The Memory Collector Part 24

Jo stumbled onto the sidewalk with Shepard hard behind her just as the Navigator drove past. She turned her face away from the street but heard tires scorch the asphalt.

"Run," she said.

They took off. Jo looked for cover, but the building next to the dry cleaner had barred windows and a locked door. Beyond that, the apartment building on the corner was sequestered behind a security gate. A strangling sensation crept into her throat. She rounded the corner onto Valencia. Glanced back. Shepard was lumbering in her wake, tie and suit jacket flapping. Behind him, Kanan was skidding the Navigator through a hard U-turn in the middle of the block. The front wheels were locked, the back end swinging around, gray smoke boiling off the tires. He pulled a one-eighty, straightened it, and gunned it up the block toward them.

"Faster. Sixteenth Street," she said. "Your car."

Sweat was rolling down Shepard's face into his salt-and-copper beard. "That puts us back at square one."

But surrounded by a solid German frame and four hundred horsepower. She pounded along the sidewalk. This street offered no cover, just locked apartment buildings and gla.s.s-fronted businesses and budding trees along the curb. Ahead at the intersection with Sixteenth, the light was green. Horns honked behind them.

Jo looked back. The Navigator was stuck at the corner, blocked by cross traffic.

She pumped her arms. Ahead at the intersection, the light turned yellow. Pedestrians in the crosswalk jogged for the curbs.

"Go for it," she said.

They ran into the crosswalk as the light turned red. Another horn honked, loud, in her ear, and Shepard danced out of the path of a rusty Honda Civic.

Jo belted across the street to the sidewalk. Up the block the Navigator was weaving through traffic, heading for the red light. She and Shepard had about thirty seconds to get out of his sight.

"Where's your car?" she said.

Shepard shook his head. "No. Split up."

"Alec-"

"He'll follow me."

He cast a look at her, hot and determined and somehow ruthless. Then he ran out into the middle of Valencia Street. He stopped in the crosswalk and turned to face the Navigator.

He spread his arms. She couldn't tell whether the gesture meant surrender, Come and get me, or Just try it, man. The Navigator's engine revved. Shepard turned and fled toward the far side of the street.

Jo stood rooted to the sidewalk. The Navigator approached the red light. With barely a pause, Kanan put the pedal down and accelerated toward the intersection, toward cross traffic, straight at her.

* 19 *

The Navigator's engine swelled in Jo's ears. Its red paint flashed in the bright sunlight as the SUV veered toward her. Cars in the intersection and people on the sidewalk swerved like crazed fish scattering at the approach of a shark. She turned and ran.

She crashed into a cl.u.s.ter of trash cans by the curb. She went down amid a clatter like steel drums falling over, hands out, and pitched to the sidewalk.

"Look out," a woman shouted.

Over the s.h.i.+ning barrel of the trash can, Jo saw the Navigator bearing down on her.

Get your b.u.t.t up off this sidewalk, Beckett. She scrambled to her feet and aimed for the door of a Chinese restaurant. All around her on the sidewalk, she saw fleeing backs. She heard distant sirens. Through the window of the restaurant, people stared at her with alarm, eyes wide, chopsticks frozen halfway to their mouths.

A cry escaped her throat. If she ran into the restaurant, the Navigator would ram the window.

She jinked left and pitched along the sidewalk at a flat, crazed sprint. Her hands were clenched, her hair falling from the claw clip into her face. Behind her the engine revved. The street streamed by, trees and cars and shops painted with throbbing murals in rain forest colors.

She needed a cement wall to dive over. A bank with an open vault. A crack. A dime edge, a fire escape, a drainpipe to climb. Her feet pounded the sidewalk.

Ahead she saw a parking garage. She pinned her gaze to it. Reinforced concrete, tight turns, and a hundred metal cha.s.sis she could put between her and the Navigator-she aimed for the entrance.

In her peripheral vision she saw a black vehicle on the street ahead. It was barreling in her direction. She heard the Navigator, seemingly right between her shoulders. She swerved into the entrance of the parking garage, toward the ticket machine.

On the street, tires squealed. She heard the Navigator's brakes engage, hard. She glanced back.

Gabe's black 4Runner had skidded to a stop, half askew, blocking the entrance to the garage. The Navigator was stopped in the street beyond it. Kanan honked, a solid insistent blast. The 4Runner didn't move. The sirens grew louder.

Kanan spun the wheel. With sunlight flas.h.i.+ng off his tinted windows, he roared away.

Jo stood for a second. She couldn't seem to move, could barely inhale. The world was throbbing in sync with her heartbeat.

Gabe climbed out of the 4Runner and strode toward her. She ran and threw herself against him. Without breaking stride he swept an arm around her shoulder and shepherded her toward the 4Runner.

"You okay?" he said.

She nodded tightly.

Eyes sweeping the street, he led her to the pa.s.senger side and opened the door. She jumped in. He jogged around, hopped behind the wheel, and pulled sharply back into traffic.

"How did... ?" She grabbed his shoulder. "Thank you." Her hand was shaking. "How did you find me?"

"The phone. You never hung up. I heard you tell Shepard to head for Sixteenth Street." He checked the mirrors and panned the street. His face was grim. "You hurt?"

She fumbled her seat belt into the buckle and sc.r.a.ped her hair back from her forehead. "Fine, Sergeant."

He looked at her palms. They were sc.r.a.ped and black with grit from her fall over the trash cans. As she stared at them, the shaking in her hand spread up her arms and across her shoulders. Then her whole body began chattering.

"s.h.i.+t, that was scary."

He took her hand and held on tight. Anxiety fizzed behind her eyes, bright and bubbly. No-it was tears. She blinked and they fell to her cheeks. She wiped them roughly away.

