See Her Run

by Peggy Townsend

  “Out,” Jordan said as Aloa parked the car at RedHawk headquarters. She pulled the keys out of the ignition and jabbed Aloa hard with the gun.

  “Will you stop poking me with that thing?” Aloa said.

  “If you don’t like it, then you should do what I say,” Jordan said.

  “Or what? You’re going to kill me like you killed Hayley? I already know that,” Aloa said.

  “Shut up.” Jordan came around and dragged Aloa out of the car. “Let’s go,” she said, and headed toward the stable, hiding the pistol against her thigh.

  Tremblay looked up from saddling a powerful-looking horse as they came through the open doors. He wore a pair of striped shorts with a gaudy orange-and-black San Francisco Giants shirt and scuffed brown cowboy boots. His hair was pulled back in a man bun.

  He frowned. “What’s going on?”

  “I need to talk to you, Hank. Right now,” Jordan said, and stepped close so that Aloa could feel the threat of the gun.

  Hank hesitated, then said, “Buck, take Thunder for a quick trot on the Winner’s Loop trail, will you? Warm him up for me.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” said the old stable hand. He put down the rake he was using to clean the stalls and walked the horse outside without looking at Jordan or Aloa. He obviously knew how to ignore what should be ignored. No help there, Aloa thought.

  “She knows,” Jordan said when the stable hand disappeared.

  “She knows what?” Tremblay asked.

  “Everything,” Jordan said. “She knows about Ethan, about the Pro-Power 500, about Africa. You need to call Archie.”

  Tremblay’s face went gray.

  “She killed Hayley,” Aloa said. “She ran her to death in the desert so she could stop Ethan’s book.”

  “She wouldn’t give me the flash drive with your recording,” Jordan interrupted. “She was going to blab about the plan.”

  “You killed her?” Tremblay looked stricken. “Why? I paid her just like she asked. A quarter of a million in a Swiss account, plus the annuity. I gave her the account number when we were camping. She was going to keep quiet.”

  “She was going to double-cross you, Hank. She was going to call a reporter about what was going on,” Jordan said.

  Tremblay ran two hands over his hair. Aloa saw the tremor again in his fingers.

  “She was going to expose the project, and expose you,” Jordan said. “She picked herself over America’s safety, over the war on terror. She deserved to die.”

  Tears brimmed in Tremblay’s eyes. “I’m so tired of this,” he said, “just so tired.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “When they sent me that photo of Ethan . . . when they threatened . . .” He swallowed. “They’re horrible people. All they wanted was diamonds, not peace, and now two people are dead because of what I did.”

  “And thousands more will live,” Jordan insisted.

  Tremblay went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It was just that we’d lost so much with the Pro-Power fiasco. The accountants told me we’d taken a big hit; then when Archie told me the plan, I thought maybe some good could come from it.” His voice trailed off. “Oh my god, what have I done?”

  “Peace requires sacrifice, Hank,” Jordan said.

  From the corner of her eye, Aloa saw the rake the stable hand had left behind. She would not die without a fight. She moved a few inches toward the heavy tool.

  “I’m tired of being afraid of them,” Tremblay was saying. “Where are they going to stop? If they killed Ethan, they could kill anybody who didn’t agree with their politics or their plans or had oil or diamonds or gold that some company wanted.”

  Aloa took another slow step toward the rake.

  “I can’t believe you killed her,” Tremblay said.

  “She was a problem,” Jordan said. “Hey!” She lifted the gun from her side toward Aloa. “Get back here.”

  Aloa froze.

  Tremblay’s eyes darted from the gun to Aloa and back again. “What the hell are you doing, Jordan?”

  “I’m fixing another problem,” Jordan said. “We need to get rid of her.”

  Every neuron, every nerve in Aloa’s body was firing. “Even if you kill me, it won’t end. There’ll just be more reporters. They’ll dig like I did. It won’t take them long to figure out you were there when Hayley died,” Aloa said.

  “I don’t believe you. Shut up.” Jordan lifted the gun so the muzzle was aimed directly at Aloa’s face.

  What happened next was a blur: A shout from Tremblay, a sudden move, an explosion of noise. A heavy weight fell against Aloa, knocking her to the floor. She was pinned by a soft heaviness she couldn’t explain. It was claustrophobic, cloying. She scrabbled from beneath it.

