The Final Twist

54

The water was a chameleon.

Back on the Embarcadero, Colter Shaw was looking over the Bay. One thing he recalled from living here ages ago: the hue of the rocking waves would change from day to day. A riveting blue, rich as an empress’s sapphire. Then a matte gray. Sometimes tropical green.

Today, under yet another June gloom overcast, the Bay was dun, the color — he couldn’t help but think — of a newly turned grave in a cemetery rich with clay.

He kept his eye on the street, the traffic. Russell hadn’t seen the green Honda or its blond driver recently but Shaw decided that she was too persistent to have given up.

He also suspected she’d rented a new car, now that he’d made her. It’s what he would’ve done.

But that sedan wasn’t the only vehicle he was interested in. There was another one he kept looking for.

And it happened to pull up to the curb now near him.

You didn’t see many Rolls-Royces in the Bay Area. Of course, there was plenty of money to buy everything from Teslas to Ferraris to Bugattis, but the Rolls — and sibling Bentley — marque was not the sort that appealed to the Silicon Valley crowd, it seemed. Maybe the recent designs — you could mistake them for a Dodge at a distance — were not showy or distinctive enough. Maybe they signified old money, which Google, Facebook and YouTube decidedly were not.

Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, Shaw stood and walked to the ruddy-colored vehicle.

The driver, who’d exited the car, was the same man he and his brother had seen at the Tenderloin UIP meeting and the safe house. He was armed, a large 1911 Colt automatic on his hip.

Shaw walked around the car to the driver’s side. The man said, “Mr. Shaw. I’m wearing a recording device, which will be running throughout this meeting.” He spoke in unaccented American English.

“Are you now?”

“So the record will show that there’s been no coercion. I’m inviting you into the car. And you’re free to get in or not.”

This was curious, since Shaw himself had arranged the get-together. There perhaps was a history of people being “encouraged” to get into Devereux’s car when they were not wholly inclined to do so.

“Fair enough. And since we’re setting ground rules, I’ll tell you that I just texted my associate a photo of your car and its license tag. If I don’t text her again in thirty minutes, she’ll alert the police that there’s been a kidnapping.”

Shaw heard a high-pitched chuckle from inside. When the driver looked into the back, apparently getting the okay sign, he opened the door.

Sitting in the driver’s side backseat was a gorgeous blonde with teased-up and sprayed-down hair. She was beautiful, no doubt, but would have been more so had she lost the heavy makeup, which favored purples and blues. She was not the woman Shaw and Russell had seen accompanying Devereux in the safe house on Alvarez, though in line with the dress code her skirt was just as short and her blouse just as low.

Devereux slipped his hand into a pocket and extracted several hundred dollar bills. “Get yourself some coffee or a glass of wine. Have some lunch. There’s a good girl.” The condescension dripped.

“Girl.” She huffed but took the money. “Can’t I come with?”

“Cassie, please.”

“It’s Carrie.”

“I do beg forgiveness. I was distracted.” His eyes scanned her figure.

Did men really get away with this crap? Shaw wondered.

She offered a forced smile to Shaw and climbed out, walking away on clattering heels.

He called after her, “If you get lunch, no garlic.”

Shaw bent down and looked at Jonathan Stuart Devereux. “Droon and Braxton? Anyone from BlackBridge?”

“They don’t even know I’m here, do they? I’m adhering to your requirements, Mr. Shaw. You’ve set the agenda.”

Shaw got into the seat Carrie had occupied. He was enveloped in the cloud of her perfume. He dropped his backpack on the spacious floor before him. He glanced around. Bird’s-eye maple, luxurious carpet, polished chrome. This really was a marvelous vehicle. There was a control on the door for what seemed to be a back massager.

The Rolls pulled away from the curb and moved silently and smoothly through the streets. It had to be one hell of a suspension system; some roads in the Embarcadero were cobblestoned.

Shaw had seen Devereux from a distance, in the Tenderloin and through Russell’s security camera at the safe house. Up close, observing the man clearly, Shaw decided he could be an ambassador. This suit was gray with darker gray stripes. Maybe he felt the vertical lines made him look thinner. Today’s explosive handkerchief was pale blue. Shaw caught a glimpse of a Ferragamo label inside his jacket. Did he keep it unbuttoned to show off the name? How much wealthier would he be if his corporation began holding office in the state? He suspected after a certain decimal place, you begin to focus on power, not gold.

“Mr. Shaw. I was, as you can imagine, surprised when I got your message.”

Before they got to business, though, Devereux’s phone hummed. He looked at the screen. “Yes?” Upon listening to a caller Shaw could not hear, Devereux grew motionless, his face stilled. “That will hardly work, now, will it?” His face was the epitome of calm but the voice was filled with ice. “Mais, non.” And launched into what Shaw assumed was perfect French. Shaw had known a number of people from the UK who were multilingual. It was only a fifty-dollar BudgetAir ticket from London to any number of exotic locales. Very different in faraway America.

After five minutes he reverted to English once more, apparently addressing the original speaker. He wiped his brow and shiny head with a handkerchief. “You better do.”

He disconnected and turned his attention back to Shaw, who suspected that he had not needed to take the call at all but — like with the suit jacket label — it was a show of power. He’d also like to keep people waiting; he had arrived at the Embarcadero fifteen minutes late. “So. The floor is yours.”

“I have something you’re after. I want to negotiate a deal. That’s why I called you, and not Droon or Braxton. I don’t trust them. All of their strong-arm crap. It’s not helpful.”

Devereux was silent for a moment but the pleasure was obvious in his face. “Always good to eliminate the middleman, if possible. Cheaper in the long run.” He added, “Safer too in most instances.”

Shaw continued, “You and the people from BlackBridge broke into a house of my father’s. Alvarez Street.”

The driver glanced in the rearview mirror.

Devereux reassured him with a shake of the head.

To Shaw he said, “That’s not accurate. They were already there. I have no idea how they got in. They invited me to join them. I didn’t know whose house it was.” His fingers were flying, twitchy. It wasn’t a palsy; he could control it. “Not at that time.”

“My family’s in danger.”

Devereux nodded. “I see. You heard us. You were bugging the house.”

“I don’t believe it’s bugging if it’s your house.”

“Well taken. Go on.”

Shaw said, “My mother and sister are safe. But I want to make sure they stay safe. I’ll give you what you want and you call off Droon and Braxton.”

“I’m intrigued. So it was in Gahl’s courier bag.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want a guarantee of your family’s safety for it, of course. But there’s more in it for you. Do you know, Mr. Shaw, that one could argue that money dates back more than forty thousand years — to the Upper Paleolithic era. It took the form of barter but look at it this way: there were undoubtedly humans back then who did not need the flint arrowhead they traded ears of corn for. That makes the arrowhead a form of currency. A stone tuppence, you could say.

“Then there’s the Mesopotamian shekel. I have one from five thousand years ago. That was among the first coins. The first mints were built in the first millennium b.c. They stamped gold and silver coins for the Lydians and Ionians to use to pay for armies.”

“Hobby of yours?”

“Bloody well is!” Devereux blustered. He seemed delighted. “Now, back to business. I get what I want and I’ll write you a check — well, you’ll want a wire transfer, of course — for quite the pretty sum. You can move your family wherever you want. They’ll be completely out of harm’s way. What proof could you give me that you have it?”

Shaw said, “Why don’t I show it to you.” He lifted his backpack to his lap.

The fingers stopped moving, the arms stopped waving. Surprise — what seemed like an alien expression — blossomed in his face, followed by greedy anticipation.

Shaw unzipped the backpack and handed Devereux a thick plastic binder.

Devereux took it and emptied the contents onto his lap. He eagerly began flipping through the sheets of paper inside.

Shaw said, “Of course, these are copies. I have the originals.”

Devereux frowned when he’d finished. “What’s this?”

Shaw was hesitating, a confused look on his face. “It’s what you’re looking for.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t know what this is.”

“It’s what Amos Gahl stole from BlackBridge. What was in the courier bag. Proof about the Urban Improvement Plan. It’s evidence for the police.”

Devereux shook his head. “Where’s the voting tally?”

“What’s that?”

He eyed Shaw closely. “The legal ruling from nineteen oh-six? A single sheet of paper signed by a judge?”

Shaw looked toward the papers in Devereux’s hand. “That’s all that was in the bag. I mean, some magazines and newspapers, some memos, but all dated within the past ten years. I went through every single page. Nothing a hundred years old.” Shaw’s body language skills came into play again, though in reverse. He made certain that now, when he was lying, he kept his mannerisms and expressions unchanged from a moment ago when he’d been telling the truth. “I thought that’s what you wanted. To destroy the evidence about the UIP.”

Devereux sighed. The hands began to twitch again. “I don’t know what the UIP is.”

“Really?”

“No,” he muttered.

“BlackBridge’s Urban Improvement Plan. Seeding drugs into neighborhoods to lower property values. So people like you can buy up the land for cheap.”

The man’s face grew rosier, and not in a good way. His jaw was tight. “I have no knowledge of that whatsoever. I hire BlackBridge to help me identify properties to buy, yes, but I know nothing about any drugs. What a horrific idea.”

“It is. But it’s not my issue. I’m not going on a crusade if it puts my family in danger.”

Devereux would be wondering if Shaw was right. Maybe the courier bag didn’t have the tally in it. But if not, then where was it? His eyes grew cold, and under those small fingers the copies of the UIP documents shivered. He read through them again. “I’ve dealt with enough solicitors and barristers in my day to know this hardly amounts to evidence, Mr. Shaw.”

Silence for a moment as the Rolls climbed California Street and swerved around a cable car, bristling with enthusiastic tourists.

“I don’t think I believe you, Mr. Shaw. You’re playing hard to get. I’m going to assume you found the vote tally certificate. You hid it somewhere. And you’re holding out for more.”

Shaw appeared exasperated. He tried not to overdo it. “Voting about what? Why’s it so important?”

“It just is.” Devereux was growing irritated. Finally the man controlled his pique. “I would be willing to pay seven figures to you, in cash, untraceable, for the certificate. You will never want for anything again.”

Curious phrase, archaic. And an odd concept; Colter Shaw had not wanted for anything for a long time. Maybe since birth, and money had nothing to do with it.

“This tally, whatever it is, wasn’t in the courier bag. What do you want it for?”

The man who would be king...

Devereux didn’t answer. He looked out the window. Very few people disappointed Jonathan Stuart Devereux, Shaw supposed. And fewer still did not do what he wished them to.

If this were Ebbitt Droon, of course, Shaw would probably be on his way to a warehouse in a deserted part of the city. Maybe across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, a city where there would be far more industrial spaces practically designed for torture and body disposal.

The Tannery...

When they had met once earlier in the month, Droon had tried to extract information by threatening him with a .40 pistol — a big, nasty bullet — targeting joints, which would have the effect of altering them forever. Now, apparently he’d returned to the twisting knife — what he’d used on Amos Gahl.

Devereux turned back to him. “All right. Eight figures.”

Shaw wondered where on the scale between ten million and ninety-nine the man was thinking. He guessed the payoff would be on a low rung of the ladder.

“A higher number isn’t going to miraculously produce something I didn’t have two minutes ago. In exchange for leaving my family alone, I’ll give you the Urban Improvement Plan evidence, whether or not you say you don’t know what it is.” He shrugged. “If it’s not enough for the prosecutor, then it might at least point the police in a... helpful direction.”

Sullen, Devereux muttered. “I doubt that will be a very productive endeavor, Mr. Shaw.”

They had arrived back at the place where they had picked Shaw up. Carrie was nowhere to be seen.

The CEO looked around for her.

Perhaps it had been one jab too many.

Devereux shrugged. “It happens. Those girls...”

Shaw thought: Good for you, Carrie.

Devereux tapped the driver on the shoulder. The man shut the recorder off. The tape was soon to be erased.

A sigh. “I would hate to have to turn this matter back to Ian Helms and Irena Braxton. They’re so... unsubtle. Let me encourage you to have another look at the contents of the courier bag. Discuss it with your bearded friend. Eight figures is, after all, eight figures.”

He handed the copies back and Shaw slipped them into his backpack.

The driver was out of the car and opening the door. Shaw stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Shaw heard Devereux’s voice. “I would look very carefully for that tally, Mr. Shaw. It would be good for everyone.”

55

“How is it there?” Shaw asked.

Victoria Lesston said through the speaker on Shaw’s Android, “We’re vigilant. Carrying sidearms. Your friend’s guys brought a machine gun.”

“Mary Dove told me.”

“What’re you up to?”

Back in the Pacific Heights safe house, sitting beside an open window and letting a pleasant breeze breathe past him. “Just hung out with a lecherous billionaire.”

“You have all the fun.”

His eyes were on the sketch he’d done of Echo Ridge, in the Davis & Sons frame, hanging on the wall. Even though it was in save-a-few-bucks plastic, the art didn’t look at all bad.

“Your mother,” she said, “was telling me about Ash. Sorry I never got a chance to meet him.”

“He was quite a man. Troubled, complicated, compassionate. Nobody like him in the world. He was a crusader.”

“This thing you found? So, you think it’s true?”

He said, “It is, yes. A real voting tally from nineteen oh-six. If it got out in public, it’ll change... well, it’ll change everything.”

“Is it safe? The tally.”

“I hid it in a picture frame.”

“In plain sight?”

“Not really. It’s facing backward.”

“A framed blank page — isn’t that a little obvious?”

“There’s a sketch I drew on the back. A landscape.”

“But it’s not what your father was looking for?”

“The tally? No. He didn’t even know it existed.” His voice grew terse. “He was looking for evidence to bring down BlackBridge and get the president — this guy named Helms — arrested. But there never was any. Only the vote tally. Oh, he had a mixed tape too.”

“A what?”

“Another story for when I see you again.” He wished they could have a longer conversation, but this wasn’t the time or place.

