The Nightmare Thief

Gabe didn’t move. “Bad idea.”

Dustin looked at Noah. “We can take them.”

Von glanced at them, suspicious, but they were speaking too quietly to be overheard. He resumed his manic dialogue with Friedrich.

Dustin’s breathing picked up. He whispered, “They’re going to kill us all.”

“This is not the place,” Gabe said.

Dustin turned to him, pale, almost seasick. “And who are you, some guy who works at USF? Me and Noah and Ritter here, we charge. Three on one. You can sit here with your girlfriend if you want, but we have at least three men who can do this.”

Gabe’s eyes flashed, briefly, and dimmed again. “Not yet. Not here.”

His gaze slid toward the window. The Hummer was rocketing along the rutted gravel road, bouncing like a runaway covered wagon. To their left, an eroded gradient dropped into the depths of the gorge. There was no guardrail.

Jo whispered, “Dustin, look outside. Don’t be rash.”

They had no margin for error. The gorge was so deep that she couldn’t see the bottom. The light swept across the interior of the limo as they continued to bowl around the long, sweeping bend.

Friedrich’s hands jerked back and forth on the wheel like a cartoon character’s. “We are screwed. Royally.”

“Shut up.”

Von got out a cell phone and punched numbers. As he did, a chime echoed from his pocket. Jo recognized the sound: It was her phone, sending a message. Von pulled her cell out.

Dustin’s breathing accelerated. “He’s distracted.”

Dustin tensed. Gabe shot out an arm to grab him, but Dustin was beyond reach and in motion. Shouting like a wild man, he threw himself at the front seat.

Von heard the disturbance and turned, phone to his ear. Dustin lunged into the driver’s compartment and tackled him.

Friedrich’s head whipped around. “Shit—”

Gabe moved too, fast as a snake. Ritter was a beat behind him.

Jo saw Dustin’s flailing legs and grunting face. He was fighting Von for control of the gun. Noah scrambled toward the melee. The pistol waved in Von’s hand. Jo watched it swing. She couldn’t possibly reach it. She couldn’t get anywhere close to helping.

Friedrich gaped and lifted his foot off the gas.

“No,” Von yelled.

“Faster—don’t let them jump out.” Friedrich slammed on the power again. The Hummer leapt forward.

With Dustin in the way, Gabe couldn’t get close enough to grab Von’s gun. Instead, he swept his right arm around the headrest, grabbed Von by the hair, and smashed his head against the door frame.

“Dustin, aim the gun away from us,” Gabe said.

Von twisted and submarined and kicked like a trapped bull. Gabe slammed his head against the door frame again. With his left hand he gouged at Von’s eyes. Von’s knees came up and his feet kicked the dash and the gearshift and the windshield. Friedrich turned his head.

Von’s boot connected with it. Hard.

Friedrich’s head snapped sideways. He jerked the wheel.

Jo had a sick, falling sensation. No, don’t. Stay on the road.

Friedrich hauled the wheel back and straightened out.

The gun in Von’s hand fired.

Jo ducked. Peyton and Lark screamed. The windshield spidered and the Hummer swerved. Von kicked furiously. The pistol waved in the air. Dustin clawed at Von’s hand, trying to grab the gun.

“No, turn the barrel away from us,” Gabe repeated. “Pin his hand against the dash and aim the gun away.”

Von’s legs muscled wildly back and forth. Ritter dived for his knees. Gabe continued battering Von’s head against the door frame. Von weakened. The Hummer veered left.

Jo yelled, “Steer. Hold the wheel and stop the car.”

Lark threw herself onto a seat and grabbed a seat belt. She wrapped her arm through the shoulder strap and gripped it like a vine. The Hummer shuddered. The left front wheel caught the lip of the hill. Friedrich jerked the wheel, fighting, foot still to the floor. Jo saw Autumn’s eyes gleaming with fright.

From the driver’s compartment came grunts and shouts. The gun boomed again. Then again. Glass shattered and Friedrich’s hands dropped from the wheel.

The Hummer straightened momentarily and tilted. The light turned in the sky, shadow overtaking the window.

“Oh my God,” Autumn said.

Then everything went sideways, fast. Jo hit whoever was next to her. She cried out. She saw Gabe, arms around the headrest, gripping Von’s head. He let go, grabbed a seat belt, and braced himself. He snapped the buckle and grabbed for Lark.

The front of the Hummer angled down, sliding, fast. Through the window Jo saw the slope, covered with trees and boulders.

They flipped.

The Hummer capsized, hard. The roof of the car hit the slope with a crunching sound. The windows shattered. People flew around the interior of the limo. Jo hung on to the shoulder strap of her seat belt like a commuter in a subway car that had just been kicked into a tumble cycle. The gorge steepened, and upside down, they slid forward down the slope. Jo saw light, shadow, felt the roof crushing. Dust blew through the shattered windows. She saw boulders and the silver glint of water at the bottom of the gorge. Her mind went firework white. They were going down, all the way.

Chapter 12

Evan Delaney paused at the foot of the marble staircase. She wanted to look meek and inconspicuous. Luckily, in the vaulted echo chamber of San Francisco City Hall, that wasn’t hard. City Hall looked like the U.S. Capitol, but gaudier. It had a gilded dome. It flashed a little leg. She backed against the banister and watched the man in the pin-striped suit descend the stairs toward her.

The word ambush had a lovely ring to it. It was full of hope.

