Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Two of them.

  But Driscoll’s grip has loosened.

  Cara draws her breath deep inside her and drops.

  DAY FOUR

  Chapter 18

  There is pounding. Some violent struggle. Cracking, splintering . . .

  Roarke pulled himself out of a dazed sleep. Not to some epic battle going on around him. Someone was pounding on his front door.

  He grabbed for a robe and stepped out into the long darkness of the hall.

  As he approached the door he glanced at the side table, at the drawer where he kept his service weapon . . .

  Then he heard a familiar voice. “Roarke, goddamn it. Open up.”

  Mills.

  Roarke shot the bolt and pulled open the door. The detective stood in the dim hall outside, in a state of dishevelment and grim dismay.

  “Your damn phone is off. Your guys got the DNA results back. It’s Ramirez’s blood on the razor that killed Butler.” Before Roarke could even process the information, Mills continued, “Molina’s going in to see the judge this morning.”

  The adrenaline jolt shook Roarke fully awake. “To move the prelim up? To ask for a dismissal?”

  “All of the above, what the shit do I know? We need to get over there now.”

  Roarke backed up, then turned toward his bedroom. “Five minutes.”

  It was a zoo. The courthouse steps were entirely packed. Not just the steps; the sidewalks and the streets were jammed with people. Swarming reporters and news vans bristling with satellite dishes, illegally parked anywhere they could find a space. Protesters crowding the street, strategically placed at the intersection of Bryant and Seventh, so anyone driving by would get a full view of the commotion.

  Patrol officers attempted to direct traffic at the clogged intersections, while mostly female demonstrators marched the sidewalks with hand-lettered signs: “Justice for Cara.” “Free Cara Lindstrom.” “Cara is my heroine.” “War on rape culture NOW.”

  There were images on those signs, too, skeletal depictions of Santa Muerte, and a few actual masked skeleton figures. One was dressed in a long white gown, wearing a skull mask and flowered hat, carrying a globe in one hand and a scythe in the other.

  Mills blinked at that one. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and Roarke knew the detective was experiencing the same sick, surreal feeling he was.

  Ahead in the crowd, Roarke caught sight of a tall hulk of a man, a dark, familiar face. Epps. The agent spotted him at the same time and shouldered his way through the crowd toward him and Mills. The three of them huddled, a tight knot in the surge of onlookers.

  “What the holy fuck is going on here?” Epps looked around in disbelief.

  Roarke recalled the blogger’s words of the night before. “Time for a reckoning.” The blogger, the people she worked with, Molina, maybe all of them, working in concert to make this case headline news.

  He spoke it aloud. “Molina leaked it to Bitch that they were going in to see the judge. She must have.”

  Whether that would pressure the judge into dismissing the case was anyone’s call. It could just as easily go the other way. Roarke was floored by the risk Molina was taking: an enormous, all-or-nothing roll of the dice.

  “How did this happen so fast?” Epps demanded, shouting over the crowd.

  Mills looked disgusted and resigned all at once. “Stanton disclosed the DNA results on the razor to Molina. She musta called the judge last night. I’m betting she’s asking for a dismissal.”

  “Can that even happen?” Epps was in a fury. But they all knew the answer to that. A judge could do pretty much anything, and San Francisco judges leaned heavily on the side of protecting the rights of the accused.

  “Lots of pressure from the media, too. This was the front page of the Chronicle today.” Mills handed over a rolled-up newspaper that looked like he’d been using it for batting practice. Epps unfurled it to reveal the headline:

  “‘Miracle Girl’ held without bail, without evidence.”

  Mills summed it up. “Valiant survivor of unspeakable crime now unjustly accused, held without bail, exculpatory evidence, blah-dee-blah blah. There’s a Twitterstorm, too, Facebook memes. All over the Internet. Looks like Molina called every reporter in the book.”

  With all kinds of help from Bitch, Roarke thought. He could see the young blogger on the sidewalk in front of his house, gazing up at him through the dark.

  “Maybe it’s time.”