A pause. “Which will be when?”

Shaw nearly said as soon as possible. He missed her. But chose: “A few days. Just some loose ends here.”

The front door opened and Russell walked into the living room.

“My brother’s here. I better go.”

“Say hi to the mystery man for me.”

Shaw liked the lilt in her voice.

They disconnected.

Russell asked, “How did it go with Devereux?”

“He had an idea we’d found the tally. But he wasn’t sure. He might think Gahl hid it somewhere else. He offered to pay us a little money for it.”

“Little? Six figures?”

Silence.

“Seven?”

“More.”

“Hmm.” Russell’s go-to response. The accompanying facial expression was: easy come, easy go.

“He suggested that Braxton and Droon were going to step up to bat again.”

“Used a baseball analogy?”

“No, that was mine. He collects money. Devereux.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“No. I mean, he’s a real collector. Old coins and bills. Ancient. A hobby. Does that make him a numismatist?”

“Couldn’t tell you.” Russell walked close to the frame and examined his brother’s sketch.

It was only then that Shaw realized that it might be titled View from Echo Ridge. Which was, of course, the very spot where Colter had believed his brother had murdered Ashton. What had subconsciously motivated him to pick that scene for the drawing?

His brother studied it closely.

Would he remark on Shaw’s choice?

“You can’t see the typewriting on the other side” was all he offered. He turned away.

“They used thick paper back then.”

Shaw was about to say something but then tensed, cocking his head.

“Colt?” Russell asked.

Shaw held up a finger. He rose and stepped to the front door. He peered through the peephole.

He stepped outside, hand on his gun. He noticed a woman in a maid’s uniform, sorting towels on a cart, facing away. He returned a moment later and closed the door. “Maid.”

It was then that a brilliant white flash from outside filled the room and an instant later the staccato crack of an explosion rattled windows. Car alarms were wailing.

Both brothers drew their guns and looked out.

Two men in tactical black and ski masks had blown open the door of Russell’s SUV. Apparently the vehicle had extra reinforcement and the bang had not completely breached the vehicle. One of them was trying to pull the door open all the way.

Russell muttered, “You flank, the alley.”

Shaw nodded.

His brother didn’t bother with the subtle approach. He went for a frontal assault. He stepped out the window and balanced briefly on a ledge. He then judged angles and leapt onto the roof of the one-story building below.

Hiding his gun under his jacket, so as not to startle residents in the building and earn a 911 report, Shaw closed and locked the window his brother had just climbed through and then walked into the hallway, now empty. He was in a hurry, yes, but took the time to double-lock the door. He jogged to the stairwell that would take him to the exit in the basement.

On the street it was soon obvious that a firefight was not forthcoming.

The two tactical ops were gone.

Shaw joined Russell, standing beside the car and examining the damage, which was considerable. A six-inch hole had been blown in the door near the lock. It seemed like an efficient, if messy, way to enter a vehicle, but they hadn’t known about the extra steel plates. The door held.

“What happened?” Shaw asked.

“They saw me and my weapon and decided not to engage. They had a van waiting up the street.”

“BlackBridge? Or one of your customers from the Oakland operation?” Shaw was thinking of the hidden room in the safe house and his brother’s maps of the docks across the Bay — which had a decidedly tactical theme about them.

“BlackBridge or Devereux. My other project? No one is a risk anymore.”

“How’d they make us?” Shaw asked.

“I’ve got some thoughts on that.”

But he didn’t explain just now. He tilted his head, listening.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“I’ll have to talk to the cops.” Russell was the epitome of calm.

“You have weapons inside?”

“Won’t be a problem.”

“Who’s it registered to?” The smoke was acrid, Shaw’s eyes burned. The breaching charge involved manganese or phosphorus.

“A company. Offshore. Done this before. Go back upstairs.”

Shaw nodded.

He turned and left, walking back to the front door of the residence. The back one, through which he’d exited, was self-locking. And while he could jimmy it, there was no reason to. Shaw entered the building and climbed the stairs. Survivalists tended to avoid elevators. For one thing, he recalled his father’s rule:

Never miss the opportunity to strengthen limbs in everyday life.

For another, in an elevator you’re subject to someone else’s control.

On the second floor, he walked to their unit and undid both locks.

He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He was only three or four feet inside when he glanced up to where he’d hung the Davis & Sons frame, containing the halfway decent sketch of the stark view from Echo Ridge.

The wall was now bare.

56

They’d tagged him.

That’s how Droon and Braxton had found the new safe house.

Tagging.

“Got the back of your jacket.” Russell scanned the garment with a handheld device that looked like a noncontact thermometer. The display lit up with little yellow dots.

“How?”

“Where were you when you met with Devereux?”

“The backseat of the Rolls.”

“They coated it. RFID dust.”

Radio frequency identification.

In the Compound, where there was no high-tech, the three children were not exposed to the basic internet, much less the universe of other digital esoterica. In the years since he’d been out in the real world, as a reward-seeker, Shaw had embraced much that was electronic and he’d heard of RFID dust. It was a common technique used by security and military forces — those from countries with sophisticated SIGINT — signals intelligence — operations, and sizable budgets. Radio frequency tracking systems were complicated and worked only with state-of-the-art equipment. Satellites and drones were involved.

Once tagged, you could be trailed even when you ducked out of sight and moved via underground passages. Algorithms compared geographic mapping systems to predict where you would emerge. When you did, another sensor would pick you up again, then hand off to others.

Really remarkable.

“There was a passenger in the seat before me, one of Devereux’s dates.”

“She got tagged too but there was plenty to go around.” Russell added, “He maybe brought her along so you wouldn’t be suspicious.”

“You’ll have to dump your jacket and jeans. Dry cleaning doesn’t kill them. Your boots’ll be okay.”

So Devereux had indeed been lying. Braxton and Droon knew about his meeting and had arranged for the dust in anticipation of it.

Well, Shaw himself hadn’t been the model of honesty with the billionaire.

Shaw went into the bedroom, stripped and tossed his clothes into a garbage bag — the second set of clothing he’d lost in the space of twenty-four hours. He changed into new jeans and a black polo shirt, untucked to keep his Glock concealed.

He found his brother on the phone. Russell nodded to a spot by the door and Shaw dropped the bag there. When he disconnected, his brother said, “I’m going to swap out the SUV. There’s a place in South San Francisco we use. I’ll take care of this.” He picked up the bag. “I’ll let you know if Karin gets anything on Blond.” With that, he was out the door.

He didn’t bother to call the management of the Pacific Heights residence. Shaw was sure that there was no maid service in this particular building at this particular time of day. The woman in the hall was no maid, but a BlackBridge employee.

The brothers could now return to the safe house on Alvarez Street. Why not? They weren’t at risk any longer, since Devereux, Ian Helms and Braxton had the document in the plastic frame.

And what was happening with the vote tally now?

Shaw guessed it was already en route to Sacramento, probably via private helicopter or jet. The legal department of the state assembly would be gearing up to consider how to handle an issue that none of them had ever had to face in their collective years as legislators: a century-old amendment to the state constitution that allowed corporations to hold public office. There would be the matter of authentication and a flurry of behind-the-scenes meetings. Shaw had no doubt that Devereux was pulling strings and disbursing cash to key players in the legislative and judicial branches of government. Wielding threats too. BlackBridge would be putting its skills at blackmail and extortion to work to gin up support for the amendment.

He sat down at his laptop. A fast search of the internet revealed that Devereux, the governor, and the chief justice of the California supreme court played golf together with some frequency, and Banyan Tree employed one of the largest lobbying firms in the state.

He wondered what the reaction would be — in California, the United States, the world.

The intercom buzzer hummed. Police, canvassing after the shoot-out? Had somebody followed him from the Steelworks club last night?

“Yes?”

“Mr. Shaw?”

“Who’s this?”

“Connie... Consuela Ramirez. Maria Vasquez’s my dear friend. I’m Tessy’s godmother. I’m sorry to trouble you. Can I see you for a few minutes? I won’t be long.”

He hit the entry button, then pulled his jacket on and lifted his shirt hem over the gun’s grip. He could draw faster this way, rather than the two-step, which involved lifting a garment with one hand and drawing with the dominant. Sometimes seconds mattered.

He wasn’t, however, too concerned. BlackBridge and Devereux had the document. Why draw attention by racking up bodies? Besides, the visitor had dropped Tessy’s and her mother’s names.

When the doorbell rang, he looked through the peephole and noted a dark-haired, attractive woman in her early thirties. She was in a nicely cut business suit. For some long seconds, Shaw watched her dark eyes through the lens. If she were with anyone, not visible, she would have glanced to the side. This did not happen.

Finally he let her in, tugging his shirt back down over his weapon.

“I’m Colter.”

They shook hands.

“Would you like to sit?”

She picked the couch and Shaw a nearby chair. He detected an ambivalent floral scent, not jasmine, not lilac, not rose. Pleasant, though.

“Only a minute of your time.”

“Please.”

“Maria told me what you did. You saved Tessy’s life.” Her voice was breathless. “I don’t know what we would have done... if...” She choked back a sob and wiped at her eyes, which were tearing. She looked in her purse.

Shaw asked if she wanted a tissue and she nodded. He got her a napkin from the kitchen.

She dabbed and tried to wipe the damaged mascara, much as Vasquez had done in her Tenderloin apartment. “Maria said you were a kind man. You would not take any money, the reward.”

“She told me her situation, being laid off. I don’t need the reward. I sometimes do that in my business.”

More often than Velma Bruin liked.

“I don’t have any more money than she does, but I do have this.” She opened her purse and handed him a black velvet bag. “This was a gift from my mother. Diamond and gold.”

Shaw looked inside and shook out a necklace. It was a flower petal, a rose, he thought, with a diamond set in the center.

“I can’t take this.”

A firm smile crossed her face. “In this life, Mr. Shaw, there is not much good. I would say good with a capital ‘G,’ you know. I think good must be rewarded. I could not sleep if you didn’t accept it. You saved my goddaughter’s life.”

He had received stocks and bonds on his reward jobs, in lieu of cash. Original art too. Never jewelry.

He hesitated. “Then thank you. I will.” He put the piece back in the bag and slipped that into his jacket pocket.

And walked her to the door.

She turned. “One favor? Maria’s proud. She would be embarrassed if she knew what I did.”

“A secret, sure.”

She shook his hand with both of hers. “Good, with a capital ‘G.’”

57

Colter Shaw had returned to Hunters Point.

He was all too aware that the clock was counting down on the SP family’s murders, and could think of nothing else to do. Kevin Miller, the O.G. with the Hudson Kings, had told him that crews from Salinas were making forays into this part of Hunters Point.

For two hours he canvassed people on the shabby streets, flashing Blond’s altered picture and asking if anybody knew him.

He wanted to believe that somewhere here was a lead to the identity of the family that BlackBridge had targeted to die.

A belief that was stubbornly, however, not becoming a reality.

As he walked back to the Yamaha, chained to a light pole in a large, deserted parking lot, he spotted some construction workers, jeans and T-shirts, tan or gray jackets. They’d just finished boarding up a building to the north side of the lot, the direction where the city proper lay. It was impossible to tell from the faded paint on the side of the place what the single-story structure might once have been. It seemed to say fresh eggs though that seemed plain odd.

He waved and walked toward the workers along the waterfront. He noted that the bay near the shoreline was coagulated with grease and probably toxic runoff from the old shipyard. He could see, far away, the massive battleship turret crane, an unobstructed view, and even from this distance it was impressive, a monument to ingenuity and muscle and industry.

The Egg building was masterfully sealed. Substantial plywood boards and many Sheetrock screws had been involved. Maybe the place had fallen into the hands of crack or meth users and the owner wanted to secure it permanently.

Shaw walked up, smiled and nodded.

The six men, half of them Anglo, half Latino, glanced his way, then their eyes slipped to the asphalt.

“You work around here mostly?”

One of them said, “The Point, Bayview.” The others remained cautious. Was he a cop? Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

“By any chance, you seen this guy? He was a buddy of mine in the Army. He’s gone missing.”

Offering his phone, Shaw continued to spin his tall tale. “Got into some drug trouble and ended up in Hunters Point somewhere. I want to find him, get him some help.”

They seemed to buy his story. All looked at the picture, then at one another, but finally shook their heads. Shaw’s sense was that they — unlike him — were being honest.

He thanked them and they piled into the vehicles and drove out of the parking lot, leaving the whole area deserted, except for Shaw.

It had been a long shot. As he walked back to his bike he wondered, Who are you, SP? And who are the children? How many? Were they sons, daughters, both? What was there about the gangs in Hunters Point that was central to your death sentence?

Questions, questions, questions...

And Colter Shaw was filled with anger that he couldn’t seem to get a single answer.

He pulled on his helmet, started the bike, tapped it into gear and eased forward. He accelerated and was about a hundred feet from the exit when a battered gray pickup truck shot out from between two small, abandoned warehouses and aimed right for him, speeding with a gassy roar.

The Ford bore down on him at thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour. He had no choice but to brake and spin the bars. The pickup passed within two feet of his front fender.

Shaw tried to steer into the skid, but like much of the parking lot the surface here was sand and disintegrated asphalt. The Yamaha went down and he tumbled off with the bike pinning his right leg and arm under its two hundred pounds of metal. Not a huge weight but he could get no leverage to rise or to reach his weapon.

Which he now saw he needed.

The driver and the passenger had climbed from the pickup and were walking toward him.

Shaw recognized them.

The BNG gangbangers he and Russell had relieved of their drugs, money and guns in the TL yesterday.

They reached under their untucked shirts and pulled out their new weapons and approached the bike.

58

“Ang malaking tao,” Red Shirt muttered.

White Shirt laughed. “Hindi ganoon kalaki ngayon.”

Which got a smile in return.