She couldn't believe she had admitted her fear to him. She could only recall confessing fear to her parents when she was five, and once to Daniel when they were four hundred feet above the valley floor in Yosemite, and to her sister Tina one desperate empty night after Daniel died. But it had just poured out of her mouth to Gabe. Yet she didn't feel embarra.s.sed or weak for having done it. Maybe she was in shock.

She looked around the street. "Did you see which way Kanan went?"

"South, out of sight. And no way are we going hunting for him." He gripped the steering wheel. "My number one priority is to protect you. My other number one priority is to protect Sophie-she needs a father, not a hero."

He slowed for the light at Sixteenth and signaled left.

"I'm unarmed and in no position to take the fight to Kanan. We talk to the police and get you home safe," he said.

The sun was tipping toward the west. Lengthening shadows etched the road. She heard anger in his voice. He didn't want her to think he was running from a confrontation.

As if. She touched his face. The light changed and he turned onto Sixteenth. Ahead, outside Ti Couz, an SFPD black-and-white was stopped, lights flas.h.i.+ng. Gabe drove toward it.

Hearing a gla.s.s note in her own voice, she said, "What did you find out about Kanan?"

Another sidelong glance. Gabe didn't speak, just put a hand on her arm, half to rea.s.sure her, half to see if she was clammy and about to hyperventilate. P.J.s. What could you do?

"He wasn't a security contractor?" she said.

"It's worse."

* 20 *

Seth Kanan was scared. He was tired and felt alone, because n.o.body would tell him anything. But mostly he was scared.

Everybody wanted to keep him in the dark, it seemed-in such absolute night that he couldn't tell whether his eyes worked anymore. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't talk to his parents. Even though he was all by himself, he felt absolutely controlled. He couldn't do anything except worry.

He kept waiting for his dad to walk through the front door, but he hadn't. It had been another night without him. And the men were out there.

Seth pressed the Scotch tape around the bridge of his gla.s.ses to hold them together. He'd seen the men today. He tried to keep them distant in his mind, to put them in a corner of his memory like c.o.c.kroaches, but they just swelled back up and took over his thoughts. Sneering, making wet sounds, jeering, threatening him. He had a feeling that something had happened today. Vance, the rapper wannabe, had followed him around. Vance had been edgy, like he had bees swarming around him.

"You're safe," Vance had said. "You want to stay that way, you play nice. You say please and thank you, sir."

Safe. What did that mean? Safe as in protected? Safe as in everything else was dangerous? Seth had the feeling that bad things had happened in Vance's world today. And the way the guy looked at him, it was like Vance thought his dad was the one behind it all, putting Seth in danger. That made no sense. That made his stomach burn.

And Murdock had stood behind Vance, staring over his shoulder at Seth like burning holes with his eyes would make Ian Kanan appear on the spot.

"Play nice," Vance had said. "Keep quiet so Mommy doesn't hear any complaints from you. Otherwise her and your dog could find theirselves getting the torture treatment at baby Gitmo." Then he made pathetic barking, whimpering sounds.

Seth had turned his back on him.

Yeah, something had gone wrong for Vance and Murdock. They were all of a sudden in a big hurry. And he was a p.a.w.n they would be only too happy to sacrifice to get whatever it was they wanted.

He needed a weapon.

Something sly, something unexpected. He turned to the bed. He scooted the mattress back from the edge of the frame. He began working on the spring, bending it back and forth, back and forth.

He didn't know how long it would take. But he did know that not all metal was the same. He knew that from shop cla.s.s and chem cla.s.s. And from his dad and Uncle Alec telling him about sword-making, metallurgy, scimitars and daggers. And about Damascus steel.

He kept working, back and forth. This spring wasn't Damascus steel. But it was galvanized, and when it broke, it would be brittle and sharp.

Jo locked her front door behind her and followed Gabe down the hallway to the living room. He walked like Mr. Kicked Back, a guy without a worry in the world. But his gaze swept the living room, the hall, the stairs, the kitchen, and the view of the back yard. She turned on a table lamp, crossed to the bay window, and closed the shutters.

They had talked to the police at the scene outside Ti Couz. But Kanan had disappeared, and so had Alec Shepard. His Mercedes remained outside the restaurant and he wasn't returning her messages.

And Gabe had held his counsel while he drove her home. She turned and faced him.

"Tell me, or forget about it and kiss me, but open your mouth, Quintana."

His gaze finished its slow sweep of the house. He looked at her, fierce and quiet, as cool and centered as a stone in the middle of a flowing stream.

"Ian Kanan served ten years on active duty in the army. I don't have official confirmation, but my air force contact told me some things that jibe with my own impression. Kanan was Special Forces."

" 'Impression'? Does that mean rumor or hard facts?" she said.

"Off-the-record verification. Plus your description of Kanan. Lean and whippy, that's how the Special Forces like 'em."

If Kanan had been in special ops, his service record would be buried in a hole. "Honorable discharge?"

"Far as I know. Contact military records-maybe Amy Tang can shove through the request. You might get some information in a couple of weeks."

She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. "And after he left the army?"

"He went to work for a private security contractor."

"Blackwater?"

"Another outfit, similar deal. Cobra."

"Because Daisy Hill Security wouldn't instill esprit de corps."

"Or fear," Gabe said. "Kanan spent four years with them. Baghdad, Ramadi, and two tours in Afghanistan."

"So he's a soldier of fortune."

"Contractors earn their keep, and the military loves them for it. They handle security and logistics, they take the heat, and they take the pressure off the army."

"They're mercenaries who double as chauffeurs and event planners."

"And bodyguards, marshals, private Secret Service. They even handle security at the Iraqi parliament."

"So they're the bigwigs behind the scenes," she said.

"And until recently, they've had immunity from prosecution. There's been absolutely no way to hold them accountable for things they do wrong."