by Meg Gardiner
The smashed windshield sagged in its frame. On the mangled steering column, the keys hung in the ignition. I smelled mud and gasoline and coffee. The coffee cup was still jammed in the cup holder.
The coffee cup. I grabbed it and climbed out.
Jesse approached the side of the flatbed. “What is it?”
“He didn’t kill himself. Nobody stops for hot coffee on their way to commit suicide.” I held up the cup. “And they certainly don’t buy the extra-large mug so they can get free refills.”
Traffic nudged along the road, past pink flares and a Highway Patrolman waving cars around a wrecker. The white Mercury edged its way toward the scene.
Boyd Davies slouched in his seat, one hand slung over the top of the steering wheel, toothpick between his lips. He wore shades and a baseball cap, his black hair pulled into a ponytail. He wasn’t worried about the goatee. Nobody was going to recognize him.
In the passenger seat, the woman who called herself Bliss kept scratching at her arm. She was skinny as a cigarette and had short piss-blond hair. She was like a thing you heard out in the tall grass, a skittering sound on the air, dry and pitiless as a lizard. She was pulling scabs off with the scratching. Crank bugs, Boyd thought. She got high last night and was crashing hard, thought beetles were crawling under her skin. Meth, no question. He was keeping notes for his report.
“That’s it,” she said.
They’d found the car and hauled it up the hill. It lay crushed on the back of the wrecker. Uniforms were crawling all over the place, fire and CHP and sheriffs. A woman had climbed up on the wrecker, was crouched down talking to a deputy and a plainclothes and a guy looked like he’d busted his knee, leaning on crutches. The woman was gesturing to the deputy, showing him a coffee cup.
“Who’s she?” Bliss said.
He glanced at her, and at the rest of the scene—a pickup truck, and a Mustang that had laid rubber when it squealed to a stop.
“Investigator,” he said. “Else, maybe family.”
“They’re looking for him,” she said.
Let them look. He cruised past the wrecker, getting a good eyeful of the woman, the emotion on her face. Family, yeah. Now, wasn’t that interesting.
“I think what we have here is an actual lead,” he said.
She turned to the backseat. Christian was asleep, shades crooked, hair draped over his face.
“Leave him be,” Boyd said. “Get on the phone. We take this to the top.”
3
I was thirty-three when I found out my dad was a spook. The revelation came at a bad time.
Philip Delaney left Oklahoma to spend his life in the blue-water navy. He ended up in the desert, an expert in missile guidance and explosives technology at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. That’s where I grew up: in a world of pilots and researchers who worked under the sun to perfect the machinery of death. It was a happy childhood.
Dad’s job was to protect me, my brother, my mother, and our country, to eliminate those who would make war on us, and to keep our fighter pilots alive in the skies. He was a warrior, and my hero.
But the reality was completely different. My father set up a shield, beneath which he lived another life entirely. He worked for naval intelligence. He had such a knack for clandestine work that he hid the truth even from my mom. Maybe, in the end, that contributed to their divorce.
And I finally learned the truth because a classified project went disastrously wrong at China Lake and led to the deaths of my high school classmates. It nearly killed my mother. It caused me to take a life, and cost me the chance to start a family. Faced with such wreckage, Dad could no longer live with the lies and denials. He went public with the truth.
Since then, through months lost in regret and shock, I had become determined to know the reality of my father’s past. And he had promised to talk with me, but secrecy was a habit deeply ingrained in Phil Delaney.
“Opposition research.”
That was how he described it to me, walking on Stearns Wharf one day, tilting back his hat and watching the sun shatter on the water. To destroy the enemy, weapons researchers needed to know what the enemy was up to. His job had been to find out who the bad guys were and what toys they had. He sussed out their technology.