They were thirty feet away. Shaw struggled to shift the bike. It moved a bit, an inch.

Two inches.

Then the skinny men were twenty feet away. “Hey, asshole? Where what you stole?” The accent was thick, the words nearly imperceptible.

“Yeah, where?”

Just a little more and he could grab the Glock. A round was chambered, no safety to click. Point and shoot: the proud legacy of this brand of weapon.

Shaw muscled the bike a little farther off himself. Two more inches.

Come on, push it, come on...

Fifteen feet away.

He touched the grip of his weapon.

With one finger.

The men stopped. One whispered to the other. They shared another laugh.

Now two fingers.

White Shirt pulled a knife out of his pocket. It was spring operated and he flicked the black blade out.

Shaw thought: Insert, twist...

“I don’t have the drugs here. I can get them,” he said, stalling for time.

His fingers closed around the weapon’s grip.

“Where?”

“They’re back there.” Shaw gestured toward the Egg building.

As they looked, he shouldered the bike up and crouched. The two BNGs turned, guns rising. Shaw’s did too. He’d take one out at least, but where would the other one shoot him to wound. Maybe just to wound. They would really want their drugs back.

Weapons rose, fingers on the triggers...

At that moment a roar filled the parking lot.

It was a car engine. The vehicle was coming from the side, behind the Egg building.

The smiles vanished from the men’s faces and they spun around, lifting the guns.

But they were too late.

The white Chevy Impala slammed into them at speed. One flew against the wall and the other caromed off the hood. They lay still, eyes closed, though breathing.

The car skidded to a stop.

Shaw glanced at the driver, getting out, the blond woman in sunglasses and baseball cap. So she had swapped out the green Honda.

She pulled the glasses off and looked at Shaw.

He squinted. “You?”

59

He knew her name only as Adelle.

Or more formally, Journeyman Adelle.

“Are you all right?”

Shaw ignored the scraped knee. It was bleeding. Not bad.

He nodded, scanning the area for other hostiles. He saw none. He pulled off his helmet. Shaw walked to the BNGs and collected their guns. He put them into one man’s shoulder bag and set it by the motorcycle. He looked the men over. Neither was bleeding badly.

She glanced at the two Filipinos. Her gaze was clinical. Emotionless.

The woman, late twenties, had been a member and employee of the cult in Washington State where he had met Victoria Lesston — the cult he was just telling his brother about the charismatic — and dangerously narcissistic — clan leader had brainwashed her, and her fellow followers. She came to believe that if she were to kill herself, she would be reunited in the next life with her young daughter, who had died several years earlier.

There was no one near enough to have seen the incident. But they’d have to clean up quickly. He sent Russell a text telling him he was needed urgently, giving the GPS coordinates. He concluded:

The reply was nearly instantaneous.

Slipping his phone away, Shaw said to her, “Thank you.”

She nodded, still seemingly indifferent to what she’d just done. He wasn’t surprised at her reaction, nor with the vehicular assault in the first place. When he’d first seen her, last week, she had observed with no emotion the brutal beating of a reporter by the sadistic head of the cult’s security department. Shaw could still picture the three dots of the man’s blood on her blouse.

She walked the fifteen feet to the water’s edge and looked down. He joined her. He had plenty of questions, of course, but remained silent for a moment. Then:

“You got rid of the Honda.”

She nodded. “You spotted me. I had to.”

“So. How’d you get to San Francisco?”

After a moment she said, “At the camp? I talked to Journeyman Frederick and found out who you really were, that you’d been after this reward for Journeyman Adam, some crime they said he’d done. You were with him when he graduated.”

The cult’s troublingly sanitized term for suicide.

“He told me you had Adam’s notebook and that you were going to give it to his father, Mr. Harper. I drove to his shipping business in Gig Harbor and waited for you.”

Shaw couldn’t help but appreciate her clever, industrious detective work. And as for following him to San Francisco, if you’re going to be tailing a vehicle, when your subject is driving a thirty-foot motor home, your job is pretty damn easy.

“I was going to kill you. I didn’t have a gun. But I had my car. I was going to drive you off the road. I felt you ruined my life. You destroyed it. Everything he taught about coming back, it seemed so true. I believed it.” A sigh. “I remembered her face, her laugh, her little fingers — Jamie’s. My daughter’s... And all I could think was that you took away my chance to see her again. I wanted you to die. I was working up my courage. A couple times I almost hit you.”

“Eli did nothing but lie to you, to everybody. He wanted money and he wanted sex and he wanted power. Trying to sell immortality. It was all fake.”

“I know that now. Maybe I knew all along.” A sad smile. “Eli was pretty sharp. You can’t prove what he taught us doesn’t work.”

This was true. The only way to know for certain if there was an afterlife was to die, and nobody was going to send back social media pix from there, confirming the theory.

“The nails you threw into the street. You learn that from Journeyman Hugh?” The cult’s head of security.

“He said we needed to know how to stop enemies coming after us.”

“Why the change of heart, Adelle?”

She blinked, maybe at the use of her given name alone. In the cult you always used a prefix: at first “Novice,” then “Apprentice” and finally the coveted “Journeyman.”

Shaw had no idea what her last name was. Withholding those from members of the cult had been a way for the leader to control his sheep.

“I can’t really say. Maybe... Eli’s spell wore off.”

She’d hesitated again before mentioning the cult leader’s name. It was a serious breach of the rules to fail to refer to him as “Master Eli.”

She turned her eyes his way. “I kept thinking, you had to die... But I couldn’t get out of my head that you helped people. You saved lives. Hugh and Eli would have poisoned them. And you nearly got killed... So I couldn’t hurt you. It would just be wrong.”

Noise from the highway. A Lincoln Navigator appeared, paused and then drove to where Adelle and Shaw stood. Russell got out.

“This is Adelle. Russell.”

They nodded to each other and Russell looked over the BNGs. “How’d they make you?”

“Been here, asking about Blond. Maybe word got back.”

Now the same white van Shaw remembered from several days ago pulled up, and Karin and Ty got out. The other group ops weren’t present. Ty assessed one of the injured Filipinos and gave him an injection.

Shaw stirred.

Russell said, “Just a painkiller.”

The second man too was treated.

“We’ll drop them off at a hospital, take a picture of their licenses and tell them to get amnesia.”

Shaw said, “She needs to be safe. Out of the area. Where can you go?”

“My sister’s in Vegas.”

Russell said, “We’ll get you on a plane. It has to happen now.”

Adelle nodded.

“I’ll drive you to SFO.” He nodded at her Impala. “Report it stolen to the rental company.”

“But—”

“Report it stolen.”

“Okay.”

The car would be cubed within the day and in a scrapyard by tomorrow.

Russell asked, “You have things somewhere? A hotel?”

“Motel Six. Near the airport.”

Karin took a call, listened then disconnected. “Possible facial recognition hit on Blond from the alley. Came up at a joint OC task force in San Leandro. They’re cross-referencing. We should know soon.”

The brothers shared a glance. If they could get his ID, that might be enough to crack the code of the Hunters Point gang, which would lead to finding out who the SP family was and stopping the hit.

Shaw checked his motorcycle for damage — there was little.

He said to Adelle, “You know you’ll meet somebody, you’ll have children. You’ll never forget Jamie. But you can move on. Not in a cult. In the real world. We’re diminished by things that happen to us in life. But we can find a separate happiness.”

In his rewards business, Colter Shaw had on occasion had to counsel the grieving. Not all jobs ended happily.

There was a salute that was used in the cult, an open palm touching the opposite shoulder. By reflex Adelle started to do this now. Then stopped herself and gave a small smile and hugged Shaw hard.

60

After stopping along the way to make a purchase, Shaw returned to Pacific Heights to pack up. The brothers could now return to Alvarez Street, as the safe house was indeed safe once again. Mary Dove and Dorie and her family would not be in danger any longer either. There’d be no point in targeting them, though out of prudence Shaw texted them to keep Plans A and B in place for the time being.

Shaw brewed another cup of coffee, this one Guatemalan, and a fine brew it was, deriving from a grower that, in his opinion, had been sadly overlooked for years. He and the farmer knew each other. The man had suggested Shaw come to Central America, where abductions were common, and said, “You, Mr. Colter, can make a great deal of money, I would think, at rewards.”

Shaw had explained that he was familiar with Latin American kidnappings. They occurred for two reasons. One was snatching corporate execs. The bad guys throw a CEO or general manager into the back of a van, submit a demand for a quarter million and release him or her when the money is dropped. The victim’s company and family never post a reward offer; they buy kidnap insurance and in ninety-five percent of those cases the victim is returned largely unharmed.

The other reason people are kidnapped down there is because of politics or cartel business, in which case the vics are dead five minutes after they vanish and rescue is not an option.

This put Shaw in mind of SP and his, or her, family once again.

Did SP have some connection with the voting tally? If so, the kill order might have been rescinded, now that the document was in Devereux’s possession. But Shaw and Russell couldn’t make that assumption. It seemed more likely that since the gangs in Hunters Point were involved, SP was targeted because they knew something about the Urban Improvement Plan. Maybe they had discovered the source of the opioids and other drugs being strewn around the city by BlackBridge and its subcontracting gangs.

He was lifting the cup to his lips when a knocking on the door resounded.

A man’s low, threatening voice shouted, “Police! Warrant. Open the door!”

61

Colter Shaw stood, leaning forward, with his hands against the yellow-painted living room wall of the residence, a pleasant shade. His feet were back and spread. His palms were in roughly the same spot that the Davis & Sons Rare Books frame had rested before it had been stolen. He was looking at the nail, eight inches away from his face, on which it had hung.

“Don’t move,” the voice instructed. It belonged to a large Black SFPD officer, uniformed.

“I won’t.”

“Don’t turn around.”

“I won’t.”

Shaw knew the drill. He’d been arrested before. Detained too, which was arrest lite. He’d never been convicted, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a first time.

“I’m armed.” It was always a good idea to tell this to law enforcers when they were confronting or arresting/detaining you. In some jurisdictions it was required to so inform them.

“Okay.”

Police always said that. Every single cop who’d arrested or detained him had said “Okay” pretty frequently.

He lifted Shaw’s untucked shirt and plucked the Glock 42 from the Blackhawk holster. The gun would be tiny in his hand. The man was massive.

The cop wore a Glock 17, the full size, double-stack model, with seventeen rounds to play with. Nine-millimeter. Shaw’s was a .380, and had only six in the mag.

It’s never the number of rounds you have; it’s where you put them.

The gun, Shaw’s knife and the black velvet bag went on the coffee table.

Another cop — a short man, Anglo, with similar close-cropped hair, though blond in his case — was going through Shaw’s wallet.

“He’s got a conceal carry. California. Up to date.”

“Okay.” The big cop, named Q. Barnes according to the tag, was the one in charge. He un-holstered his cuffs and stepped closer. Shaw knew this was coming.

“I’m going to cuff you now for my safety and for yours.”

More or less exactly what he’d told Earnest La Fleur in Sausalito.

“Put your hands behind your back, please.”

Polite.

Shaw did and he felt the cuffs ratchet on. The man did a good job. They were tight enough so he couldn’t get free but there was no pain.

“You’re not under arrest at this point.”

Because I haven’t done anything that I can be arrested for. Shaw did not verbalize this, however. He said, “Okay.”

The man turned Shaw around.

That was when he saw her.

Consuela Ramirez.

The young woman was walking into the safe house suite with a policewoman, an intensely focused redhead, hair in a tight ponytail. Makeup-free, save for a little blue eye shadow. She was petite but stood perfectly erect, even with all the cop accessories she wore: gun, mags, Taser, cuffs, pepper spray. You needed to be in good shape to do public safety. The bulletproof plate alone had to weigh ten pounds.

“Consuela,” said Shaw. “What is this?”

She cocked her head with a faint frown. But she said nothing.

“This is the man you told us about?”

“Consuela...” Shaw repeated.

“Yessir,” she said.

“It’s okay, miss. Don’t worry. You’re okay. He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Hurt you?” Shaw said, frowning. “What’s going on? What did she say?”

“Ms. Ramirez filled out an affidavit saying that she saw you with a significant quantity of narcotics. She had a relative who overdosed and was doing her civic duty to get them off the street. Now, you can help yourself here by cooperating. And I’ll tell you, sir, it’ll go a long way if you do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve never done drugs, let alone sold them.”

“Cooperation?” Barnes reminded, steering back to his theme.

“Of course. Sure.”

Barnes’s face registered some relaxation. “So,” he said. “The drugs?”

Shaw frowned broadly. “I don’t know anything about any drugs. I assume you’ve looked my name up in NCIC. Nothing there, right?” His eyes were fixed on the young woman’s, which were cast defiantly toward Shaw. She really was quite beautiful.

Barnes asked, “How do you know each other?”

Shaw beat her to whatever she was going to say, “I don’t really know her. We have a mutual friend.”

To Shaw, he said, “Tell me about the drugs.”

“There are no drugs.”

“Ms. Ramirez tells a different story.” Barnes sighed, as if autonomically responding to what he’d heard a thousand times before. The officer returned to his favorite subject with: “You should be more cooperative than you’re being.”

“Doesn’t get any more cooperative than this. I’m telling you the truth.”

“All right.”

A variation on “Okay.”

Shaw shrugged. The cuffs jingled.

Barnes asked Connie, “Where?”

She pointed to the end table beside the couch, where she’d sat earlier. “The drawer.”

Barnes jerked his head toward another patrolman, an underling, a short, uniformed cop with a shaved head and the complexion of mixed races. He fit the description of Roman, Tessy’s stalker former boyfriend. The man opened the drawer. “Got something.” After donning blue latex gloves, he removed the bag and set it on the table, near Shaw’s accessories.

The woman’s look of vindication was smug.

“About eight ounces, Quentin,” the woman officer said, eyeing the bag. “Way over felony.”