  “What does Stanton have to go in with?” he asked Mills.

  “Without Jade? Fuck all. Our girl may be taking a walk.”

  Roarke’s adrenaline surged. He tried to keep his voice neutral. “Is Lindstrom in there now?”

  Epps was not fooled by his carefully bland tone. He shot Roarke a bitter look.

  “I’m not clear on that,” Mills answered. “Something weird is going on.” Roarke felt an inexplicable shiver of worry.

  The men shouldered their way up the steps, parting the masses before them. Even in a jacked-up crowd like this one, a phalanx of three law enforcement heavies was nothing anyone was willing to tangle with.

  Inside the too-warm lobby of the Hall, the crowd was almost as thick: packed bodies massing in the marble halls, wrapped in winter coats. Roarke could see courtroom security guards communicating across the corridors with walkie-talkies. Expecting trouble.

  Inside he was fixated on Mills’ last remark. “Something weird is going on.”

  If Cara wasn’t at the courthouse, what did that mean? Had something happened? What was Molina trying to do?

  He looked over the sea of faces. And then he saw her. That explosion of hair, the mosaic eyes.

  Jade.

  It can’t be. Roarke was dazed. Would she really risk coming here?

  She hovered just inside the heavy front doors, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. A hundred people between them. He stared through the throng, and, as if feeling him, she looked across the sea of faces, caught his eye . . . and she knew him. For one crackling moment she held his gaze, that intelligence blazing through the crowd. He was breathless with the life force of her.

  Then in a flash she was slipping backward, pushing out through the front door.

  Roarke felt someone grab his arm from behind. He spun and saw Epps staring into his face. “What?”

  “I just saw her,” he muttered. “Jade.”

  He pulled away from Epps and muscled through the milling people after her, shoved his way through one of the front doors.

  Outside, the courthouse steps were even more packed than before. Protesters chanted on the sidewalk below, a swell of overlapping voices. “Free Cara! Free Cara! Free Cara!”

  Roarke stood at the top of the steps, bracing himself against the ebb and flow of the crowd, and scanned the faces for the girl, focusing on anyone moving downward.

  At first it seemed hopeless . . . but she was easy to spot: that wild hair. She was halfway down the steps, moving like water through the masses toward the street.

  He lunged after her, maneuvering around bodies dressed in thick overcoats. What had possessed her to come? Could she be thinking of testifying after all? Or she just couldn’t stay away?

  He reached the protesters packing the sidewalk and scanned the crowd at street level, looking for Jade’s hair. The chanting surrounded him. “Free Cara! Free Cara! Free Cara!”

  There was no sign of Jade on the sidewalk. He turned slowly, in desperation . . . and lasered in on a young woman getting into a taxi at the curb.

  Not Jade, he thought, staring at her. Short hair—wait, no, she was wearing a hat. And as she stooped to get into the car, he spotted the tattoo on the back of her neck, spiraling up into the curls at the nape. She’d scooped her hair up into a cap, taken off her jacket.

  Roarke pushed forward against the crowd of protesters in front
of him. He was jostled by startled and then angry onlookers, but he shoved back and burst through the last living wall of people . . . just as the taxi pulled away.

  He started toward it, focused on the license plate. 4CND 542.

  He was already reaching for his phone as he scanned the traffic for another cab. But San Francisco was not like New York, with its yellow cabs available every few seconds in a continuous stream. Here taxis were plentiful mainly around the bigger hotels and shopping strips like Market Street, and certain tourist havens, which the Hall of Justice decidedly was not.

  He ran out in the middle of the street, at the same time auto-dialing Singh. He shouted into the phone, “I need the dispatch of the Yellow Cab company. Vehicle with plate 4CND 542. I just saw Jade get in. Track that cab.”

  “I am on it, Chief,” his agent’s voice came back.

  Cars were honking around him, but there was not a taxi in sight. The sidewalks were mobbed, so Roarke kept to the street as he jogged back around the corner to Bryant Street, the front of the Hall, where there was always a line of black-and-white patrol cars at the curb.

