Adam was the bait to draw him here.

  My hands shook. ‘‘How many are there?’’

  ‘‘Maybe two, three.’’ His head rolled. ‘‘They disarmed me when I came through the door. Stupid, I was stupid. . . ."

  ‘‘What happened to Utley? Did you knock him through that window?’’ I said. No answer. ‘‘Adam, stay with me.’’

  He leaned his head back against the desk. I took his hand in mine, squeezing so he wouldn’t know how frightened I was. Tears of pain fell down his cheeks.

  His voice was almost gone. ‘‘They’re out there.’’

  Noise from the hallway, Jesse thudding up the stairs. I turned and saw him in the doorway, looking at Adam. The shock on his face was horrible to see.

  Adam squeezed my hand and coughed. His face was pale. The spear, I thought, must have hit a vein. All those old Westerns, where the hero gets shot and says, ‘‘It’s nothing, ma’am, just got one in the shoulder’’— garbage. Shoulder wounds can lead to a quick death.

  I heard Jesse struggling to get through the door. He said, ‘‘Adam . . .’’

  I held Adam’s hand, clammy, weak. The shadow of beyond crossed above me, a presence I had known but not seen before.

  Jesse crawled toward us, breathing hard. ‘‘I’m sorry, buddy, I’m sorry.’’

  ‘‘Get out,’’ Adam said.

  Jesse reached Adam’s side. He looked at the spear, then at me.

  I said, ‘‘We have to wait for the police and paramedics. ’’

  ‘‘No. We have to get him out of here.’’

  ‘‘How? We can’t remove the spear.’’ I tried to put emphasis in my voice, to get the point across: Because the spear is all that’s keeping him from bleeding to death.

  ‘‘Maybe we can get him loose from the desk,’’ Jesse said, his hand hovering above Adam’s shoulder. ‘‘Go get the wheelchair so we can put him in it.’’

  Mr. Common sense, the clear-eyed cynic who would shrug and say, ‘‘Shit happens,’’ at the worst televised carnage, sounded pleading. I had never heard such wish-fulness in his voice.

  ‘‘We’re getting him out of this building,’’ he said.

  Behind us, the floor creaked. We looked around. Mickey Yago was strolling into the loft. He had a pistol in his hand.

  30

  I started to stand up and Yago waved the gun.

  ‘‘No, stay where you are; that’s a nice tight target grouping,’’ he said.

  He sauntered toward us. In the dingy light his gold ringlets looked ashen. His face was a hatchet.

  He approached Jesse. ‘‘You, my friend, are a major dipshit.’’

  Jesse tried to put himself between Yago and Adam.

  Yago said, ‘‘It would have been real simple for you just to do what I told you. But no, you had to be a yahoo and hold out. And look what happened.’’

  ‘‘Adam has to get to a hospital,’’ Jesse said.

  Yago stepped forward and nudged Adam’s leg with his foot. ‘‘You ain’t kidding.’’

  ‘‘Let me get him out of here and I’ll do whatever you want.’’

  ‘‘Too late, amigo.’’

  ‘‘You’ve made your point. I’ll move the money for you.’’

  ‘‘No. I don’t think you get how stupid you been, not yet. You need more convincing,’’ he said.

  He looked at me and rubbed a palm against his shirt, as if wiping off sweat.

  Jesse said, ‘‘Touch her and I’ll kill you.’’

  Yago snorted. ‘‘You haven’t told her, have you? She don’t know . . . wait, you don’t even know, do you?’’

  He smiled. Pretending to pout, he put on a falsetto voice. ‘‘Oh, baby doll, I’ve been so bad, I can’t help gambling, boo-hoo . . . I’m so sorry about everything, thank God you saved me, Jesse. . . .’’

  Yago laughed. Jesse shrank back, trying to stay in front of Adam.

  Yago said, ‘‘You really think you know how to protect and save a woman?’’ He eyed me. ‘‘Come here.’’

  I said, ‘‘The police are coming.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ He wagged the gun. ‘‘Can they get here faster than a speeding bullet?’’

  I saw the flash. It was a snap of light in the shadows somewhere beyond the door frame. Sound followed, a crack. Yago flicked forward and dropped to the floor like a sack of corn. A dark flow spread from beneath his head.

  Jesse stared at him, eyes huge. ‘‘Fuck.’’

  I was shaking. I felt it again, the feeling of forever, of something coming toward us out of a rift in the air, a black presence pressing on me.

  ‘‘Jesus,’’ I said. ‘‘Oh, Christ—’’

  Then they were in the loft, sliding through the shadows, and I knew why Win Utley had come crashing through the window with no warning, pouring blood. He’d been shot. Jax and Tim moved toward us, Jax holding a pistol with a suppressor screwed on the end, Tim carrying the scoped rifle that had just emptied Mickey Yago’s brain onto the floor.