Barnes sized up Shaw, assessing the offense not of drugs but of failure to cooperate. He nodded to the underling who’d discovered the bag. The officer removed a folding-blade knife and cut a small slit in the top of the bag. From one of the many pockets in his service vest he extracted a small bottle. He broke a liquid capsule inside and added a bit of the white powder. He shook it. There was no color change.

“More,” Barnes said.

The young officer added powder. It still didn’t turn blue or green or red, whatever it was supposed to.

“What?” Connie whispered. Her expression registered a minor Richter number of concern.

Shaw said, “It’s not drugs.”

Barnes asked, “No? What is it?”

“Chalk. I rock climb. This is just a misunderstanding. I appreciate her concern. Drugs are terrible.” He looked into her lovely eyes. “I see why you’d think that, of course, but I’d never have anything to do with narcotics.”

Barnes took the knife and sniffed. He handed the blade back to the other officer. He looked from one to the other. “Whole room,” Barnes ordered. “Search it.”

The others — four cops in total — began searching. They were good. Every place where a four-by-eight-by-two-inch pouch of cocaine could be hidden was examined.

After the dining room came the kitchen then the two bedrooms, the living room. All of the closets, of which there were a fair number, and they were big ones. For a last-minute safe house, it really offered some nice features.

Barnes was frustrated. He snapped, “Dog,” to the patrolman who’d searched Shaw’s wallet.

A moment later the canine made his appearance with a young Latina handler. He was a lithe and focused Malinois, one of the four Belgian herding breeds, the others being the Tervuren, Laekenois and the Belgian sheepdog. The Malinois was smaller and wirier than the German shepherd and had largely taken over law enforcement duties from the latter around the country.

The dog — whose name was Beau or Bo — zipped up and down the floor twitchily. Nose up, nose down, turning corners fast, sticking the lengthy muzzle into cushions and the gap between cabinets. Everywhere.

But he never once sat. Sitting is the signal that police K9s learn to indicate that they’ve found what they were searching for: the drugs, the explosives, the body. They don’t point or bark and they never bring a treasure back to their handler in their eager and powerful jaws.

They sit.

But Beau or Bo didn’t.

Barnes was no longer relaxed. And he definitely wasn’t happy.

The handler gave the dog a dried meat treat. His confirmation that the suite was drug free was as much a win for the muscular animal as if he’d found a thousand pounds of smack.

“Officer Barnes?” Shaw asked.

The man continued to scan the residence, then finally looked toward Shaw. His massive, round face displayed no expression whatsoever. “Yes?”

“In your experience how many people who have CCPs are involved in criminal activity?”

To get a concealed carry permit you undergo an extensive background check. If a criminal past shows up, you’re disqualified. If you can legally carry a sidearm — especially in California, where the requirements are more rigorous than in any other state in the union — that means you’ve been vetted about as well as a civilian can be.

Barnes looked at Connie. “Ms. Ramirez?”

“I’m sorry. I saw the package. I just thought...”

Barnes stepped away to make a radio call. This left Shaw and Connie in the living room, standing near each other. The woman officer with the taut hair was nearby, keeping an eye on them but she was out of earshot.

Shaw whispered, “Here’s the deal, whoever you are. You come back here later. Alone. If you don’t, I give the cop the video of you planting the real drugs in the drawer when I was getting you that tissue. I saw you wipe it, so it may not have your fingerprints on it, but it still has your DNA. Roll you up for felony possession.”

The tears had been real, but a little Tabasco on the fingertips does the same thing as true sorrow or method acting.

“Do you understand?”

Silence. Her lip trembled. A nod.

Barnes and the others returned. The blond male cop took the cuffs off Shaw.

“Chalk,” the big officer muttered. As the men and women in blue left, he added, “You should leave too, Ms. Ramirez.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was worried. All those drugs... I did it for the children.”

Which, Shaw reflected, was rather a nice touch.

62

Shaw opted for an Altamont Beer Works IPA and drank long.

Typically, he’d been cautious about the Maria Vasquez reward offer.

From Teddy Bruin’s starting the conversation with “coincidence” to Mack McKenzie’s assessment — “probably legit” — he had remained wary. There were too many people in the San Francisco area — from a video gaming exec in Silicon Valley to BlackBridge — who were not pleased with his recent visits here.

He was always skeptical of those posting rewards and he generally spent hours, sometimes days, researching the offerors. It was not unheard of, for example, for a murderer to post a reward for the “loved one” they themselves had dispatched, in a numb-headed attempt to appear blameless. Tessy’s disappearance, though, had happened fast. He was no less cautious than on any other job but he didn’t have the luxury of in-depth research. And, if her mother was telling the truth, she could have been in real danger from her abusive ex, Roman.

Of course, the girl’s disappearance and the reward offer turned out to be one hundred percent genuine.

The “dear friend,” though? He just didn’t quite trust that scenario. Why hadn’t Maria given him her name as someone whom Tessy might contact?

So he’d simply ignored the keep-it-between-us plea and called Maria, asked her about Tessy’s godmother.

Alarmed, Vasquez had said, “Dios mio! Did something happen in Guadalajara?”

Answering his question.

Then he’d inquired: Had anybody called and asked her about the reward? Yes, a woman had seen the offer and called her and said that she too had a missing child, a son; did someone answer Maria’s ad?

Yes, someone named Colter Shaw, Maria had explained to the woman. She had given her Shaw’s number and address. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have... I thought, maybe she has more money to pay you than I do.”

“It’s all right.”

“This person, is she a problem?”

“I’ll handle it.” Shaw had told her, “It’s probably nothing, but I’d recommend you go stay someplace else for a few days.”

“Yes, of course. Okay, we’ll leave now. And, Mr. Shaw, again, bless you!”

Immediately after disconnecting, he’d called up the security camera recording and watched “Connie” planting the drugs. Using a plastic bag, to avoid transferring his fingerprints, he’d collected the coke and put it, and the necklace, in another bag and hid them some blocks away in a vacant lot. Then on the way back from Hunters Point, he’d stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a bag of hand chalk. He returned to the Pacific Heights safe house and awaited the law. He was sure officers would descend at some point. What he didn’t know was what the woman’s game was.

Now, sipping more beer, he heard the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” came the sullen voice through the intercom.

When she arrived at the door upstairs, he checked her eye movement once more, hand on the gun.

She was alone now too.

He let her in and told her to stop. His voice was abrupt. “Hands.”

“Come on,” she whined.

“Up.”

She grudgingly complied and he frisked her. She was clean. “Sit down.” Pointing to the couch.

The woman complied. He pulled up a chair across from her.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t call Maria?”

“You said you wouldn’t.” As if he’d cheated at checkers.

“Is this something you do? In addition to tricks? Planting drugs and getting people busted?”

He suspected she was a call girl.

She tried to look offended but it didn’t work, and that answered his question. Shaw was continually amused at how the guilty can look so indignant when they get caught.

He opened her purse and shook out the contents. He pushed the pepper spray out of reach. There were no other weapons.

He shuffled through three driver’s licenses, same picture, different names. One read “Consuela Ramirez.”

“Which is real?”

“Sophia Ionescu.”

“That’s Romanian?”

She nodded.

Shaw asked, “¿Y si te hubiera preguntado algo en español?”

“I speak Spanish too.”

He took a picture of the Sophia license and sent it to Mack. Less than thirty seconds later:

“You didn’t answer my question. Is this something you do? A franchise?”

“A guy wanted to take you down. Get you in the system. He had this idea. He knew what you did for a living so he checked for people around here who’d posted rewards for missing kids or wives. He gave me the numbers and I called them up. Maria Vasquez told me you’d saved her daughter. You were so nice, you didn’t even take the reward. This guy told me to pretend to be the girl’s godmother. I do some acting too.” Sophia said this with a wisp of pride.

“Yeah, you’d get an Oscar. Who hired you?”

“This guy I have dates with.”

A phrase he figured meant something different from “This guy I date.”

Shaw said, “That’s half an answer.”

“Ian. Ian Helm. Or Helms. Maybe an ‘s.’ I don’t know. He’s rich, has some consulting company, he says.”

Well. Interesting, but not utterly surprising, news.

“What’d he pay?”

“Ten thousand.”

“You get along with him? Helms?”

“We fuck.”

“Would you testify against him?”

Sophia laughed at Shaw’s naivete.

He considered the issue but decided that this wasn’t the way to go. Even if the woman cooperated, what could Helms be busted for? Nothing serious. Shaw didn’t want to swipe at the men. He wanted to take the entire BlackBridge operation down permanently and send Helms to prison for decades.

Shaw leaned close, staring. He saw uneasiness cloud her eyes. He was using Russell’s approach. “Is there any risk to Maria or Tessy?”

“No, no. We just wanted information.”

“Because if there is...” He tapped her authentic driver’s license.

“No, I swear. I told Ian no way would I help if anybody’d get hurt. I don’t get involved in anything like that. I’m a three-G-a-night girl.”

Offered, he guessed, as proof of her moral caliber.

“Give me your number. Your real one. And keep the phone alive. I may need to be in touch with you. If it goes out of service, a friend of mine comes to pay a visit at Eight Five Four Sumner Street. Or wherever you’ve moved. I will find you. You’re in our system now.”

Which meant nothing but sounded good, and certainly unnerved her.

“Jesus.”

Shaw raised an eyebrow.

A tight-lipped nod, still looking victimized. She recited her cell number and Shaw memorized it.

“How much was the necklace?”

A shrug. “Fifty-nine ninety-nine. It’s not a real diamond.”

She looked at the pepper spray.

Shaw laughed and ushered her out the door.

63

The Alvarez Street safe house once again.

Karin and Ty were handling cleanup. The Filipino BNGs’ pickup truck and the weapons were gone. The injured men, now practicing vows of silence, were in the hospital. Adelle was on her way to Vegas. And somewhere in Oakland a perfectly fine Chevrolet Impala, if somewhat bloodstained, was soon to become a two-ton block of scrap.

He wondered if Karin was having any luck finding the identity of Blond, with the task force in San Leandro.

Once they knew who he was, they could deep-background him and, ideally, find out where he’d been recently, whom he associated with, where he lived, what division of BlackBridge he worked for, which gang in Hunters Point he had a connection to.

And who SP was, and why he or she had been targeted for death.

Once those unknowns were brought to light, they would have a chance to save the family.

The time was 1:10 p.m. The kill order would go into effect in less than six hours.

His phone hummed with a text from Professor Steven Field.

He flipped to a live TV streaming app on his phone and turned the unit horizontal.

The woman newscaster looked calm and in control and did a fine job reading the words that scrolled up on the teleprompter, but Shaw could see that she was having a bit of trouble understanding the concept. Then again, who wouldn’t?

“...government document from more than a hundred years ago has been discovered in San Francisco. It’s a voting tally of a recount in a statewide referendum in nineteen oh-six where the citizens of the state voted to allow...” A dramatic pause. “...corporations to run for public office. Officials say that the tally was lost among hundreds of thousands of documents that went missing after the earthquake that year, which destroyed three-quarters of the city. It’s believed that the judge certifying the recount was killed in the disaster, which is why no one learned of it at the time.”

Well. That didn’t take long. Shaw supposed this was no surprise. Devereux had waited years to find his magic document. He’d move as quickly as possible to use his ring of power.

“Joining us now is University of Utah business law professor, C. Edward Hobbs. Welcome, Dr. Hobbs. Explain how this amendment could become law after more than a hundred years.”

“Hello. Thank you for having me. There’s no time limit on amendments going into effect once they’ve been approved. No statute of limitations, you might say. A proposition for an amendment doesn’t need to be signed by the governor; it’s not like a bill. Once a majority of the people have voted in favor, it becomes law.”

“So it’s true then. This amendment will allow corporations to run for office?”

“Yes. And, we should say, not just run in an election. A corporation could be appointed to a position too. Judges, sheriffs, regulatory board presidents.”

“Will it be challenged?”

“No doubt it will. The tally itself will have to be authenticated. I’m sure there are experts doing that right now. But we have to remember there’s been a groundswell of support lately to expand the rights of corporations. Look at ‘Citizens United’ — the 2010 case that extended the First Amendment right of free speech to corporations.

“The majority of Americans support that. And many professors and politicians I’ve spoken with consider the movement a good one — good for the country, good for democracy. If a corporation holds office, the authority is decentralized. There’ll be an automatic system of checks and balances with the shareholders, the board and the CEO. Remember that the greatest innovations in the past century have come from corporate research. Corporations represent the best brain trusts in the world.”

The shill — on Devereux’s payroll, of course — gave no mention of the man’s troubling policies described in the documents that Shaw and Russell had found in the courier bag, undermining human rights.

“So Facebook or Apple or Amazon could one day be governor of California.”

“In theory, yes.”

“But a corporation couldn’t run for president of the United States?”

“No, the U.S. Constitution is clear on that. The amendment doesn’t apply to federal elections or appointments either. Only state and local. But this is an important precedent. In law, we say, as California goes, so goes the nation...”

Shaw shut the broadcast off. He glanced around the safe house. In a windowless corner sat a brown Naugahyde armchair facing the bay window that overlooked the street. This would have been where his father sat — his back was never exposed to door or window. Beside the chair was a scuffed and unsteady side table. Shaw walked to the chair and sat in it. He ran his hand over the arms, torn and scuffed. His father had been in San Francisco, just before he returned to the Compound, and not long after that he’d died. Maybe it was here that he’d sat as he assembled the clues that would lead someone — his son, as it turned out — to continue the quest to bring down BlackBridge Corporate Solutions, if he couldn’t finish the job.

Maybe it was in this chair that he’d written the letter and circled the eighteen magic locations on the map that he’d hidden on Echo Ridge.

It was then that his phone hummed with a text from Russell.

