The Final Twist

He and his colleagues looked for evidence against the company, hoping to build a case for authorities. Nearly all BlackBridge workers refused to talk to them but he managed to learn of an employee who felt the UIP had crossed a line. A researcher for BlackBridge, Amos Gahl, found some evidence and smuggled it out of the company. The man hid what he’d stolen somewhere in the San Francisco area. But before he could contact Ashton or the authorities, he too was dead—the victim of a suspicious car crash.

Ashton had written in his letter: It became my obsession to find what Gahl had hidden.

Then BlackBridge learned of Ashton and those who shared his obsession. Several died in mysterious accidents, and the others dropped out of the mission, fearful for their lives. Soon, Ashton was alone in his quest to bring down the company that had killed his student and so many others in the City by the Bay—and, likely, untold other cities.

Then on a cold October night, Colter Shaw, sixteen years old, discovered his father’s body in desolate Echo Ridge.

Since then, he’d become well aware of the shady figures he was up against:

Ian Helms, founder and CEO of BlackBridge. Now in his mid-fifties and movie-star handsome, he had had some national defense or intelligence jobs in the past and had worked in politics and lobbying.

Ebbitt Droon, a “facilitator” for the company, which is to say a hitman, was wiry with rat-like features. After several personal runins with the man, including one that featured a Molotov cocktail hurled in Shaw’s direction, he was sure that Droon was a certifiable sadist.

Crema Braxton, BlackBridge operative in charge of stopping Ashton—and now stopping his son. Of her Ashton had written:

She may look like somebody’s grandmother but oh, my, no.

She’s the picture of ruthlessness and will do what needs to be done.

She was an external relations supervisor, a euphemistic job description if ever there was one.

Ashton had concluded his letter with this:

Now, we get around to you.

You’ve clearly followed the breadcrumbs I’ve left leading you to Echo Ridge and now know the whole story.

I can hardly in good conscience ask you to take on this perilous job. No reasonable person would. But if you are so inclined, I will say that in picking up where my search has ended, you’ll be fighting to secure justice for those who have perished or had their lives upended by BlackBridge and its clients, and you’ll be guaranteeing that thousands in the future will not suffer similar fates.

The map included here indicates the locations in the city that might contain—or lead to—the evidence Gahl hid. After leaving this letter and accompanying documents, I will be returning to San Francisco and I hope I will have found more leads. They can be found at 618 Alvarez Street in San Francisco.

Finally, let me say this:

Never assume you’re safe.

A.S.

4

This was Colter Shaw’s mission. To check out each of the locations on his father’s map—there were eighteen of them—and find the evidence Amos Gahl had hidden.

As he now looked over the documents in the secret room of the safe house’s basement, he realized they had nothing to do with BlackBridge. They had to do with engineering projects and shipping. Some in English, some in Russian or perhaps another language using Cyrillic characters. Other printouts were in Spanish, a language that he could speak, and they related to shipping and transportation too. There were a number in Chinese as well.

Someone was using the secret room as a base of operations. One of the original members of his father’s circle? Or, like Shaw, second generation? A man or a woman? Young? Middle-aged? Some of these materials were dated recently. He turned to the duffel bag on the floor and—after an examination for a tripwire—unzipped it.

Inside was the answer to the question of gender. The clothing was a man’s, of larger-than-average physique. T-shirts, work shirts, cargo pants, jeans, sweaters, wool socks, baseball caps, gloves, casual jackets. Everything was black, charcoal gray or dark green.

Then he saw in the shadows against the back wall another stack of papers. Ah, here was his father’s material. It was Ashton from whom Shaw had learned the art of calligraphy, and the man wrote in a script even more elegant—and smaller—than Shaw’s.

His heart beat just a bit faster, seeing these.

Shaw carried the stack upstairs and set the papers on the rickety kitchen table. He sat down in an equally uncertain chair and began to read. There were more details about the UIP, and references to other schemes the company engaged in: dodgy earthquake inspections of high-rises (some located on the San Andreas Fault, no less), government contract kickbacks, land-use and zoning ploys, stock market manipulations, money laundering.

There was a clipping about the death of a California state assemblyman, with two question marks beside the victim’s picture. The man had died in a car crash on the way to meet with a state attorney general. The resulting fire had destroyed his auto and boxes of records he had with him. The crash was curious but no criminal investigation was begun.

He found as well articles about Todd Zaleski, his father’s former student turned city councilman whom Ashton believed was murdered by BlackBridge.

Everything he found hinted at the company’s guilt. But this wasn’t evidence—at least not enough for a prosecutor. Shaw had some experience on the topic of criminal law. After college he’d worked in a law firm, while deciding whether to take the LSATs and apply to law school. He’d been particularly inspired to study the subject by one Professor Sharphorn at the University of Michigan and thought he might take up the profession. In the end, his restless nature put the kibosh on a desk job, but an interest in the law stayed with him and he often read up on the subject; it was also helpful in his reward-seeking job.