In those days Latin America and Southeast Asia foamed with dictatorships, coups, drug wealth, machete massacres, cartels, and blood feuds. Hearing him talk about such places, I felt my heart sink. Technology was clean and precise. Foreign jungles were chaotic and bloody. Remember the times, he said. Remember the stakes. The Cold War. Communists. Drug warlords. Terrorists. And we didn’t have police powers in Venezuela or Burma. We couldn’t just march into the jungle with a search warrant and get the information we needed.
I understand, I said. I’m not a kid.
He stared at the water. No. You’re a tough girl, Kit, but even with all you’ve been through lately, you don’t understand.
And now I feared that I never would.
Ten thirty: nothing. No sign of Dad, despite the search and rescue helo, despite my inarticulate prayers. Just CHP investigators poring over the scene with cameras and measuring equipment, and clouds threatening rain, and my stubborn refusal to leave, until Jesse pointed down the highway at the TV news van heading our way. I peeled out in the Mustang.
By the time I got back to Santa Barbara the clouds had broken up. The city unrolled like a Mediterranean carpet, mountains looming green against the sky, red tile roofs spooling through palm trees all the way to the spangled sea. I dropped the car at my place and hopped into Jesse’s truck.
“Sure you don’t want to skip this?” he said.
“Positive.” I didn’t want quiet, or time to think. I wanted to do something. Anything. “Sure you don’t?”
He looked dog-tired. He hadn’t been home since before the swim meet yesterday.
“First things first,” he said.
We needed to find his boss, Lavonne Marks, and bring her up to speed. We drove to the Belchiesa Resort, across Cabrillo Boulevard from the beach, where the California Bar Association was holding its spring conference on trial advocacy.
“You know we’re bound to run into Gray,” Jesse said.
“If he can stop preening for the cameras.”
Nicholas Gray, the U.S. Attorney who was circling my father like a vulture, was giving the keynote address at the conference. Earlier in the weekend he had managed to interrupt Dad’s meeting with Lavonne and Jesse in a restaurant at the resort’s conference center. Give him a chance of publicity and he became omnipresent.
Jesse left his crutches in the truck. The conference center was extensive, and walking more than a hundred yards didn’t work. He got the wheelchair out of the backseat. I slammed the door of the truck and we headed into the lobby, passing a poster for the keynote address.
“Screw Gray. Let him try to make hay out of this,” I said.
A tendril of wind brushed my arms as the doors shut. Jesse’s gaze lengthened. “Shields up. You’re about to get your wish.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the men in dark suits walking toward us.
The tall one was Nicholas Gray, Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California. Gawky and purposeful, he swept along ahead of two underlings in matching blue pinstripes. They looked overdressed for Santa Barbara, where half the population wears flip-flops and Sex Wax T-shirts. To their own weddings.
“Just the people I was looking for,” Gray said.
One of the suits, a young guy, popped the top on a soft drink can and handed it to him. “Diet cola, sir.” He nodded at Jesse. “J-man.”
“How you doing, Drew?” Jesse said.
Gray took the soda without a glance. “Ms. Delaney, we heard about the car wreck. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He eyed Jesse. “Here to attend my speech?”
“For the margaritas. What’s up?”
Gray managed to smile wi
th just his long white teeth, no eyes. “If you’ll excuse us, I need to speak to Ms. Delaney about her father.”
Bald and buzzardy, Gray had a firm voice and a sympathetic expression. His mien was assiduous and concerned. And I was having none of it. Nicholas Gray was a scalp-taker. The West Coast’s chief federal prosecutor, he was determined to indict my father under the Espionage Act.
Jesse didn’t move. “Ev?”
I nodded to Gray. “Talk.”
He nodded, a very well gesture. “I’ve spoken with the county sheriffs. Their deputy thinks the crash was deliberate.” He took a sip of his soda. “I have to agree. But I don’t think your father committed suicide.”
I took a mental step back. “Are you suggesting foul play? Did somebody run my dad off the road?”
He didn’t actually snap his fingers, merely lifted an eyebrow at his soda bearer. “Farelli?”