64

At three that afternoon, Shaw’s iPhone trilled. He answered, “Hello?”

“Is this Colter Shaw?” The woman’s voice was low, matter-of-fact.

“That’s right.”

“I was just speaking to your brother, Russell. I’m Julia Callahan. I’m with Systems Support in Bayshore Heights. He called me earlier about an analysis of an old cassette audiotape.”

“I was with him then. You work with Russell, right? He never said exactly.”

“My company does contract work for his organization. He told me to call you ASAP.”

“Russell said you were going to do a deeper analysis. You find something else on the tape?”

“I did. They were smart, whoever made it. The first run through the analyzer showed only music tracks. But the more I listened to it I decided there was a pattern of sounds within the static between the tracks.” Her voice was excited.

“Static?”

“Which wasn’t static at all. I isolated it and slowed it down. Way down.”

“What was on it?”

“A man’s voice, reciting account numbers, routing instructions to offshore corporations and banks, wire transfers to individuals. The man specifically mentioned that the purpose of the transfers was to evade taxes. And some payments were made to outside contractors. And by contractors, it sounded like he meant... well...”

“Hitmen?”

“That was my impression. I’m just an audio analyst. But we work with companies that do security consulting, so I’ve got experience in the subject. He also mentioned some names. Braxton, Droon — I think that’s a name. And the company they worked for, BlackBridge. And something called UIP was mentioned a half-dozen times. He gave sources for what he called ‘product.’”

“Drugs.”

“I figured.”

Shaw asked, “So you’ve extracted what was said?”

“Yes, it’s a separate recording. An MP3 file.”

“Good. I need to get a copy. I can use it as leverage in an operation Russell and I are running.”

“Give me an email address and I’ll upload it.”

Shaw said, “No. We need to keep it off the internet. Can you get me a physical copy? Maybe on a thumb drive?”

“I can.”

“We only have a few hours. Bayshore’s south of the city?”

“That’s right.”

“You know San Bruno state park?”

“Sure. I jog there some.”

Shaw asked, “Is there a deserted place we can meet?”

“The south entrance, off McGuire Road. Nobody ever uses it.”

“A half hour?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be on a motorcycle. Black leather jacket.”

“I’ve got a Toyota Camry. Blue.”

“I’ll bring the original tape.”

“Good. I can do some deeper analysis.”

Shaw paused. He whispered, “Evidence against them... So Ashton was right after all.”

“What was that?”

“Oh. Just thinking out loud. I’ll see you soon.”

65

Many years ago, San Bruno, south of San Francisco, was an Ohlone village.

The Ohlones lived in scores of indigenous settlements from San Francisco down to Big Sur in precolonial America. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they were hunters, fishers and gatherers, and did some farming too. They were the first people in America to learn how to make bitter acorns into food. The Ohlone practiced the Kuksu religion, heavy into rites and rituals, usually practiced in secretive underground chambers.

Life was fine among these people until the conquistadores arrived and, with the Franciscans, set to work “missionizing” the tribes, moving them off their lands and forcing conversion to Christianity. The population was reduced by three-quarters on account of European diseases, against which the Ohlone had no natural immunity. The coup de grâce for the tribes, however, was not the missions, the Spanish or bacteria, but the state of California itself, whose first governor, Peter Burnett, said, in an address to the legislature in 1851, he would wage a war of extermination against the native people “until the Indian race becomes extinct.” He pursued that policy to grim effect, though several Ohlone tribes still existed in the Central Coastal region.

Shaw knew this because he had some Ohlone blood in his veins, through Mary Dove, who’d taught him about their distant ancestry. San Bruno park, which had been in the heart of their territory, was a sample of what their home had been like two hundred and fifty years ago, before the gold, silver and silicon rushes: Lush and rich and verdant, covered with undulating hills.

It was into a small parking lot here that Colter Shaw now steered his Yamaha. He traversed the smooth asphalt, stopping in the center. He looked with some envy at nearby hiking trails, which would make for an exhilarating dirt bike ride.

That diversion would, of course, have to wait.

The place was not quite deserted. On one side of the small parking lot was a commercial van — a plumbing company. The driver, in overalls, was eating a sandwich and sipping from a very large soda cup. Also present was a California State Parks service pickup, its driver — in an oversize Smokey-the-Bear hat — making a call and referring to a clipboard. No joggers or hikers or sightseers were present. The gray sky shed mist and teased with the promise of rain.

A blue Toyota sedan pulled into the lot and edged slowly toward him. The car stopped and the door opened.

Shaw nodded to the woman in black leggings and sweater and a navy-blue windbreaker. “Julia?”

“Colter.”

He joined her. “You weren’t followed?”

“No. I’m sure. You?”

“I have an anti-tailing device.”

She frowned. “What’s that?”

He nodded to the Yamaha.

“In your motorcycle?” she asked.

“It is my motorcycle. You drive on the lane stripes seven miles over the limit and nobody can follow.”

“I might try that someday.”

“You ride?”

“No. But I always wanted to. I’d need somebody to teach me how. You have to take a test, don’t you? To get a license.”

“Piece of cake. You’ll pass with flying colors.”

She pursed her lips. “What are flying colors exactly? I’m always curious where expressions come from.”

Shaw didn’t know and he told her so.

She pulled a hair elastic off her wrist and tied her tangle of dark-blond hair up into a ponytail, centered high on the back of her head. “Where’s Russell?”

“He’s back at the safe house. Following up on some other leads for our operation.” He looked her over, frowning. “You’re not armed, are you?”

“Me?” She gave a laugh as if this were an absurd idea. “I work for a tech company. We don’t carry guns. Why?”

Shaw nodded at the state park pickup. “Government property. Weapons aren’t allowed.”

“Are you armed?”

Shaw shrugged. “I am but I’ve had plenty of practice keeping mine out of sight.”

The parks department truck’s engine fired up and the unsmiling driver touched the brim of his hat as he pulled past them. Shaw nodded in reply. The truck vanished up a dirt trail into the woods.

She said, “I’ve got a thumb drive but I also ran a transcription program. It printed out everything. I got about a hundred pages.” She retrieved a large white envelope from the front seat of her car.

“Excellent.”

“I might pick up something more from the original. Second generation there’s always some fallout. I was thinking...” Her voice faded, then she gasped, looking past Shaw.

The front door of the plumbing van was swinging open and the driver, a pale-faced man, climbed out. Blond as the dead man in the alley. He was huge, dressed in black tactical gear and was holding a pistol.

Then the side panel slid open and two others stepped to the ground: Ebbitt Droon, armed as well, and — looking every inch the harmless grandmother — Irena Braxton.

When they were out, standing on the ground, another figure emerged and joined them.

The head of BlackBridge, Ian Helms, stared his way. In a voice that was a rich, resonant baritone — as one might expect, coming from such a handsome leading man — he said, “Well, Colter Shaw.”

66

Arms crossed, studying Shaw, Helms said, “Would’ve been in your best interest not to outsmart my friend.”

Shaw supposed Helms was referring to Sophia/Connie and his dodging the bust at the Pacific Heights safe house.

I was worried. All those drugs... I did it for the children...

At least there he wouldn’t be facing that fate they now had planned for him here in the park.

Droon took over. “Okay, Shaw, pull your shirt up. Slow, don’tcha know?”

“Just take it easy, Droon.”

“What is this? What’s going on?”

“Hush, there, Miss Julia,” Droon scolded.

“How do you...” Her voice faded.

“Sit tight. I’ll get to you in a minute, Lovely.” He turned to Shaw. “Now, Righty, use that left hand of yours and pluck that sissy Glock off your hip and toss it in the bushes there. I want to see fingers out, like you’re sipping tea from a dainty little cup.”

“If I do that, it might go off and hurt someone.”

“Now, now, you know better’n that. Those Austrians’re too clever for accidents. Be a good boy and behave. Miss Julia’s looking a little queasy. We don’t want to upset her. Be a sorrow and shame. Go on, go on.”

“What is this?” she repeated, her voice quavering.

Droon snapped to Shaw, “Pistole, son.”

Shaw did as he’d been told, tugging his shirt up, revealing the weapon.

“Look at those abs. You must work out till the cows come home.”

Shaw pitched the gun to the ground.

“Pull those jeans cuffs up too, would’ya, boy? You look like an ankle holster kind of guy.”

Shaw complied.

“Goody good. Now. You, Miss Julia, you can stay fully clothed, much to my disappointment, don’tcha know? I heard you say you’re not packing heat.”

“You heard?”

Shaw glanced at the plumbing van. “They were listening. They know about the cassette. The analysis.” He looked to Braxton. “After you stole the voting tally I thought you’d forget about us.”

“We couldn’t afford to do that.”

Droon said, “You’re our favorite number-one reward-seeker, Mr. Colter Shaw.” He chuckled. “It’d hurt too much to say goodbye.”

Helms waved his hand to silence the irritating man and stepped forward. “I wanted to see you in person, Shaw.” He looked him over, and the man seemed enormously unimpressed. This was mutual. “The Shaw family... you’ve caused me nothing but grief.”

“Grief?” Shaw laughed cynically. “My mother’s a widow, thanks to you.”

He sighed. “That again. It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did. We thought Ashton had found the vote tally certificate. Our man was simply going to pay him a lot of money for it.”

“Your representative for those quote ‘negotiations’ was an armed trespasser on our property at three in the morning, tracking my father in the woods. What you meant to say was torture him until he told you where it was hidden, and then kill him. You’re tedious, Helms.”

“Tedious?” The handsome face darkened. The word had insulted him. Shaw realized whom he resembled: a younger Warren Beatty. His voice honed: “The Endgame Sanction. It’s going to change the country fundamentally.”

“Stalin changed Russia fundamentally. I don’t think that’s the kind of standard you want to be touting.”

“BlackBridge didn’t vote on Proposition Oh-Six. Mr. Devereux didn’t vote on it. We were hired to locate a document that’d been duly passed by the citizens of the state in a legal election. We’re just enabling the will of the people.”

The words sounded like they came from a spokesperson at a press conference.

Helms continued, “Just think, Shaw. The amendment gives any corporation the right to run for office. A do-good nonprofit.”

“You’re not the shining light of social conscience, Helms. You’re destroying neighborhoods with your Urban Improvement Plan.”

Helms shrugged. “I never held a gun to anybody’s head and said, ‘Here. Take these drugs. Or else.’”

The big man with pale skin, the van driver, just watched everything quietly. Maybe he was the hitman who’d been brought in to replace Blond. The man who had his sights on the SP family.

Irena Braxton appeared impatient. “We knew that Gahl had found the voting tally and hid it.” She glanced toward the white envelope. “We never knew he was sucking up evidence too.”

“The tape recorder was in our safe house when you broke in,” Shaw said. “You had a chance to get it then.”

Helms muttered, “Well, better late...”

A nod toward Droon, who said, “Now, Miss Julia. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give us that envelope and your purse — or wallet, if ‘purse’ is too sexist a thing to say. Sorry for the offense. I’m going to get your partic’lars, find out where you live and your family or, if you prefer, loved ones live.”

“No, please!”

“Yes, please!” he mocked. “Then you’re going back to the office and you’re overwriting every single bit of that digital copy of that cassette. ‘Overwrite’ is the key word. ’Member that. Nothing really gets deleted ’less you overwrite it, as you probably know, being in this business.”

Braxton said, “No calls to the police. Or my associates’ll drive straight to your house.”

“No!” Her voice choked. “I have children!” Her hand kneaded the envelope manically.

Droon said, “Settle there, Lovely. You make sure everything’s gone and... promise never to say a word about this again. And your little ones and hubby’ll be fine.”

“How could you do this?” she raged.

Droon frowned as if he didn’t understand the question. He turned to Shaw. “I want the original cassette too, don’tcha know? Where is it? And don’t be playful. We don’t have all day here.”

Shaw’s face darkened. “All right.” He held up his right hand — indicating no threat — and reached into his jacket pocket with his left, removed the cassette.

“Lookee. Wasn’t that easy and painless? Toss it here.”

Shaw did and the man picked it up.

In that giddy, grating tone, Droon said, “All right, Miss Julia, the sooner you hightail to the office, the sooner—”

“Wait.” The urgent word came from Braxton. Her head was angled, eyes squinting. “Wait.”

Helms was frowning, and Droon turned toward her.

“You were scanning his safe house when you picked up the call from Julia, right?” Braxton asked.

Droon said, “Well, yup.” There was an uneasiness in his voice, as he looked at his boss’s powdered, troubled face.

“What phone did he pick up on? What was the number?”

“I...” Droon was thinking. “It started with eight-four-five or eight-four-something, I’m pretty sure. I can look up—”

“Jesus Christ!” Braxton’s voice raged. “That’s his iPhone!”

The woman would know that Shaw had been using his encrypted burner — the Android platform — since he’d been in San Francisco because he knew BlackBridge could listen in on the iPhone, which was unprotected.

If Shaw had picked up the call about the audiotape on the Apple, it was because he wanted them to hear the conversation.

“It’s a trap! There’s nothing on the tape. The static? That was just bullshit. He’s got people here.”

The pale man and Droon lowered their stances and scanned around them, weapons extended.

Shaw was disappointed. He had hoped to play the game out a little longer to get more information from Droon and Braxton — and more incriminating admissions.

Braxton whispered to Helms, “Get back in the truck, Ian. Now.”

Colter Shaw then gave a nod.

From the woods nearby, the “park ranger,” who was, in reality, Ty, Russell’s associate from his group, called, “You with BlackBridge, hands where I can see them! Drop the weapons. Lie facedown on the ground! If you present with a weapon or any threat, you will be fired on.” He let loose a burst of rounds from his silenced H&K submachine gun. Dirt kicked up ten feet in front of the BlackBridge crew. “Now!”