  They were coming for us. Right now. Everything Jesse had feared, should have been feared. It had been them all along. And I’d ignored him, and now we were next.

  I felt bile climbing up my throat. I tried to stop myself from throwing up, covered my mouth with my hands. I looked at Jesse. He was looking back, the confusion on his face clearing into understanding.

  He said, ‘‘It’s them, isn’t it?’’

  From between my fingers I said, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’

  Jax went to Yago. She kicked the pistol away from his hand and stopped to take a good look at him. I tried not to do the same, because I could tell that Yago’s face had become an exit wound. Jax nodded at Tim and made a slashing motion across her throat with her thumb.

  Tim came toward us. He held the rifle tight to his side, index finger outside the trigger guard. He was wearing gloves.

  He gestured for Jesse to move away from Adam. ‘‘Out of the way.’’

  ‘‘You’ll have to kill me,’’ Jesse said.

  Tim’s dog-pound face registered surprise, but he didn’t slow down.

  I said, ‘‘Don’t do this, Tim.’’

  He said, ‘‘For chrissake, move. Let me take a look at the wound.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ I said.

  And I felt Jax’s hand pulling me out of the way. Those ballerina arms were stronger than steel cable. Tim knelt next to Adam, set the rifle down, and peered at the shoulder.

  He put his hand around Adam’s wrist. ‘‘You all right, mate?’’

  Adam was sweating. ‘‘Been better.’’

  Jax pulled me away from the men. I felt stunned, relieved, embarrassed. Jax held the pistol at her side. Her black gloves looked stylish.

  She said, ‘‘You thought we came to kill you? You are the most distrustful person I’ve ever met.’’

  ‘‘I—’’

  ‘‘Be quiet and listen. The building is now secure.’’

  ‘‘You mean they’re all dead.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  I rubbed my hands across my face. ‘‘Did you follow Jesse’s car? How did you know what was going down?’’

  ‘‘Another time. What matters now is getting out of here.’’

  She glanced toward Tim. He was talking to Jesse.

  ‘‘We can’t sanitize the site,’’ she said. ‘‘We’ll have to leave the bodies.’’

  Ridiculously, I found myself nodding, as though I faced such niggles every week.

  ‘‘We can get you and Jesse away from here, but any halfway decent crime scene team will be able to figure out you were here,’’ she said.

  Another glance at Tim. He looked back this time. He tapped a finger against his wrist and shook his head.

  Jax’s expressi
on didn’t change, but she lowered her voice. ‘‘Tim can’t find a pulse. If Adam doesn’t get to a hospital soon he’s liable to lose the arm. If he makes it that far.’’

  I stared at Adam. He was gritting his teeth, trying to maintain consciousness. Tim spoke to Jesse, who maneuvered to get under Adam’s good shoulder, to lift him up and take the weight off the side that was impaled.

  I said, ‘‘The police and paramedics should be here soon.’’

  Her face hardened. ‘‘You called them? How long ago?’’

  ‘‘Maybe five minutes.’’

  ‘‘Tim. We’re going,’’ she said.

  He said, ‘‘Right.’’

  She put a hand on my arm. ‘‘When I say going, I mean far gone.’’

  ‘‘You know the police are going to interrogate me and Jesse,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘I won’t be able to keep all this from them.’’

  ‘‘I know. You’re hardly an accomplished liar. What will you tell them you saw?’’

  ‘‘A flash in the dark. Yago falling. I presume it was a gunshot, but I didn’t see who fired it.’’

  She nodded. ‘‘Fine. But expect to spend the night in jail.’’

  In the distance, sirens. Tim said, ‘‘We can’t stay.’’

  I turned back toward Adam. Jax stopped me.

  ‘‘Listen, i-heist is dead, but this isn’t over. And we can’t protect you any longer.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand.’’

  ‘‘I-heist wanted to keep you and Jesse alive. They thought they could manipulate you to get money and access. But now they’re dead. And the people who are left only want to shut you up. Irrevocably.’’

  The big band was starting a new tune in my chest. ‘‘What people are you talking about? Franklin Brand? I thought . . . Wasn’t he here tonight?’’

  ‘‘No. He wasn’t here.’’

  Tim looked at me, then at Jesse. ‘‘If you want to go, we have to get you out right now.’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘Can you get Adam out of here?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Then I’m not leaving.’’

  The sirens drew nearer. Jax went to the window, peered up the street.

  ‘‘Two squad cars, SBPD. We’re gone,’’ she said.