Drew Farelli had a sheen of perspiration on his forehead, and cheeks that spoke of a love for his mom’s cannoli. He was jingling coins in his pocket.
“I talked to the deputy—Gilbert’s his name. There’s no evidence your father’s car was hit by another vehicle.”
“What’s going on?” My head was throbbing. “Have the sheriffs found him?”
Gray ran a hand across his shiny skull. “I can see the strain is taking a toll on you. Would you like to sit down?”
“No. Have they?”
“They haven’t.”
If I didn’t count to ten, I was going to bite him.
Jesse eyed Gray with a calm like a shard of ice. “Nicholas, what’s going on?”
Gray gestured to the second suit. “This is Special Agent Ceplak, from the Bureau.”
A Fibbie. My heart dropped even farther into confusion and failing hope.
Ceplak said, “Ms. Delaney, it’s no secret that your father is a person of interest to us. He’s been recalcitrant for months, jumping fences to stay ahead of the U.S. Attorney’s investigation.”
“And?”
“I think he’s done it one final time. He isn’t out there on that hillside. He wasn’t in the car when it left the road.” He glanced at Farelli. “What did the deputy tell you?”
“Driver’s door was open from the top of the fall line. Suitcase was in the trunk, but no computer case.” He jingled his coins like he had the DTs. “And from the damage pattern to the brush on the hillside, it seems the car was moving only a few miles an hour when it left the road.”
“What?” I said.
Ceplak nodded. “And they’ve found tire tracks in the mud. Also a footprint. The car went over at a few miles per hour, then gained speed. What happened is, your father got out, took his computer, and pushed the vehicle over the edge.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Trying to make it look like a back-road suicide. Remote site, nobody around—it could have worked, but he made a mistake. He took the computer. That gives the game away.”
“Game?”
Jesse put a hand on my arm, trying to stop me from rising to the bait. But it wasn’t his father they were slandering.
Gray crossed his arms. “He didn’t want to stick around.
Is that because he knew we’re getting close to evidence that will lead to an indictment?”
Drew Farelli jingled the coins in his pocket. Gray maintained his facade of earnest righteousness, glancing from Jesse to me.
“Your father was with the two of you immediately before he disappeared. What did he tell you before he left town?” he said.
“Where do you get off—”
“Has he contacted you since the crash?”
I forced myself not to take a step back. “God, the search and rescue team is still out on the hillside trying to find him—”
“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Gray said. “Your father disclosed classified information. Granted, his legal team helped him skirt the edges of the law. But that’s what he did.”
Don’t spit. Just don’t.
“He endangered national security. He can claim he did it for some nebulous greater good, but that won’t exonerate him.”
Farelli said, “We’re going to get his phone records. If you’ve been in contact with him, we’ll find out. If it turns out you knew about it beforehand, you could be considered an accessory in his flight to avoid prosecution.”
“Flight? For chrissake, he hasn’t fled.”
Gray said, “Your reluctance to cooperate is disappointing, though understandable. But if his legal team is involved, that’s an entirely different matter.”
Jesse looked away, mouth skewing. “Are you just going to kick dirt at us, or do you have an actual point?”
Gray paused for a moment, as though marking Jesse’s name on a mental shit list. “If Ms. Delaney cooperates fully in our investigation, things will go more smoothly for her father.”
“Cooperate? You mean betray my dad. Forget it.”
“You needn’t speak in such dramatic terms.”
“But that’s what you mean—you want me to pin something on him he didn’t even do. No. He hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Gray’s pate shone under the lights. “Who does your father know in Colombia?”
“South America? I have no idea.”
“How about Thailand?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why would he have reason to go to the U.K. twice within the past nine months?”
Bam, I felt as though he’d hit me with a skillet. Dad had been out of the country?
Farelli said, “And then he came to Santa Barbara. He talked to you, and conferred with his attorneys, and then poof, he vanished.”