The pale op did exactly as told, tossing his pistol away as if it were burning his skin. Braxton, grimacing, unhooked her macramé hippie purse from her shoulder and dropped it. She began kneeling. When finally down, she eased face forward to the dirt. Ian Helms followed suit.

Ebbitt Droon began to do the same, making a show of reaching out to set his gun gingerly on the ground. But he suddenly reared backward, putting the plumbing van between himself and Ty. He looked right at Shaw, his eyes both sadistic and amused. “No, sir, no, sir.”

He began to lift his gun toward him. Shaw instinctively crouched, hands forward in a defensive posture.

Which is when the woman beside him — not audio expert Julia but Shaw’s friend Victoria Lesston — pulled the trigger of Shaw’s Colt Python .357, which was in the white envelope. Because she wasn’t able to aim, the big round missed Droon by a few inches and blew apart the side-view mirror of the plumbing van. Droon stumbled backward and fell, his gun flying into the brush. He rose and fled into the woods.

Victoria offered Shaw the Colt, but he said, “No, cover them.” Nodding toward the BlackBridge crew. He didn’t waste time searching for his Glock. Shaw turned toward the well-trod footpath Droon had disappeared down and sprinted after him.

67

Shaw caught up with the wiry man fifty yards away.

Breathing hard, Droon turned back, drawing the SOG knife from the scabbard on his belt.

“Okay, Reward Man. Pretty much had it with you, don’tcha know?”

Shaw ignored the words and assessed the terrain. A flat grass-covered clearing. Fair ground for both of them.

Never fight from a downhill position.

Droon moved quickly, dancing back and forth, the knife hand — his right — always in motion.

Shaw tried, and he only tried once. “It’s over, Droon. You know it. Don’t make it harder on yourself.”

“Haw, you’re a funny man to speak, Shaw.” He lunged and swept the blade back and forth. Shaw easily dodged. “We debated finishing you in the camper in Tacoma. I was for that. But Irena said you might have something else for us. Something helpful.” Another swipe. “And damn if you didn’t. You found that certificate. That made her day, my oh my.”

Shaw was paying no attention to the words. Let him talk, let him use up oxygen. What he was doing was studying Droon’s arms and hands. That’s what you always watched in a knife fight. He kept his own in front and kept dancing away from Droon, making the small man come to him, then backing off.

Instinctively, Shaw was thinking of the rules of combat with blade.

Rule One: If you’re attacked by someone with a knife and you’re unarmed, run.

Not an option here.

Droon, laughing, giddy, eyes filled with glittery light, kept jogging forward and back, sweeping the knife between the men. Shaw moved back, but returned immediately, keeping his own hands up and open — to avoid breaking a finger — and slammed them into Droon’s right arm, knocking it aside. As soon as the blade was past, Shaw cuffed Droon painfully in the face. Then moved back.

This infuriated the man, and his resulting expression accentuated his rodent features.

At one point Shaw, thinking the ground behind him was flat, stumbled on a root he hadn’t seen. He didn’t fall, but lost balance momentarily. Droon sprung and Shaw felt pain as the blade slashed the back of his hand.

Rule Two: You will be stabbed in a knife fight. Accept it and try to present non-vital portions of your body.

Shaw continued to dance away every time Droon lunged. Shaw kept up the palm slugging at his opponent’s face, stunning him.

He didn’t go for the knife.

Rule Three: Do not try to get the knife away from the attacker. He has a religious connection with it and no martial arts move will cause him to drop it.

Droon was no longer smiling. Shaw was not playing fair, dancing in and out, cuffing ears and eyes. Another slash to the upper arm. The jacket took the brunt.

Droon would pounce and Shaw would leap back, but every time he did so his right palm or left would connect with Droon’s face, which was now red in places and bleeding. That was his only target. In fast, out fast.

“How’d you like...” Droon took a deep breath. “... to be blind, son? That suit your way of life?” Like a fencer he thrust the knife forward. Shaw saw it coming. He stunned Droon with a blow to the ear. Hard enough and such a move can render your opponent unconscious. This strike didn’t do that but it disoriented him.

“I’m tired of you, Shaw. Let’s finish this.”

Rule Four: When the attacker draws back, counterattack to the eyes and throat.

Droon leapt forward, and the blade missed Shaw’s chest by inches. The second that the scrawny man turned slightly and drew the blade back, Shaw was on him, gripping the knife wrist in his left hand and clawing at the eyes. The man howled.

Shaw pressed his advantage and, still holding the knife hand, gripped the man under his right knee, lifted him into the air and slammed him onto his back on the hard, rock-strewn ground. His breath went out of his lungs.

The knife tumbled to the ground.

“No, son, no.” Droon held up his hands, as if for mercy, but then pressed forward and seized Shaw’s throat. Though he wasn’t a large man, there was formidable strength in the grip.

As his vision began to fade, Shaw picked up the SOG knife and, holding it firmly in his right hand, plunged it into Droon’s neck.

“No, wait, no.” He seemed surprised. Maybe he thought that for some odd cosmic reason Colter Shaw didn’t have the right, or wasn’t able, to stab him with his own blade.

The pressure on Shaw’s neck continued.

Colter Shaw thought of his father.

Thinking of one word:

Survival...

He twisted the blade, opening the rent in the man’s neck wider. Blood propelled.

“Look... No... I...”

The arms dropped.

In no more than ten seconds, the man had gone limp.

Breathing hard, Shaw rolled off him, rose and stepped away ten feet. He kept a firm grip on the knife.

Never assume even a downed enemy is no threat...

Droon coughed once. Then his breathing ceased. Shaw watched him, motionless, his unblinking eyes staring upward. They were aimed toward an oak bough, not far overhead, stark in the gray sky, thick with clusters of early-season acorns, which were a pleasant green in color, a deep shade.

Colter Shaw thought: Not a bad image to carry with you in your last moments on earth.

68

Got ’em on the wire,” Ty said to Shaw. “Listen.”

The operative, no longer in the park ranger hat, was playing the recording he’d made of the conversation among the BlackBridge crew as they’d waited in the plumbing truck.

A fourth voice was that of the pale man, whose name turned out to be George Stone, a BlackBridge employee. He’d been a mercenary in Africa and the Balkans, Ty had learned.

Ty shut the recorder off.

“That should be enough for the Bureau to get started,” Shaw said.

“I’d think. Conspiracy to commit murder, extortion. Admission of murder. That’s a sweet one. The councilman.”

Shaw told him that the death of Zaleski, his father’s protégé, was what had started Ashton Shaw on the trail of BlackBridge, all those many years ago.

Helms snapped, “Did you have a warrant for that recording?” His wrists, like those of the others, were zip-tied behind him.

Ty glanced at him briefly, the way you’d regard a fly that buzzed a bit close. “You just executed an illegal wiretap, you extorted Mr. Shaw and Ms. Lesston here under threat of force and your associate tried to kill two people and got killed himself. That means you’re guilty of felony murder. And I haven’t even got near conspiracy yet. Oh, by the way, we didn’t trespass in your vehicle to plant a listening device. Your window was open, and my microphone just happens to be very good. So, no warrant needed.”

Shaw gazed over at Braxton. He took satisfaction in the fact that the woman who was responsible for his father’s death looked truly stricken. Her overly made-up face was taut. She was no longer grandmotherly, but ghostly.

Helms muttered, “I want an attorney.”

Ty said in an oddly formal voice, “That will be arranged, I’m sure.”

The takedown operation had been improvised and more than a little rushed. But no matter. It had worked. They now had everything they needed to get BlackBridge. Shaw texted Russell then walked up to Victoria, who was rubbing her shoulder — the one she’d injured last week. “You okay?”

“Just sore is all.”

Her eyes widened slightly as she saw the slash on his hand, the messy blood.

“It’s okay.” He walked to his bike, lifted the seat and got a bottle of alcohol. He poured it over the wound, exhaling at the hot pain that radiated up to his jaw. She tore open the bandage he’d taken out, and when the liquid had evaporated off, she pressed on the skin and smoothed the edges.

“Droon?” She nodded toward the woods.

Shaw shook his head.

“I was going to say sorry I missed him. But worked out better this way, right?” she asked, in a soft voice.

Yes, Droon had been his. It couldn’t end any differently.

He was about to ask her a question, when he suddenly sensed that the ambient sound had changed.

The parking lot had been filled with the white noise of traffic. San Bruno is bordered by the 101 and 280, both multilane Silicon Valley arteries and as busy as can be at all hours.

He’d been aware of the sticky rush of traffic. Been aware of the guttural whine of aircraft descending toward or departing from San Francisco and San Jose airports. Been aware of the wind in the pine and maples, a distant dog complaining.

Then, rising, rising, was the sound of a vehicle engine, growing louder.

Insistent.

He found his Glock in the brush, and he thought: Helms, Stone and Braxton had had their phones in the chaotic moments after she figured out the trap. She might have a speed-dial button on her mobile: need backup or distress.

Shaw’s team had a good defensive position where they were.

But the black Escalade was plowing unexpectedly over a pedestrian trail.

“Ty!” Shaw called. “Hostiles.”

The big man nodded and clicked off the safety of his H&K.

He glanced at the Colt in Victoria’s grip and, digging into his pocket, handed her ten loose shells. She reloaded and slipped the live shells in her pocket, then crouched, looking toward the approaching SUV.

A smoke grenade spiraled from the window of the SUV and popped, filling the area with dense gray cover. Shaw couldn’t see for certain but he believed at least two men were out, firing automatic weapons — loud, unsilenced — in three-shot bursts. Shaw and Victoria rolled to cover behind a fallen tree. Ty was behind a low berm of grassy earth.

But he and Shaw lowered their weapons. It was impossible to acquire a target. Shaw squinted through the raw, pungent smoke, Victoria too. She said, “Flank them?”

A nod. He started left, she right.

But they got only a few feet before the relentless machine-gun fire tore into the air and ground around them, spitting dirt and rocks and branches high into the air. The stream of slugs swept toward her.

“Victoria!” Shaw called, as he saw her go down.

69

Too much incoming fire, too much smoke to acquire targets.

Angry shouts from the attackers. “Move it, move it!”

Both Victoria and Ty were hidden from sight by the smoke.

“Victoria!”

No response. Shaw’s heart was slamming.

He tried to find a target. But it was impossible to see anything clearly through the thick, creamy cloud.

He knew they were in the SUV because the machine-gun spray had ceased. Shaw couldn’t hear the doors slam — the weapons fire had partially deafened him — but he knew the Escalade was speeding away along another trail, a narrow one.

He stared in that direction but holstered his Glock.

Never discharge your weapon without a clear target...

He turned back. “Victoria!”

Still no response.

Jesus...

He’d gotten her into this.

Coughing, spitting out the vile fumes, he strode through the cloud to where he’d seen her fall.

“Victoria!”

Still nothing.

Come on, come on... Please.

He pushed through the smoke.

No body, no blood trail.

Had she been wounded and then snatched by one of the attackers?

Then... Did he hear a voice?

Again: “Here.”

“Victoria.”

A bout of coughing.

“Here!”

Then he saw her on her knees in a clump of sedge grass. He ran to her and helped her up. She clutched her torso. Then lowered her hands. No blood. No bullet wounds. She’d fallen hard to the ground, it seemed, the breath knocked from her lungs.

Arm around her shoulders, he helped her out of the haze. They were both coughing and wiping tears from the smoke, which wasn’t the sort from wood or paper; the grenades spewed corroding, chemical fumes created by burning potassium chlorate or hexachloroethane and zinc. While not intended to debilitate, the thick clouds stung and choked.

“Ty!” Shaw called, looking around.

The broad-chested man was staggering from the berm behind which he’d taken cover, coughing and spitting as well.

Now that the smoke was drifting away on the breeze, they could see, probably a hundred yards away, the SUV was rocking along the pedestrian trail, about to turn out of sight.

Shaw said to Victoria, “You okay to go after them with me?”

She nodded. Shaw looked to Ty, who did the same.

The three of them started out of the dissipating cloud.

Then, suddenly, the Escalade lurched hard to the left, narrowly missing a tree. Something had flown from the right front tire.

A muted boom rolled over the landscape. Shaw knew it would have been much louder had his ears been functioning better. Then the windshield of the SUV blew to pieces. Another boom.

The Escalade stopped entirely. Several more booms, several more lurches.

Shaw said, “Engine’s gone. It’s dead.”

You can’t shoot a car motor by hitting the block, not with ordinary rounds. But all it takes is one well-placed bullet to destroy the delicate electronics under the hood that make today’s cars such miracles of modern transportation — and so vulnerable to hackers.

Ty, Victoria and Shaw moved forward slowly, using trees for cover.

Shaw called, “Everyone, out of the vehicle now!”

Ty: “This is your last warning. Weapons on the ground. Step out with your hands raised. Now!”

A moment passed.

A huge ring as another rifle slug hit the driver’s side door, low, tearing into the seat just beneath where he sat.

As the echoing report of the shot from the rifle rolled over them, all at once the doors opened and guns flew out. Soon everyone was on the ground.

“Let’s get them bundled up.”

While Victoria covered them with the Python, Shaw and Ty searched the whole crew: the Latino driver and another BlackBridge op, a redheaded, muscular ex-military sort, as well as Braxton, Helms and George Stone. Zip ties for the newcomers. The other three remained bound.

More vehicle noise, another SUV approaching, coming down the trail. This one was a Lincoln.

Its arrival didn’t trouble Shaw in the least. Or surprise him.

The driver climbed out and walked toward Shaw and the others, leaving in the vehicle the McMillan TAC-338 sniper rifle he’d been using as he covered the takedown. He now had his own pistol in hand. He saw that the hostiles were down and slipped away his gun.

Shaw introduced Victoria to his brother.

70

Two hours earlier, as Shaw had sat in his father’s Naugahyde chair, having learned that the San Leandro lead to finding the identity of the SP family had not panned out, he had glanced around the safe house and his eyes rested on the tape recorder.