The man came down the stairs slowly, his white hair bouffanting like a televangelist’s. He was surrounded by minions. He was a mortgage banker who had been testifying before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He had also been a client of the dead lawyer Phelps Wylie, and he was her last hope for an interview.

He drew near. She stepped out from the banister.

“Mr. Higgins, I have some questions about Phelps Wylie,” she said.

The minions rushed to block her, like a flannel wall. She persisted, batting them away as if they were Brooks Brothers moths.

“Mr. Higgins, do you have any comment on your lawyer’s death?”

He swept past her, down the stairs, into the cavernous foyer, and out the door.

She followed him to the street. Higgins climbed into a waiting car and zoomed away. The car disappeared into traffic, followed by the minion swarm.

Ambush? Strikeout. None of Wylie’s clients wanted to speak to her. Only a few had even bothered to give her a no-comment. The rest had deflected her calls. Higgins had been her final shot.

Maybe it was time to go home. She turned and headed for the parking garage. She could already hear her credit card, shrieking in pain. And then her phone beeped.

It was a text message from Jo. She slowed. No—it was three messages. She opened the first, and stopped.

I found Wylie’s 2nd cell. He was carjacked. Drove to Sierras under DURESS.

Evan’s lips parted.

Wylie recorded conversation during drive. 2nd person in car. FORCED HIM.

“Oh my God.”

More to come.

She opened the second message. It included Wylie’s cell phone number and forwarded his call list. Data corrupted, Jo warned, and, indeed, Recent Calls turned up as incomplete phone numbers. But most had the first seven digits, including area codes.

Jo’s third message included the log-in information for her voice-mail service.

Sent Wylie’s recording to my voice mail. Log in and listen. Must take cell to Tuolumne sheriff s in Sonora. Will call when get better signal.

She smiled at her phone. “Oh, Jo. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Pulse racing, she tried to phone Jo back. She got a recording. The number you are calling is out of range. Please try again later.

A misty wind gusted. She found a seat on a nearby bench and, with trepidation, called Jo’s voice mail and logged in.

She heard Wylie’s voice. “Where are we going?”

A chill inched up her back. She closed her eyes, and listened to Wylie’s desperate attempt to save himself and to leave a trail of evidence behind.

A new voice entered the conversation. “Shut up.”

It was a creepy reply from across Wylie’s car, swaddled in engine noise. The hairs on her arms stood up.

“—punishment.”

She couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. But its tone, flat and imperative, frightened her.

The recording ended. She opened her eyes, stunned. Jo had sent her a message in a bottle—from a dead man. Wylie had tried to tell people what was happening to him, even as he was being driven into the mountains to his death. He must have feared what lay up the road. But he kept talking.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed to a Starbucks across from the Civic Center Plaza. On a legal pad she cross-referenced the corrupted data from Wylie’s Recent Calls list. Different portions of each number had been lost, almost like a glass of milk had spilled across the screen. But she quickly saw that Wylie had called only a few numbers from the second cell phone. And he had received calls from only a handful of numbers. By cross-referencing, in most cases, she could assemble the entire number.

None of them belonged to Wylie’s clients, friends, or family.

She went online, pulled up a crisscross directory, and tried to put names to the numbers she had pieced together. No luck.

Time to cold-call.

She got out her phone and dialed the first number on the list. The number rang three times, paused, and rang again with a new tone, as though the call were being forwarded. A woman picked up.

“Ragnarok Investments.”

The voice was brusque, sharp. Impatient.

Evan paused. Was Wylie using the second cell phone for sex or for bad business? “I’m calling about the charity drive—for Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow church.”

The Ragnarok woman hung up.

Evan stared at the phone. Now, wasn’t that interesting. She turned to her computer and typed Ragnarok.

Chapter 13

The hissing sounded like a geyser, hot and wet. The light trickled through windows that had shattered white. Dust hung thick in the air, motes spinning.

Jo coughed. She was breathing.

The hissing continued. The radiator. Behind it she heard the sound of rushing water. She blinked. Her fingers and toes and skin were tingling, sending adrenaline distress signals: Hell was this?

The roof of the Hummer was beneath her back. She was lying on pellets of shattered safety glass. She turned her head and heard the glass crunch, like broken bottles in a Dumpster. Other sounds infiltrated her pounding head. A low drone, like a moaning animal.

Hot fear jumped through her. “Gabe?”

Oh God, the roof of the Hummer was hard beneath her back but the floor was close above her head. Too close. The Hummer had been smashed on its plunge down the side of the gorge, like a gargantuan jaw squeezing down. Her chest caught.

She put her hands up and pressed against the floor of the limo. It was crushing her. She stifled a cry. She had to get out. Where was Gabe?

“Quintana.”

Across the vehicle, behind the dust, someone moved. “Jo.”

“Gabe . . .” The rest of her words disappeared in relief and overwhelming fear.

They had to get out. The car would crush them. “Move.”

The wire of panic heated her voice. She coughed back tears. Where were the others? Were they okay?

She was bruised and cut in a dozen places, her head was thundering, her muscles tighter than if she had tried to deadlift half a ton, cold. She had gripped the shoulder harness so hard that she had nearly sent her whole body into spasm. She fumbled for the buckle, punched it, got it to release.

She tried to turn over and banged her head on the roof—the floor—of the Hummer. Dust stung her eyes.

Behind her, the moan turned to hacking. Autumn was hanging from her seat belt, like a skydiver tangled in her harness. With the Hummer smashed, her knees scraped the roof below her. She was conscious, eyes wide. She hit the buckle release.

“Get out. Come on.” Jo could barely keep from screaming.

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