Gray pursed his lips. “If it’s within your power, contact your father and convince him to surrender. This can still be handled quietly, but only for the next few hours.” He glanced at Ceplak. “After that, I imagine the FBI will announce the likelihood that his disappearance is a hoax.”
“I imagine we will,” Ceplak said.
“From there, it’s out of my hands. But I foresee the media taking an interest in the story. Former intelligence officer with contacts in some awfully seedy neighborhoods fakes his disappearance ahead of indictment. . . . Nothing I can do about the way they’ll play it.”
“Oh, don’t even—”
“Ev.” Jesse held my arm.
Gray crumpled the soda can and tossed it in a trash can. “Let me hear from you.”
4
I stormed out of the conference center, pushing open the door. “Bully.”
The day was sunny and breezy. “User. Publicity hound.” I stalked toward the pickup truck. “Leak the story to the Los Angeles Times and let them bury Dad’s reputation for good. That’s Gray’s plan. Keep himself on the front pages and at the top of the news hour.”
I grabbed the door handle but the truck was locked. “Hoax, my ass. He cares nothing about Dad. The car went over a cliff and he insists it’s a hoax?”
I yanked again on the door. “Inquisitor. Spiteful, grand-standing . . .” Wouldn’t open. Turning, I saw that Jesse was still inside the conference center, speaking to Drew Farelli. I was talking to myself.
I leaned against the truck. Clouds riffled past the sun. Across Cabrillo Boulevard a picket line of palm trees guarded the gleaming ocean.
Dad’s car had been pushed over the edge.
And I didn’t believe for one second that my father had done it. Somebody else had, and then they’d done something to my father. Heat swept through me, fear and thrill all together.
Dad was alive.
Jesse finished talking to Farelli and wheeled over to the truck. “Drew’s toeing Gray’s line. I got nowhere.”
“He’s Gray’s cocker spaniel.”
“He’s a decent guy, just anxious to please. Always was, even in law school.” He unlocked the truck. “You thinking the same thing I am about your dad?”
“He’s been abducted.”
His face was grave. “You’ll never get the FBI to pursue
that avenue.”
“No.” I opened my door. “I have to take another road.”
I got in but he held still, hands on his push-rims as though keeping the brakes on. “You going to contact her?”
I nodded. Grimly, he held my gaze.
Colombia. Thailand. Intelligence officer with contacts in seedy neighborhoods.
If those were the questions, there was one answer: Jakarta Rivera.
Jesse drove me downtown without comment, face cool behind his shades, and dropped me at the bank. Inside, I followed a teller into the vault and gave her the key to my safe-deposit box. My palms were tingling.
Jax Rivera was a recurring apparition in my life, a specter who had seemingly manifested out of malign chance. A former CIA agent, she was glamorous, conniving, and violent. She now ran a small business with her British husband, killing people for money. They seemed a happy couple. And they liked me. Talk about unwelcome attention.
When we first met, they offered me a job ghostwriting their memoirs. I laughed and walked away, calling their story a lie. But though the offer was spurious, their story was not; they had come to Santa Barbara on a job. Then Jax left me a thick manila envelope containing dossiers she and Tim North had assembled over the years: notebooks, photographs, memos that named names, places, dates, deaths. I barely leafed through them before getting a big hairy chill, shoving them back in the envelope, and taping it up.
If Dad’s disappearance had anything to do with his work for naval intelligence, the one person who might be able to provide me with a clue, or help, was Jax. Because, I had recently discovered, they knew each other.
I didn’t have her home phone, didn’t know where she lived, didn’t even know whether Jakarta Rivera was her real name. All I had was that fat manila envelope containing the dossiers, locked in my safe-deposit box.
When I slid it from that box, it felt heavier than I recalled. I thanked the teller and walked the six blocks to Sanchez Marks feeling as though I were carrying a sack of cobras.