  In front of her lay Hank Tremblay, a bloom of red staining his flamboyant shirt.

  “You shot him,” Aloa cried.

  “He grabbed the gun. It went off.” Panic tinged Jordan’s voice.

  Aloa touched a finger to Tremblay’s neck, searching for a pulse. Nausea rose in her throat.

  “Get away from him,” Jordan barked.

  Aloa thought she felt a flutter of heartbeat under her fingertips but she couldn’t be sure. Blood pooled on the brick floor.

  “Look what you did,” Aloa said, anger building.

  “Stop talking.”

  “He’s going to die, Jordan.”

  “I said, be quiet.”

  “You know what? I don’t think you’re a patriot,” Aloa said, getting slowly to her feet. “I think you just used that excuse to hide the fact you wanted revenge for Charlie, for his death.”

  Aloa measured the distance to the rake.

  “You’re not even a real soldier,” Aloa went on, holding Jordan’s eyes with her own. “If you were, you’d know soldiers don’t kill innocent people.” Aloa moved toward the rake. “What you are is a rent-a-cop playing games. Games that got out of hand.”

  Another few inches.

  “Everything is falling apart,” Aloa pressed. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. Only this time you’ll be the inmate and not the guard.” She pointed at Tremblay’s body. “Look at him.”

  Jordan’s eyes shifted toward Tremblay, and that’s when Aloa made her move.

  She leaped across the stable floor and grabbed the rake, swinging it at Jordan in a fierce arc.

  The tool’s heavy tines struck Jordan’s wrist, causing her to cry out and the gun to fall and skitter across the brick floor.

  The two women’s eyes met for a moment, and then Jordan darted for the pistol. Aloa stabbed the rake toward the athlete as if warding off a rabid dog. They circled. Jordan lunged. Aloa thrust the rake again.

  “You can’t win,” Jordan said, breathing hard.

  “We’ll see about that,” Aloa said, and jabbed the tool into the athlete’s chest, knocking her backward to the ground.

  Aloa sprang toward the gun just as Jordan scrambled to her feet. The runner threw her weight into Aloa’s legs and Aloa fell hard, feeling twin stabs of pain in her knees. Now the two were grabbing and kicking. Their fingers raked faces, their feet connected with flesh. Then, suddenly, a fist was in Aloa’s hair and she felt her forehead slam into the bricks. For a moment, she saw stars.

  Aloa groaned and rolled over, blinking at the pain. Jordan stood above her, the gun in her hands, her eyes wild. “This is what you get for hating America,” she said, and aimed the gun at Aloa’s chest.

  Aloa couldn’t help it. She threw her arms over her face and squeezed her eyes shut.

  But instead of a gunshot, she heard Jordan say, “What the . . . ?” followed by a grunt, a thump, and the muffled sound of something hitting the floor.

  Aloa opened her eyes to find Jordan lying on the ground with Tick standing above her, his breath coming in raspy pulls, his conker—the dangerous tube sock—still swinging in his hand.

  “Jeez, Ink, you scared the hell out of us,” Tick said.

  “Yeah,” said a voice, and Aloa turned to see P-Mac and Doc beh
ind her, both silhouetted in the glare coming through the big stable door, each holding a baseball bat.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Doc said.

  CHAPTER 45

  Aloa sat in front of the editor’s desk at Novo’s headquarters, Michael sprawled in a chair next to her. He rested his chin on his fingers as Aloa recounted to the editor, Dean Topper, her desperate drive to RedHawk’s headquarters, the car accident that had slowed the Brain Farm’s van on the bridge, and their discovery of her damp notebook in Jordan’s driveway. They’d used Doc’s new iPhone to hack into Aloa’s HardE app and used the passwords Tick had stolen from her computer to track her to Tremblay’s headquarters. Thank god for the obsessive little app and for the Brain Farm’s nosy ways. Her knights in rusting Volkswagen armor.

  “Once we heard the shot from the stable, we knew we had to move,” Doc had said to Aloa after the police swarmed the concussed Jordan and a coroner’s van drove off with Tremblay’s body. Paramedics had been unable to revive him.

  “P-Mac came up with the ambush plan,” Doc had said.

  “Simple distract and attack,” P-Mac had grumbled. He didn’t like hero labels.