  He ran along the line of parked vehicles, suit coat flapping, until he spotted a uniform behind the wheel of a patrol car. He halted beside the car and slapped his open credentials wallet against the passenger window.

  The startled officer lowered the window. Roarke shouted at him, “Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roarke. I’m in pursuit of a material witness to the hearing going on inside. Need assistance.”

  “Uh, yes sir.”

  Roarke pulled open the door and dropped into the seat just as his phone buzzed. Singh spoke into his ear. “Cab is headed to the bottom of Market. Number One Embarcadero.”

  Roarke’s mind was racing. The Ferry Building. So many stores. BART access. Ferry access. Christmas shoppers.

  “Ferry Building,” he told the young officer beside him.

  The uniform hit the lights and siren, but the street was so clogged there was no place for cars ahead of them to pull off.

  Roarke sat in the stalled traffic in agonized frustration.

  His phone buzzed again and he grabbed for it. Mills. “Where the fuck are you?” the detective demanded through the phone.

  “I saw Jade.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Roarke answered, though he was beginning to wonder, himself.

  “Why the . . .” Mills drifted off, clearly brooding on exactly what Roarke had been wondering since he saw her. Why? was the question. What is she doing?

  The traffic ahead of them opened up, and the young uniform zoomed the patrol car forward.

  “I’m in pursuit,” Roarke told Mills. “Cab’s dropping her at One Embarcadero. I’d appreciate some backup.”

  “I’ll get cars on the way.”

  “She’s in a motorcycle cap with her hair tucked up. Leather jacket, jeans. Alternating jacket on and off. White jersey underneath.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Market Street was decorated for Christmas: lights strung over the street; giant, glittery tinsel wreaths; extravagant window displays in the high-end retail stores. Roarke leaned forward in his seat, staring down the sidewalk through businesspeople rushing in and out of office buildings and tourists headed for the Ferry Building. Even on a good day nowhere near the holidays, the area was infamous for traffic jams. Two blocks from the bottom of the strip, Roarke was reaching for his door handle, unable to wait.

  “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Sir, can I assist?” the young uniform asked tensely.

  Roarke took a millisecond to consider. Tell the kid what Jade looks like? Have two pairs of eyes on the crowds?

  No time. And this was his. If anyone was going to spot her, it would be him.

  “Thanks. I’ve got it,” Roarke said, catapulting out of the cruiser.

  But once on the street, he scanned the blocks ahead of him in despair. The bottom of Market Street hosted a street fair most days, tented stands where artists and artisans sold crafts, produce, jewelry, knockoff purses. At Christmas the fair was three times its normal size, swelled by seasonal craftspeople, street magicians and acrobats, carolers strolling, dressed in Dickensian finery, a steel pan band playing a Jamaican version of “Jingle Bells.”

  To top it off, the sky was starting to mist. Umbrellas popped up like mushrooms, making it even harder to see through the crowd.

  Roarke turned on the pavement in the cold rain, taking in the aisles of stalls, scanning the shoppers. He figured there were two ways Jade could have gone: to the Embarcadero BART station, which could take her to any one of four sides of the bay . . . or to the Ferry Building, with its artisanal shops and restaurants and the ferryboats that took commuters and tourists across to Oakland, Sausalito, and Vallejo.

  Or she got out of the cab blocks ago and just took off anywhere in the city, he told himself. Anywhere. Anywhere. What was I thinking, that I could find her?

  Except that he knew. He heard her voice in his head.

  “Do you believe in destiny, Agent Roarke?”

  Despite the odds, he found himself striding through the roughly parallel rows of tents in the fair, dodging singers and jugglers, winding past vendors minding their tables of embroidered bags, Christmas ornaments, fuzzy sweaters and ponchos, San Francisco memorabilia. And he felt a glimmer of hope.

  It’s like the Haight, the carnival atmosphere. Jade’s kind of place.

  He scanned everyone, everything around him for that hair. But more, for a feeling. A sense of her.

  “Come on, Jade,” he muttered. “I know you’re here.”