With little time left until the family died, he’d forged a plan to ensnare Braxton and Droon and force them to abort the attack on the SP family.

He’d needed someone he could trust, a woman, and someone who wasn’t afraid of combat. Russell’s resourceful Karin was not a tactical op, and his group had none available. So Shaw had called Victoria Lesston and wondered if she’d help him out in an operation he was putting together.

She’d replied, “There’re two types of people, Colter.”

He’d laughed.

She said, “I’ll get the next flight out.”

“No time. My brother’s organization’ll send a chopper for you.”

“Organization. What is it?”

“Don’t know. He’s tight-lipped.”

“Have to say, Colter, with you not here, I’ve been feeling antsy. Not used to staying in one place for very long.”

A Restless Woman...

He explained what he had in mind. Her role was to pretend to be Julia, the audio analyst Russell had called from the diner in Quigley Square. Victoria would call Shaw on his iPhone, which was compromised. If Braxton didn’t tip to the fact he was using this phone, and not the encrypted Android, she would learn that there was incriminating evidence on the cassette and about the furtive meeting between Shaw and “Julia” at the park in San Bruno. She’d learn too that Russell was elsewhere — an assurance that only Shaw and the audio engineer would be present.

And the “evidence”? None of the science, which Victoria had fabricated on the fly, was real. There was no such thing as hiding voices in static.

But Shaw had figured, rightly as it turned out, that Ian Helms, Braxton and Droon were so desperate to make sure that the lurid details of BlackBridge’s operations went undiscovered that they couldn’t take any chances; they had to assume the evidence was real and destroy it, then kill the audio analyst and Shaw.

He had considered bringing in the law but still didn’t know the extent of BlackBridge and Devereux’s reach. He’d called Tom Pepper once again and told him his concerns. The former agent didn’t know anyone in the San Francisco FBI field office, and so he couldn’t vouch for them. But he did have some trusted agent friends in Denver. A team was being assembled. But Shaw and Russell needed to move fast to nail Braxton and Droon and stop the assault on the SP family. So he and Russell and Victoria put together their own private takedown.

“Citizen’s arrest, you could call it,” Shaw had told his brother.

Russell’s response: “Hmm.” Then: “It’s a good plan, Colt.”

And for the first time since they’d been in each other’s company, the dourness had faded from his brother’s face, replaced by what could pass for enthusiasm.

Russell had enlisted Ty to play the part of a state ranger; it wouldn’t be suspicious for him to be in the park just making the rounds, spending time on his mobile, which was connected to sophisticated recording equipment that would suck up the conversation of the BlackBridge ops who came to meet Shaw and Victoria — certainly Braxton and Droon, perhaps others. He hadn’t hoped for the other fish they caught: Ian Helms himself.

Russell took a high-cover position in the park with the sniper rifle on a bipod and covered them for the takedown. They hadn’t expected a backup SUV, which, in any case, arrived via a tree-covered pedestrian trail; he’d had to move fast to get into a new position to sight in on the Cadillac and disable it.

When the FBI arrived from Denver, in about an hour, they could take this crew into custody, along with the tape and statements from Shaw, Russell, Victoria and Ty.

Shaw said to his brother, “Let’s do some horse-trading.”

Russell looked around and said, “We’re black on the perimeter here.” He looked to Ty and Victoria. “I’d get on the west and south.”

“That’s a go,” Victoria said. She snagged one of the machine guns, checked it and scouted out a position to the west. Ty took the south.

Shaw and his brother walked to where Braxton and Helms were sitting on the ground, hands in restraints. Legs in front of them. Braxton surprised Shaw by saying in a raw, wounded voice, “You didn’t need to kill him. He would have surrendered.”

Shaw didn’t respond. It would have been a push-pull conversation, since, no, Droon would not have surrendered and was a second away from shooting Shaw, in the first case, and stabbing him in the heart, in the second. The strangulation too.

The woman was clearly shaken by Droon’s loss. This seemed out of character for her, a person who’d ordered the torture or handled the execution of any number of people. Maybe there’d been more to their relationship. Shaw had to admit that he found it bordered on unpleasant to picture romance between them, but who was he to judge when it came to matters of the heart, thought the Restless Man, whose track record in love was not stellar.

As Russell remained standing, a guard of sorts, Shaw crouched in front of Braxton and Helms, who said, “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer.”

“We’re not cops. We’re not recording anymore. This isn’t about evidence.”

“Then?” Braxton muttered.

“We assume the SP hit is off now. Can you confirm that?”

A pause. “The what?” she asked.

Shaw looked from her to Helms. “If that family dies, it’ll come back on you. We’ll make sure of that. If the motive is to kill a witness, that’s capital murder. Death penalty in California.”

Helms appeared perplexed.

Russell said, “Give us the name.”

Shaw, again in the good-cop role: “We’ll tell the U.S. attorney you cooperated. That’ll go a long way in your favor.”

“Who the hell is SP?” Helms muttered. He turned to Braxton, who shook her head. She too seemed confused.

Shaw glanced at Russell. “Show them.”

Russell took his phone and displayed the picture of the note that Karin had found on Blond’s body, the kill order.

Helms muttered, “I have no idea what that is.”

Braxton shook her head yet again.

Russell said, “The Stanford library the other day? The man with Droon? This kill order was in his pocket.”

Braxton said, “He was just a friend of Ebbitt Droon’s. He was meeting him at the library to drop something off. Whatever that’s about, the note isn’t about one of our projects.”

“He didn’t work for BlackBridge?”

Helms said, “No.”

The words — and the timbre of their voices — had moved Shaw from ten percent alert to ninety percent. He was in set mode.

Shaw asked Braxton, “Who is he?”

“Security. Works for a subsidiary of Banyan Tree.”

“Name. Give me his name.”

Russell crouched and leaned very close. His brother’s chosen method for retrieving information.

“He’s...” Braxton thought for a moment. “I think it’s Richard Hogan.”

Russell rose and said to his brother, “We got it wrong. Devereux’s the one that wants SP dead, not BlackBridge.”

“So the hit’s still on.” Shaw looked at his phone.

Three hours until the family died.

71

The brothers obtained Richard Hogan’s address nearly simultaneously.

Shaw had sent a request to Mack, Russell to Karin.

Shaw’s phone dinged first, but only seconds before his brother’s.

The place where the hitman had lived was a yellow Victorian-façaded townhome in the shadow of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. An upmarket neighborhood. At first Shaw found this surprising, given Hogan’s career — muscle work and kill orders — but Shaw supposed that Jonathan Stuart Devereux paid well.

Russell parallel parked on a steep incline and spun the wheel to chock the tire against the curb. Signs warned drivers to do this. Shaw supposed that the odds of a vehicle with an automatic transmission slipping out of park were minimal, but why not go the extra step? The incline had to be twenty degrees.

They climbed out of the SUV and Shaw dipped his head as two red-masked parrots zipped past. He noted several more, twitchily observing the street from the branches of a maple tree. Another pair was perched nearby too. The birds had made this neighborhood their own.

He and Russell crossed the street and approached the front door slowly, in a tactical formation, away from windows and the door itself. Hogan was no more, and Karin’s information revealed he was single, but he might have had roommates, who were fellow Devereux employees. Or a lover in the same line of murderous work that he had pursued.

It was just the two of them now. Ty and Victoria had to keep an eye on Helms, Braxton and the other ops until the agents arrived from Denver.

Shaw and his brother looked through the windows, fast and carefully. The living space appeared unoccupied.

“I can’t pick these.”

Russell too examined the two deadbolts. He tapped his own shoulder and Shaw nodded.

Stepping three feet back, the brothers paused and looked around. The street was deserted.

Russell charged forward and crashed into the wood. The heavy panel slammed inward as if the hardware were skimpy tin.

The men fanned out, guns drawn, clearing the sparse place. Lacking in furniture, that is, but there were weapons and ammunition aplenty, computers, tactical gear, phones — cellular and satellite, clothing and body armor.

Russell held up an ID badge with Hogan’s picture on it. The subsidiary he worked for within the Banyan Tree family was Sequoia Pest Removal.

The computers were passcode protected, as were the phones. Not impossible for an outfit like Russell’s group to hack, Shaw supposed, but SP’s family had only hours to live. Cracking the electronics would have taken too long.

Shaw said, “The kill order was handwritten. Let’s look for paper.”

They began rifling through stacks of documents that sat on Hogan’s kitchen table and a precarious card table that served as a makeshift desk.

Shaw’s pile was mostly receipts, maps, instruction booklets for newly purchased weapons, company memos that had nothing to do with the kill order, checkbooks and ledgers that showed transfers into banks in the Caribbean.

“Got something here,” Russell said. Shaw joined him as he spread a sheet of paper flat on the desk.

“So that’s what it’s about,” Russell said.

Shaw recalled what La Fleur had told them: about the CEO of one of Devereux’s competitors committing suicide after going bankrupt — following Devereux’s reporting him to the feds. La Fleur hadn’t told them what regulations or laws had been broken, but it was now clear that they would have been environmental.

They dug through the rest of the documents and searched Hogan’s clothes, looking for anything that might give them more information about SP.

Nothing.

Shaw: “Whistleblower. Means he’s got some connection to the subsidiary, maybe he’s a contractor, maybe an employee.”

Russell went online and searched for Banyan Tree. It had been much in the news over the years and hundreds of employees were mentioned but there was no fast search filter that let him find workers with the potential victim’s initials.

And because the company was privately owned, no employee records were available.

“Karin?” Shaw proposed.

“If we had a week or two, we could probably get somebody inside. Not on this time frame.”

Shaw was musing, “Dredge. Waste.”

The thought struck him almost like a slap on the back. He barked a quick laugh.

Russell looked toward him.

Shaw said, “We got it wrong.”

72

Hunters Point yet again.

The vile smells, the trash, the dilapidated buildings, the lots where the skeletons of enterprises were all that remained of capitalist dreams from so many years ago. Seagulls quarreled over the slimmest remnants of garbage. Rats prowled silently but without caution.

The place was as tired as a car abandoned in the woods, not even worth scavenging for parts.

One structure here, though, shone. A white and green one-story building, recently painted. It sat on the water’s edge and was surrounded by a parking lot in which a variety of modest vehicles sat.

As the brothers sped into the lot in Russell’s SUV, Shaw could see the thirty-foot transport boats they’d seen earlier: the ones leaving the island that had been part of the Hunters Point shipyard, filled with fifty-five-gallon drums, riding low. They would slog their way to the wide pier behind the building, where workers would offload the drums and use forklifts to load them onto long flatbed trucks.

The empty boats, with high drafts, would then return to the dismantled ship works for another load. Shaw wondered where the waste he was looking at was bound for: What competitor did Devereux have in his sights? How many employees and residents living nearby would be poisoned? How many animals? How much land would be tainted for decades to come? He wondered too if the idea of using waste as a weapon had come from the CEO of Banyan Tree himself? Or, like the Urban Improvement Plan, had it been the brainchild of Ian Helms?

Russell braked to a stop near the office and the men climbed out.

They had come back to the waterfront because of Shaw’s thought after reading about “dredging” up waste, which is usually performed by a boat. That meant that the word crew in the text authorizing the killing of SP probably did not mean crew as in gang, despite the fact that there were plenty of those in Hunters Point. The word was meant in its original sense: those operating vessels.

They walked over the parking lot of inky, newly laid asphalt to the office. Shaw noted on the side of one of the trucks was the name of the company, along with the tagline:

Shaw wondered about the ellipses at the end. That form of punctuation sometimes was meant to suggest forward motion: Now get out there and live that clean life! But ellipses also were used to indicate that something had been omitted from the sentence. Like: “Making the world a better place to be... for our company, our shareholders and our illustrious CEO.”

They looked through the window into the office, where a woman sat at a desk and several men in gray uniforms and orange vests stood in a cluster, sipping from coffee cups. The pier itself held a dozen workers.

“There,” Russell said. He was glancing toward a man in a navy-blue windbreaker, matching slacks with a stripe up the side and headgear you rarely saw: a real captain’s hat, the sort sometimes sitting atop lean and fake-tanned women in short blue skirts and tight white blouses, on the arms of rich businessmen.

The man was out of sight of the office and the pier, on the other side of a large rust-scarred fuel tank, where four empty flatbeds sat. He was scanning their license plates with a tablet, then tapping in notes. On his chest was a BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions ID badge.

They bypassed the office and, when no one was looking their way, stepped over a gray-painted chain and walked along the stone wall at waterside toward the man. The smell was of white gas — kerosene — and diesel fumes, generic ocean, and some truly foul chemical. The rocking water beside the dock was coated in concentric blue and purple and red circles of oil.

The grizzled man in the captain’s hat made a call on his walkie-talkie, then strolled to another truck. He glanced back, seeing the brothers. He looked them up and down. “This’s private property.” The voice was a growl.

Shaw and Russell continued forward and stopped when they were about fifteen feet away.

His weathered face soured. “I said, case you didn’t hear, private property. You get the fuck out of here.”

Russell said, “We have some questions.”

“Leave! Or you don’t know the kind of hurt you’ll have. I’ve whipped Somalian pirates, I’ve put down mutinies. I whaled on a carjacker so bad he needed his jaw rebuilt. Now!” The head, beneath its jaunty hat, turned toward the exit.

Russell said, “There’s an employee—”

“What’s with that beard? Are you some kind of Amish person?” His face grew even more fierce. “Or a Muslim?”

Shaw: “An employee at BayPoint Enviro-Sure. His—”

“I’m not telling you again.” His cheeks reddened; his temperature must have risen a few degrees. Soon the shade was actually livid.

“—initials are S.P. He has some connection with this facility. We need his name and address. It’s important. We’ll pay you. A thousand.”