  “Don’t forget who did the conking and who hacked the gate code,” Tick had said.

  “Li’l Jackie and I scared the hell out of her,” Doc had added. “Six-foot-five black guy with a bat? You should have seen her, man.”

  “My god,” said Dean, the editor. “Maybe we should make those guys a sidebar.”

  The first installment of Aloa’s three-part series was ready to go live. Day one covered the Pro-Power 500 fiasco, Pontifex’s history, and the Africa plot. Day two was the trip to Africa and Ethan’s death at the hands of hired killers. (Combs would be tearing out his carefully styled hair when he saw that.) Day three was the triggering of the starter interrupter, which, although it had been coincidental, had led to Hayley’s murder, Tremblay’s death, and eventually the charges facing Jordan Connor, along with sources who confirmed the diamond mine had been retaken around the time Tremblay was killed. (Detective Quinn was close to linking Calvin’s death to Radnor Chee, but no charges had been filed yet.)

  Chee was nowhere to be found. A flight to New Jersey had brought Aloa to an empty office in Toms River, where Pontifex had supposedly been headquartered, and Aloa guessed he had left the country, although Steve Porter could find no passport record for him.

  The PR flack for the Pontecorvo brothers insisted Pontifex was an independent company that had handled a minor problem with a security breach at one of its international branches but that the firm’s work had been unsatisfactory and the relationship dissolved. The brothers only met Chee once, the flack insisted, and they knew nothing about a diamond mine or a plot to kill terrorists. The Pontecorvos were backpedaling so fast they’d wind up disavowing their mother if this kept up, Aloa had thought.

  The missing flash drive, which included Ethan’s book along with photographic and audio evidence of the plot to poison the extremists at the diamond mine, had been found by Aloa, tucked into a false lid on Hayley’s keepsake box, which had been mercifully overlooked by the burglar, tucked away as it was on Aloa’s bookcase. Smart girl, that Hayley.

  “Would you like to see the page before it goes live?” Dean asked.

  “I guess.” Aloa’s heart gave a skip.

  Dean touched a few keys and a stark photo montage of mountains, a hooded assassin, a map of Africa, and Hayley and Ethan standing atop a boulder appeared as a banner across her series.

  SHADOW WAR, read the headline. AN INVESTIGATION INTO MURDER, LIES, AND A SECRET PLOT TO STOP THE TERRORISTS.

  BY ALOA SNOW.

  Aloa felt a prick of pride but also nerves. She never thought she’d see her name on a story like that again.

  “Well?” Dean asked.

  “It, um, looks good,” Aloa said.

  “Good? It’s terrific,” Dean said. He glanced over at Michael. “In fact, I owe you both an apology for thinking the story wasn’t worth anything.”

  “Thanks, Dean,” Michael said.

  Aloa only nodded.

  Dean grew serious. “You know this is going to raise a ruckus—and not just because some wackos decided to take war into their own hands.” He looked at Aloa. “There’s going to be blowback. People are going to come at you from all kinds of directions.”

  Aloa knew the truth of it, but having Dean say it aloud made it seem more real somehow.

  “They’ll be bringing up the nail salon story, your resignation, anything they can to discredit the story. People are going to be scrambling to put out the fires this thing is going to set off.”

  “I know,” Aloa said.

  “We can handle this however you want,” Dean said. “Usually on a story like this, we’d have a reporter available for talk shows, interviews, what have you. But in this case, maybe you’d rather lay low for a while.”

  “I think laying low is a good idea,” Michael said.

  “I can handle it,” Aloa said.

  “I just worry that you’ll be the story, instead of the series,” Michael said. “That’s how those guys operate.”

  “He’s got a point,” Dean said.

  “You could come to Montana for a few weeks while Dean handles things here,” Michael said, turning toward her. “We could hike, go into town. There’s a great little burger joint. You’ll like the place. Lots of open space, plenty of birds. A fine front porch.” His eyes searched hers. “We can spend a little time catching up.”

  Aloa looked out the editor’s window at the afternoon sun. September was a fine time to be in San Francisco, the air crisp, the tourists departed.

  “I think I’ll stay here and take the heat,” Aloa said, and held up a hand toward Michael. “I don’t want to run. I already did that once and it didn’t work out so well.”

  “Good for you,” Dean said. “We’re behind you all the way.”