No, nothing his father had found would interest the D.A.’s office.

Shaw then found a note, presumably from a colleague of Amos Gahl, intended for Ashton. It was a small sheet of paper folded many times. This no doubt meant it would have been left in a dead-drop, a spy technique of hiding communiqués under park benches or cracks in walls, avoiding the risk of electronic intercepts.

Amos is dead. It’s in a BlackBridge courier bag. Don’t know where he hid it. This is my last note. Too dangerous. Good luck.

So “it”—the evidence—was in a company bag hidden in one of the eighteen locations Ashton had identified as a likely spot. An arduous task, but there was no way around it. He’d have to start with the first and keep going until he found the courier bag—or give up after none of them panned out.

But he soon learned he wouldn’t have to investigate eighteen locations. In fact, he didn’t need to check out any.

He discovered in the stack a map identical to the one he’d found in Echo Ridge—well, identical except for one difference. All eighteen of the locations were crossed off with bold red Xs.

After leaving the map at the Compound, Ashton, as he’d written, had returned here and searched the sites himself, eliminating them all.

Shaw sighed. This meant that the evidence that would destroy BlackBridge could be squirreled away anywhere within the entire San Francisco Bay Area, which had to embrace thousands of square miles.

Maybe Ashton had discovered other possible sites. Shaw returned to the material to look for more clues, but his search was interrupted at that moment.

From Alvarez Street, out in front of the safe house, a woman called out. “Please!” she cried. “Somebody! Help me!”

5

Shaw looked out the bay window to see two people struggling in front of the chain-link gate that opened onto a scruffy lot containing the remnants of a building that had been partly burned years ago.

The dark-haired woman was in her thirties, he guessed. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt, a scuffed dark blue leather jacket, running shoes. A white earbud cord dangled. She was looking around frantically as a squat man, dressed in a dusty, tattered combat jacket and baggy pants, gripped her forearm. The man was white and had a grimy look about him. Homeless, Shaw guessed, and, like many, possibly schizophrenic or a borderline personality. The man held a box cutter and was pulling the woman toward the gate. He seemed strong, which wasn’t unusual; life on the street was physically arduous; to get by you needed to practice a version of survivalism. Even from this distance, Shaw could see veins rising high on the man’s hands and forehead.

Through the front door and down the concrete steps fast, then approaching the two of them. Her face desperate, eyes wide, the woman looked toward him. “Please! He’s hurting me!”

The attacker’s eyes cut to Shaw. At first there was a mad defiance on the man’s face, which struck Shaw as impish. With his short height and broad chest, he might be cast as a creature in a fantasy or mythological movie. His hands indeed looked strong.

“Oh, yeah, skinny boy, you want some of this? Fuck off.”

Shaw kept coming.

The man waved the weapon dramatically. “You think I’m kidding?”

Shaw kept coming.

You’d think the guy wouldn’t be in a carnal mood any longer, given the third-party presence. But he gripped the woman just as insistently as a moment ago, as if she were a home-run ball he’d caught in the stadium and wasn’t going to give up to another fan. Without loosening his hold he stepped closer toward Shaw.

Who kept coming.

“Jesus! You deaf, asshole?”

In the Shaw family’s Sierra Nevada enclave, where he had taught his children survival skills, Ashton had spent much time on firearms, those confounding inventions that are both blessings and curses. One of his father’s rules was borrowed—straight from Shooting Practices 101.

Never draw a gun unless you intend to use it.

Shaw drew the Glock and pointed it at the attacker’s head.

The man froze.

Shaw was taking his father’s rule to heart, as he usually did with the man’s lengthy list of don’ts. He believed, however, that the definition of use was open to interpretation. His was somewhat broader than Ashton’s. In this case it meant not pulling the trigger but instead scaring the shit out of someone.

It was working.

“Oh … No, man … no, don’t! Please! I didn’t mean anything. I was just standing here. Asked her for some money. I ain’t ate in a week. Then she starts coming on to me.”

Shaw didn’t say anything. He wasn’t someone who negotiated or bantered. He kept the gun steady as he gazed coolly at the puckish face, which was encircled with damp, swept-back hair in a style that, Shaw believed, mercifully ceased to exist around 1975.

After a brief moment, the attacker released the woman. She stepped away, leaning against a segment of chain-link fence, breathing hard. Eyes were wide in her stricken face.

The building must have burned five years ago but, with the weighty moisture in the air, you could still detect burnt wood.

The man retracted the blade on the box cutter and started to put it away.

“No. Drop it.”

“I—”

“Drop. It.”

The gray tool clattered onto the gravelly sidewalk.

“Out of here now.”

The man held up both his hands and backed away. Then he paused. He cocked his head and, with narrowed eyes and a hint of hope in his face, he asked, “Any chance you can spare a twenty?”