“Why would I care what you need and don’t need? Fuck-fancy. Get off this property now.”

Fuck-fancy. Not a phrase Shaw was familiar with. He kind of liked it.

He continued, “I’m a spit away from calling security.”

The expressions got better and better.

“All right. That’s it.” Up came the radio. Apparently the old salt hadn’t whipped those pirates without backup.

But before the call went out, Russell smoothly drew his silenced pistol and blew a nearby rat to eternity.

Not the approach Colter Shaw would have taken.

Then again, as he’d learned very well over the past few days, it wasn’t unusual for two siblings to solve a problem in significantly different ways.

73

At 6:45, fifteen minutes before the family was to die, Colter Shaw was sitting, alone, in the front seat of Russell’s Lincoln Navigator. He was looking over the house of Samuel Prescott, the BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions whistleblower. Shaw watched the garage door rolling down, hiding from view the family’s sedan, a red Volvo.

Trevor Little — the belligerent pseudo captain on the Hunters Point dock — had glanced in horror at Russell’s gun and quickly told the brothers Prescott’s name. It seemed the employee and his family had been out of town at a funeral but were due back today.

This would be the reason for the specific time and date of the hit in the kill order; the murderer would have to wait until the family returned to their home from the airport. Karin had checked passenger manifests and flight schedules. The Prescotts were due back at about 4:30 and would be home about fifty minutes later — the time it would take them to collect luggage and travel from San Francisco International Airport to their home in Forest Hill, a suburb of San Francisco.

Shaw, Russell and Ty had met the family’s flight.

A scheduler at BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions, Prescott was in his forties, stocky and tanned, with sandy-colored hair. His wife, Bette, was blond and willowy. Their son and daughter were twins and had their mother’s pallor and hair, freckled both. They were twelve.

At SFO, Ty had displayed an ID card, which Shaw caught a fast glimpse of. He saw the initials U.S. and a round emblem similar to, but not the same as, the Justice Department’s. Shaw wondered if it was real. In any case, it took no convincing for Prescott to believe that he and his family were in danger.

Prescott had been surprised Devereux had learned of his espionage. He’d taken care to hide the fruits of his spying on his computer with sophisticated encryption.

He was not, however, surprised that the CEO had issued an order to have him killed. “He’s murdering people with toxic waste. Why not kill somebody with a bullet?”

Explaining to the brothers how he’d discovered Devereux’s toxic waste scheme, Prescott said, “The numbers, always the numbers. They never lie. I’m a scheduler, right? I keep an eye on transport down to the hour, the minute. I noticed that the timing of some of our trucks was off. When they went out and when they came back wasn’t right. I knew how far they had to travel to the sites — the legitimate ones — and they were coming back to the dock too soon.

“Not a huge time difference, but it was suspicious. I called in sick one day and followed one of the trucks. It didn’t go to the site it was supposed to. It went to a vacant lot in Oakland. The waste was pumped into an unmarked tanker. I followed it to a factory owned by one of Devereux’s competitors. These men got out — like special forces, all in black. They dumped the waste into a creek downstream from the factory. I got pictures and samples. I was going to the EPA and the U.S. attorney this week. I just wanted to find a few more target locations.”

Shaw looked over the street the family lived on. It was a quiet avenue in Forest Hill, with houses set back behind small front yards of grass or gardens. It was one of the least densely populated parts of the city and, as the name suggested, more arboreal than most. Their house was modest. Prescott made good money at his job and Bette was the senior bookkeeper for a chain of urgent-care clinics. But even with double incomes, this was all they could afford. Home prices in the Bay were crushing.

Though the blinds were drawn, Shaw noted the flickering light from the TV in the living room.

He scanned the street again and saw no threat. He also was watching the rooftops to the east, looking for rifle muzzles or scope flares.

Russell and Ty were in the latter’s car, behind the house, scanning Hawk Hill Park, which is where a sniper targeting the Prescott house from the west would be. Those two had already swept the home for IEDs and found no traces of explosives. Drive-bys wouldn’t be the order of the day either. To kill the family the team needed to get inside. The two pros in the business, Russell and Ty, believed the attack would be a dynamic entry, two or three ops kicking in the door and charging through the house. They would likely be supported by a sniper.

Why did the kill order include the entire family? he wondered.

Maybe just being meticulous. Maybe Devereux was worried that Prescott had explained what he’d found to his wife, and the children might have overheard.

Maybe to send a message to the rest of the thousands of employees at BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions and Banyan Tree, reminding them of where their loyalty should be.

5:56.

He called his brother and asked in a soft voice, “Zero here. Anything in the back?”

“Thought I saw a hostile. Just a jogger. No threat.”

“’K.” They disconnected.

Would the ops come in an SUV, a couple of jeeps? He doubted a helicopter but supposed with Devereux’s money that wasn’t impossible.

Shaw was armed with both his Glock and his Colt Python, and, in the backseat, his Enfield .303 — the World War One British infantry rifle, old and battered but perfectly accurate. He really hoped he didn’t need to fire any weapons; he’d already been present at a fair number of incidents here. At some point the cops would have to get involved and, even if the firefight was justified, he wouldn’t want that hassle.

Besides, he needed a shooter alive. He wanted witnesses to testify against Devereux. Sam Prescott had proof that would bring down BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions and its executives, but the parent company — and Devereux himself — would be insulated from liability. A hired killer, even working for one of Devereux’s subsidiaries, might have evidence leading directly to the arrogant CEO himself.

A motor scooter went by, a young Asian man on the saddle. It vanished around the corner at the end of the block. An SUV, driven by a middle-aged woman, cruised up the hill, and likewise disappeared. A woman bicyclist, in a bold, floral athletic outfit, pedaled past and started up the steep hill, her feet moving rapidly, the gears in low.

At 7:10 his phone hummed.

Shaw answered and told his brother, “They’re late.” He said he’d seen a few vehicles. Nobody suspicious and none of the drivers — or the cyclist — had been interested in the Prescott house. “Sniper action? There’s nothing in the front.”

“No one presenting in the back, and any sniper and his spotter’d need time to set up, adjust for wind, humidity. We would’ve seen them by now.”

“Are they just in good camo?”

“No. Got eyes on every usable nest. Couple of them’re perfect... Hmm. They would’ve known the Prescotts landed an hour and a half ago.”

Shaw said, “With Hogan disappearing, they’re being cautious maybe.”

“Think they called it off?”

“Ten percent chance of that. Tops.”

“Agree.”

They disconnected.

7:15.

Shaw noted the light from the Prescotts’ living room change as a commercial came on the TV.

He was checking his phone for the time — it was 7:19 — when the gut-punching explosion rocked the SUV. He looked up at the Prescott house to see flame boiling from each shattered window. Shaw climbed from the vehicle and ran toward the structure. He could get no closer than forty or fifty feet. Already the entire home was ablaze.

The device — whatever it was — had been perfectly designed. Not a soul could have gotten out of a trap like that alive.

74

They drove back in silence to the safe house, Colter Shaw and his brother.

Both men were stung by their failure.

“Goddamn it.” Shaw’s voice was bitter.

What a loss...

They had expected an assault. They had expected a C-4 or another nitrate-based bomb.

They weren’t prepared for a very different improvised explosive device — and a particularly clever one. Devereux’s new kill team had run a gas line disguised as a water pipe into the house and starting about 7:00 or so the timed system had begun filling the place with natural gas — but it was the original substance, before the foul rotten egg smell odorant, to warn of leaks, was added. No one could have detected it.

After a half hour, some type of timed igniter clicked to life. The resulting explosion had destroyed the house.

If no one had known the family was targeted for death, the incident would have been reported as an accident. The intense heat and flames would melt most of the parts of the device. Investigators would assume the real public utility pipe — now destroyed too — had cracked or suffered from a leak. The igniter would be vaporized as well.

Shaw and his brother, though, explained to the fire marshal that the explosion was meant to murder a whistleblower and his family.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell anybody?” the marshal had demanded.

Because it never occurred to them that Devereux’s men would try something like this.

And also because Shaw and Russell had inherited enough of their father’s paranoia to not trust your average civic official — at least not in the case of BlackBridge.

They now arrived at the safe house and Russell parked. He had a good touch behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. All the children did. Homeschooling didn’t provide the chance for official driver’s ed classes, but Ashton had taught Russell, Colter and Dorion the skills needed to pilot vehicles from cycles to sedans to trucks from age twelve or so. It was curious that Russell drove so conservatively. In his work for the group, he was the blunter of the two brothers; Shaw, whose Yamaha occasionally went airborne vertical and returned to earth horizontal, had an approach to his own profession that was far more cerebral.

The brothers walked to the pale blue safe house on Alvarez and into the entry hall, where the FBI’s Denver contingent was standing. Shaw nodded and introduced himself. Russell did too.

Shaw then walked into the living room and up to the four people sitting stiffly on the couch. He said to the four members of the Sam Prescott family, “We were wrong. There weren’t any shooters. It was a firebomb. Your house is gone, your car, everything. I’m sorry.”

75

Their failure was that they’d missed the chance to apprehend a single member of a dynamic entry team — someone who might be willing to testify against Devereux.

There was, of course, never any question about the family’s going home from the airport; Russell, Shaw and Ty had transported them directly to the Alvarez safe house and then sped to Forest Hill to set up the bait and arrange the takedown of the assault team.

Russell had driven the Prescotts’ sedan from the airport and had parked it in the garage so spotters would think the family was home. Ty, in his own car, parked behind the property. The men had checked the house for IEDs. When they were finished, they turned the TV and lights on to simulate occupancy, then left via the back door to wait for the attack.

A house destroyed and not a single suspect who might be willing to testify against Jonathan Stuart Devereux.

What a loss...

Shaw and Russell had done all they could do and now the case was in the hands of the FBI. The scrubbed, somber agent from the Denver office was named Darrel Gardiner. He and his team would be temporary; the agents would review BlackBridge’s records and interrogate suspects to find out if any San Francisco FBI personnel had been compromised. If not, Gardiner would hand over the case to the field office here.

With Victoria Lesston at his side, Shaw sat at the kitchen table in the safe house, as the FBI agent finished his interview with him. The agent had already spoken to Victoria, Russell and Ty.

Karin, it seemed, was the invisible woman. Her name never came up, and Shaw wasn’t going to volunteer anything about her.

Looking over his notes, Special Agent Gardiner shook his head, topped with a blond businessman’s severe trim. “Extortion, murder, attempted murder and conspiracy, burglary, hacking, eavesdropping... Well.”

Shaw got the impression there was a stronger word he wished to use but couldn’t bring himself to. Religious maybe. Or just the rigorous standards of the profession.

“Urban Improvement Plan?” A shake of his head. “They must’ve dumped thousands of kilos of drugs over the years.”

Shaw said, “Tip of the iceberg. BlackBridge’s got clients all over the world and the UIP was just one of their tactics.”

The company was being shut down, and all the facilities were being seized and searched presently. Other warrants would follow. A U.S. congressman and a congresswoman from California were already looking into voting fraud allegations because of the UIP-manipulated congressional districts in the state. The woman legislator issued a statement condemning the gerrymandering and was calling for an investigation of the politicians who had benefited from the redistricting.

One problem remained, however, a serious one. All of the offenses that Gardiner had just recited had been committed by Helms, Braxton and the BlackBridge crew. Not a bit of evidence could be laid at the feet of Jonathan Stuart Devereux or Banyan Tree Holdings.

“The best insulation I’ve ever seen,” Gardiner told Shaw and Victoria. “It’s early, I understand, but so far Banyan Tree is driven snow.”

Shaw asked the special agent about BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions, whose offices were presently being searched too. “Their execs and staff’ll go down, but there’s no evidence that the parent company or Devereux himself even knew anything about dumping toxic waste on competitors’ land. No emails, no memos. We have phone records, but that’s just who called who and when. We don’t know the content.”

“Devereux was the one who ordered it, right?” Victoria asked, her lips tight in anger.

Gardiner answered, “Of course. But the head of Enviro’s taking the fall for the whole thing. Claims his boss was in the dark.”

Gardiner closed his notebook and shut off the recorder. He slipped them away and handed both Shaw and Victoria his business card.

Other agents — a woman and a man, Latinx — were helping the Prescott family gather their luggage. They would be taken to a federal safe house, where they’d stay during the course of the BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions investigation. Shaw wondered if they’d go into witness protection. If Devereux remained free, they would have to.

The family still seemed dazed by what had hit them.

Sam Prescott said, “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Shaw. We’re alive because of you. And what they did, with that bomb in the house... Lord. I can’t imagine being in there when the thing went off.”

Shaw responded with, “Good luck.” The gratitude matter again.

“Thank your brother too.”

Russell was in the safe house, but not present with the family. He was assembling the surveillance gear he’d planted upon his return.

“I’ll do that,” Shaw said.

Prescott and his family then followed the watchful agents out the door.

Ty stepped inside. “Have to leave, Colter. Got a little bit of paperwork to take care of. Oh, I got a call from SFPD. They responded to a complaint in Hunters Point. Man said an Amish Muslim and his buddy threatened to shoot him and then zip-tied him to a radiator in an old warehouse. He said he’s whaled on pirates and if he gets a chance he’s going to punch those guys out too. Just a heads-up.”

“I’ll keep my eye out,” Shaw said with a smile.

“You two make a good team. You brothers. You work together in the past?”

“Trained, ages ago. Never worked.”

“Looks like it all came back to you. Russ was saying you climb mountains?”

“I do.”

“For the fun of it?”

“You should try it some time.”

“Jesus.” Ty shook his hand.

“Oh. And one thing?” Shaw said, reflecting on meeting Ty for the first time in front of the safe house.

The squat man lifted a gear bag that had to weigh fifty pounds as if it contained pillows, and glanced Shaw’s way.

“Be careful with those box cutters.”