  Aloa stood. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, Dean. Answer calls, do interviews. I’m guessing there will be follow-up pieces.”

  “For sure,” Dean said.

  “I’ve got to go, but I just want to say thanks for giving me a chance.” Aloa moved toward the door.

  “No need,” Dean said.

  Michael got to his feet. “Wait. Could we talk for a minute, ’Lo?”

  Aloa looked at him, remembering the way he’d looked out on the raft on the lake so long ago, the way he and her father would sometimes play catch in the backyard, both of them so content, so happy. “Maybe some other time, Michael. Right now, I have an appointment I can’t miss.”

  Guillermo brought out a coconut curry cake covered in pecans and raisins and set it grandly amid the detritus of what had been an incredible meal.

  Aloa had arrived at Justus at the appointed time of six o’clock to find the Brain Farm clustered around a center table and Erik shooing out two German tourists who, pink and peeling from overexposure to the California sun, had wanted a beer and were insisting the sign proclaimed the bar open until 1:00 a.m.

  “I’m sure it’s one o’clock somewhere,” Erik had said, closing the door firmly behind them. He swept closed the curtains and hung a sign on the front door that proclaimed SHUT FOR PRIVATE PARTY.

  He flung open his arms. “Let the wild night begin,” he said.

  Guillermo brought out the first of many courses to come—a pot of mussels in a fiery sauce—and they proceeded to celebrate the heck out of the fact that not only was Aloa alive but, they believed, she would win what Tick insisted on calling “the pullet surprise.”

  She watched the old men chew and slosh wine and wipe bits of food from their wrinkled lips and felt affection for them, her mismatched and ill-fitting tribe.

  Around ten, she lifted Baxter from her lap, where he’d feasted on bits of Japanese steak, and allowed Erik to talk her into letting him walk her home.

  “Somebody messes with you and I’ll rip them a new seam,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she told him, �
�but company would be nice.”

  They walked through the neighborhood and climbed the hill to her house. The evening hinted at the arrival of winter, but right now the air was warm.

  Erik went up the stairs ahead of her and plucked a bottle from the top step.

  “Glenlivet,” he said. “Somebody knows their scotch.”

  A business card had been rubber-banded to the bottle and he pulled it off. “Hmmm. The card seems to belong to one Rick Quinn of the Major Crimes Unit at SFPD, and it says, ‘Nice work, Snow.’” Erik lifted his eyebrows.

  “I gave him some information on Radnor Chee. It’s a thank-you scotch.”

  “Believe whatever fairy tale you want, honey, but scotch isn’t a thank-you note. It’s a party invitation.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Now go inside and lock the door.”

  Aloa did what he said and went to the front window. Erik stood protectively on the sidewalk.

  She lifted a hand to let him know all was well, and he lifted his in return.

  Then he turned, and she watched him lumber off.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A writer may write in solitude but there are a whole lot of people behind her when she does. Huge thanks to my agent, Heather Jackson, for taking me (and Aloa) under her very competent and wise wing, and to Liz Pearsons at Thomas & Mercer, whose support, intelligence, and enthusiasm have made all the difference.

  Thanks also to editors Heather Lazare and Faith Black Ross for making this book sing, and to the entire team at Thomas & Mercer for their talent, care, and passion for books.

  Loud applause to my writing groups, who taught me so much about the craft and who kept me at my keyboard when I was tempted to wander off: Kathleen Founds, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth McKenzie, Liza Monroy, Micah Perks, Melissa Sanders-Self, Susan Sherman, Jill Wolfson, Wallace Baine, Jessica Breheny, John Chandler, Richard Huffman, Richard Lange, Vito Victor, and Dan White. Also, thanks to Martha Mendoza for her insights on investigative reporting, to Gail Michaelis-Ow and Claudia Sternbach for their unwavering encouragement, to Kayla Isenberg, Shelly King, and Carolyn Lagattuta for making me look good on social media, and to Mary Bisbee-Beek for helping get the word out. Thanks, too, to Todd Newberry for teaching me how to really see birds and to Randy and Mary-Jo Lomax for the seaside cottage. Huge thanks go out to all my family (Henry, Regina, Chris, Jack, Mary, and Garren) for their love and encouragement, and to Cody Townsend and Elyse Saugstad for teaching me so much about facing fear and embracing every minute of life.