Shaw grimaced. The man ambled up the street.

Shaw holstered the gun and scanned the area. Only one other person was on the street—a bearded man in a thigh-length black coat and dark slacks, a stocking cap and an Oakland A’s backpack. He wasn’t nearby and was facing away. If he’d seen the incident, he had no interest in the participants or what had happened. The man stepped into an independent coffee shop. San Francisco, with its Italian roots, had many of these.

“My God,” the woman whispered. “Thank you!” She was a little shorter than Shaw’s six feet even, but not much, with an athletic build, toned legs and thighs under her tight-fitting distressed jeans. She had slim hips and lengthy arms. The veins were prominent in the backs of her hands too, just like her attacker’s. Her brown hair was loose. She wore no makeup on her face, which seemed weather-toughened. A scar started near her temple and disappeared into her hairline.

“I don’t know what to say. Are you, umm, police?” She glanced toward the weapon on his right hip and then perused him. She was wary.

With his short blond hair, muscular build and taciturn manner, Colter Shaw could easily be mistaken for law enforcement, a fed or a detective running complex homicides—the stuff of anti-terror cases. Today, she’d think, he was undercover, as he’d ridden here on the Yamaha in his biker gear: the jacket, navy-blue shirt under a black sweater to conceal his weapon, blue jeans and black Nocona boots.

“Kind of a private eye.”

“I’m Tricia,” she said.

He didn’t give his, either real or a cover.

She shook her head, apparently at her own behavior. “Stupid, stupid …”

Shaw said, “Find a better quality of dealer. Or don’t use at all.” But he shrugged. “Easy for me to say.”

Her lips tightened; she looked down. “I know. I try. This program, that program. Maybe this’s a wake-up call.” She offered him a wan smile. “Thank you, really.”

And, in the opposite direction of the creature from Middle-earth, she walked off.

6

Shaw returned to the safe house, headed for the kitchen and the documents, but he got no farther than the living room.

He stopped, staring at a shelf on which sat a six-inch statuette, a bronze bald eagle. Wings spread, talons out, predator’s eyes focused downward.

Shaw picked it up and turned it over in his hand, righted it once more.

To the casual observer, what he was holding looked to be a competently sculpted souvenir from a wildlife preserve gift shop, one of the more expensive behind-the-counter items.

But it was significantly more than that to Colter Shaw.

He had last seen it on a shelf in his bedroom in the Compound many years ago. Before it went missing. He had from time to time wondered where it had ended up. Had he stored it away himself when he’d cleaned his room to make space for gear or weapons he’d made or discoveries from his endless hikes through the mountains surrounding the Compound: rocks, pinecones, arrowheads, bones?

Finding it here gave him considerable pleasure, at last understanding the artwork’s fate. His father must have brought it with him here as a reminder of his middle child. Shaw was thankful too it was not lost forever; how he’d come into possession of the sculpture was an important aspect of his childhood, a memento of an incident that had undoubtedly launched him into his present career and lifestyle.

The Restless Man …

But this icon of a bird in muscular flight brought sorrow too. It resurrected other memories of his childhood: specifically of his older brother, Russell.

Years ago, during a bad spell, Ashton Shaw had insisted that Dorion, then thirteen, make a one-hundred-foot free-climb up a sheer rock face in the middle of the night. This was a test. All of his children had to make the ascent when they became teenagers.

Russell and Colter already had done so. But had come to believe that the rite of passage was pointless, especially for their sister. Dorie was as talented athletically as her brothers with chalk and rope, and more so than Ashton himself. She’d already proved her ascent skills, including night climbs.

With a mind of her own even then, Dorion had simply decided she didn’t need to … or want to. “Ash. No.” The girl never shied.

But her father wouldn’t let it go. He grew more and more riled and persistent.

The older brother intervened. Russell also said no.

The confrontation turned ugly. A knife was involved—on Ashton’s part. And Russell, using skills his father himself had taught, prepared to defend his sister and take the weapon away from the wild-eyed man.

Mary Dove, her husband’s psychiatrist and med-dispenser in chief—had been away on a family emergency, so there was no adult present to defuse the situation.

After a boilingly tense moment their father backed down and retreated to his bedroom, muttering to himself.

Not long after, Ashton had died in a fall from Echo Ridge.

The circumstances were suspicious, and more troubling, Shaw learned that his brother had lied about his whereabouts at the time of Ashton’s death. He was, in fact, not far from Echo Ridge. Shaw believed that Russell had murdered the man. He was sure it had been agonizing, an impossible decision on his brother’s part. But he guessed that at some point Russell had come to believe it was Dorie’s life or Ashton’s, and Russell made his choice. By then Ashton Shaw had become someone very different from the kind and witty man and teacher the children had known growing up.