  His pulse jumped as his phone buzzed in his coat pocket. He glanced at the screen before punching on to Mills’ gruff voice.

  “She’s out.”

  Roarke stopped in the aisle of tables not following. “Out where? Jade?”

  “Lindstrom. Lindstrom is out. Molina asked for bail and the judge agreed. They posted bond immediately.”

  Roarke turned in the crowded market, taking in the kaleidoscope of people around him. He was reeling.

  “Where is she?”

  “She and Molina never came out of the Hall.”

  Now Roarke felt a sick dread. “Call you back.” He searched his contacts, punched Molina’s number . . . strode past a cacophony of colors with the phone to his ear. Voice mail clicked on, then the lawyer’s brusque voice.

  He stood still, paralyzed. And in the end he disconnected without leaving a message, as there was nothing he could think of to say but “Where is she?”

  And that point, he had a feeling, was already moot.

  Chapter 19

  She sits in the passenger seat of the Lexus as the lawyer inches through the downtown traffic, snarled in even more knots than usual because of the protesters. The car is a luxurious, soundproofed cocoon; she can barely hear the engine, much less any street noise. It intensifies the sounds going on inside her. Her whole body is humming; she feels as if her blood is too much for her veins, as if she will burst at any second.

  She has been in a daze since the shadow appeared in the jail corridor, and in the moment that she fully expected to fight to the death, the second guard took her from Driscoll, out of the grasp of It . . . out of the jail to the courtroom.

  Once again, against all rational odds, she has been spared, saved by whatever it is that guides her.

  Now freedom is just outside the car door.

  Beside her, at the wheel, the lawyer is jubilant. “I never had any doubt,” she keeps saying. “It is simple justice.”

  Cara doesn’t know about justice, but clearly it is meant. The instrument of her liberation at the courthouse is entirely unexpected, and unnerving. An image is clear in her mind: the flaming girl standing over another pimp, dead in a pool of his own blood. The implications are vast; the thought is
vertiginous, the stuff of dreams or nightmares. But that she must consider later. Now she must be entirely in the moment. Nothing can distract her from the task at hand.

  She looks out the window—right into the hollow eye sockets of a skull staring back at her. A figure in a long, white lace dress, with a skull mask, standing on the street corner as pedestrian traffic flows around her.

  The car moves on, and the figure is gone. Cara sits back, holding herself very still.

  The lawyer is asking her something, and she has to focus on the words. The lawyer repeats, “Where do you want to go?”

  She has considered this, and she responds automatically. “The Hyatt. On Market Street.” It is a huge hotel and the closest she can think of, just blocks away. And it has other advantages as well.

  The lawyer glances at her, a quizzical look. “Are you sure . . .” She trails off, the question hanging in the air.

  Cara waits. The lawyer finishes delicately. “Do you want to be so close by?”

  To the jail, she means. To the courthouse. To Roarke.

  “I need a shower,” she answers. “And to sleep.”

  The lawyer looks at her, but whatever she is thinking, she merely nods.

  Cara looks back toward the street corner, but there is no sign of the skull-masked figure.

  Three blocks later the lawyer pulls the Lexus into the small drop-off area of the massive hotel and stops at the curb. She turns from the wheel to Cara in the seat, and Cara feels an emotion coming from the older woman that is hard to interpret. Ambivalence would not be surprising, nor would apprehension.

  “We’ll need to meet as soon as possible,” Cara says, to circumvent the inevitable question.

  “Of course.” The lawyer sounds surprised. It was not what she expected, which is the point.

  Cara continues, letting her voice be hesitant, as if she is thinking things through only now, in the moment. “Late tomorrow. I have to sleep. And if we could meet here, rather than your office . . . or someplace else you can arrange that is . . .” She trails off, letting the lawyer fill in the details in her mind. The reporters, the immense crowd at the courtroom—the shock of which is one of the things Cara herself must process, once she is out and alone. Her visitor has delivered on her promise. She may have gone much further than Cara ever expected.