Shaw had made his own impossible decision: accepting that his brother was guilty of patricide. The thought tore at him for years, and tore him and Russell apart.

Then, just weeks ago, the truth: Russell had had nothing to do with Ashton’s death. It was a BlackBridge operative responsible, trailing their father to Echo Ridge on that cold, cold night in October.

Ebbitt Droon himself had told Shaw the story. “Your father … Braxton wanted him dead—but not yet, not till she had what she wanted. She sent somebody to, well, talk to him about the documents.”

“Talk” meant torturing Ashton into giving up what he knew about Amos Gahl’s theft of company secrets and evidence.

Droon had explained, “Near as we can piece it together, your father knew Braxton’s man was on his way to your Compound. Ashton tipped to him and led him off, was going to kill him somewhere in the woods. The ambush didn’t work. They fought. Your father fell.”

But until that revelation, Shaw had indeed believed in his heart that Russell was their father’s murderer. Devastated by false accusation, even if unspoken, Russell had vanished from the family’s life. No one had heard from him since Ashton’s funeral, more than a decade ago.

Colter Shaw made his living finding people—good ones and bad, those lost because of fate and circumstance and those lost because they chose to be lost. He had devoted considerable time and money and effort to tracking down his brother. What he would say when he found him, Shaw had no idea. He’d practiced a script of one brother talking to the other, explaining, seeking forgiveness, trying to find a path out of estrangement.

But all his efforts had come to nothing. Russell Shaw had vanished, and he’d vanished very, very well.

Shaw recalled discussing this very subject with someone just last week, describing the impact.

The man had asked, “What would you say was the greatest minus regarding your brother? What hurts the most?”

Shaw had answered, “He’d been my friend. I was his. And I ruined it.”

Seeing this eagle now made him feel Russell’s absence all the more.

He set the statue on the kitchen table and returned to the stack of his father’s materials. For an hour he pored over the documents. He found two notes in his father’s fine hand. They didn’t relate to the eighteen locations, which meant he’d discovered these spots after completing the scavenger hunt of the map.

One note was about a commercial building in the Embarcadero, the district along the eastern waterfront of San Francisco: the Hayward Brothers Warehouse.

The other was an address in Burlingame, a suburb south of the city, 3884 Camino.

Shaw now texted his private eye, requesting information. Mack McKenzie soon replied that she could find little more about the warehouse beyond that it was a historic building dating to the late 1800s, was not open for business to the public, and was presently for sale. The Burlingame address was a private home, owned by a man named Morton T. Nadler.

Shaw also found a business card, which represented a third possible location as well, the Stanford Library of Business and Commerce.

The library was located not in Palo Alto, where the university was situated, but in a part of town known as South of Market. Maybe it had nothing to do with Gahl’s stolen evidence; it would be an odd place to hide a courier bag. Possibly Ashton Shaw had used it for research. He had never owned a computer, and certainly had never allowed one in any residence of his, so maybe he’d gone to the library to use one of its public workstations.

Shaw decided the library would be his first stop. It was the closest to the safe house. If that didn’t pan out he would try the house in Burlingame and then the warehouse.

First, though, some security measures.

San Francisco was BlackBridge’s turf. Odds were ninety percent that they didn’t know he was here. But that dark ten percent required some due diligence.

He called up an app on his phone.

It happened to be tracing the whereabouts of Irena Braxton and Ebbitt Droon at that very moment.

Just the other day—under a fake identity—Braxton had talked her way into Shaw’s camper and stolen what she thought was Ashton’s map marking the places were Gahl’s evidence was hidden and other materials.

Shaw had tipped to who she really was. What he’d intentionally left for her to steal was a map with eighteen phony locations marked and a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, filled with code-like gibberish in the margins. A GPS tracker was hidden in the book’s spine.

In the past two days the tracker had meandered over various locations he’d marked on the map and spent time in a commercial skyscraper in downtown San Francisco, on Sutter Street, probably BlackBridge’s satellite office. This was its present location.

He now shifted to Google Maps and examined the neighborhood in which the Stanford library was located. He hardly expected trouble but it was a procedure he followed with every reward job. Information was the best weapon a survivalist could have.

Which didn’t mean hardware should be neglected.

Shaw checked his gun once more.

Never assume your weapon is loaded and hasn’t been damaged or sabotaged since the last time you used it.

The .380 was indeed loaded, one in the bedroom and six in the mag. It was a good dependable pistol—as long as you held it firmly while firing. The model had a reputation for limp wrist failure to eject: spent brass hanging in the receiver. Colter Shaw had never had this problem.

He seated the gun in his gray plastic inside-the-waistband holster and made sure it was hidden. The rule was that if you’re carrying concealed, you should keep it concealed, lest a concerned citizen spot the weapon, panic and call the cops.

There was another reason too.

Never let the enemy know the strength of your defenses …

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