The Nightmare Thief (33 page)

The sheriff broke the humming silence. “We need to track down that vehicle.”

Tang said, “You need to set up a roadblock.”

“My thinking exactly, Lieutenant.”

“Keep me informed.”

Evan opened her mouth to speak, and paused. “I hope Deputy Gilbert turns up safely.”

Tang said, “Ditto that. Good luck.”

She hung up. After a heavy pause, she said, “Coates’s girlfriend had another piece of information. Edge Adventures’ client this weekend is a young woman named Autumn Reiniger.”

“The twenty-first-birthday girl?” Evan felt a buzz. “Excellent. That’s great.”

Tang made another phone call, to a detective on duty. She told him to find out everything he could about Autumn Reiniger. When she finished, she shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You should be more excited,” Evan said. “What is it?”

“The Tuolumne deputy. It’s bad news. There’s not going to be a happy ending.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Deputy Gilbert found Jo’s truck abandoned with the driver’s door open and the engine running. Now he goes missing, immediately after this mysterious Volvo SUV appears on the scene. I’m not about to shake the pom-poms.”

“You encouraged the sheriff. Encourage yourself too,” Evan said.

Tang’s eyebrows rose. “Are you kidding? Do you know who that was? Sheriff Walt Gilbert. He’s Deputy Ron Gilbert’s father.”

P
eyton lay stretched out on the chilly dirt. Her eyes were half open. Her face was slack. Her chest was still. Gabe knelt beside her. Emotion burst across his face, flaring like a match. He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Jo’s own chest was tight with anger and disbelief.

Losing a patient hurt. Losing a young patient could be crushing. Doctors, paramedics, firefighters, PJs, all barricaded their emotions against the impact. And when it happened, it didn’t feel like a blow. It felt like a drain had opened, swallowing everything and leaving a vacuum in its wake.

Jo could hear the river. It was turbulent, braiding around rocks, pouring cold down the mountain. Again, she thought: None of this should have been happening. Rattlesnake bites didn’t kill people this fast. Not even a bite from a Mojave green.

She leaned over Peyton and flicked the beam of the flashlight at her eyes. Her pupils constricted.

She was still there.

“CPR,” Gabe said.

He leaned down and began blowing air into Peyton’s lungs. Her chest didn’t move. Still no respirations. No sound, no evidence that Peyton was getting oxygen. She remained limp.

“Airway’s completely blocked. Her throat’s swollen shut,” he said.

The sinking, dizzy feeling ran through Jo and settled hard. Peyton was falling toward the far side, maybe already there. Jo seemed to hear echoes in her head.
We have to go. He’s dead. I’m sorry.

No. She focused.

She looked at Gabe. “We are
not
going to have to tell her parents.”

He stared at Peyton. “Absolutely not.”

The vehemence in his voice, even
sotto voce
, felt like pressure in Jo’s chest.

“Trach?” he said.

It was a desperate idea, giving Peyton an emergency tracheotomy, but the situation was critical. He drew his buck knife and palpated Peyton’s neck.

“Perimeter. Watch for people coming,” he said.

Jo scanned the darkened slope. She could see nothing but shifting shadows in the moonlight. She grabbed Peyton’s wrist and checked for a pulse. It was there, solid.
What was causing this?

“Maybe an especially powerful load of venom?” she said.

Wrong, wrong, this was so wrong—but real, and right there. Peyton’s words …
“When I was little I …”

Jo stilled.
Oh my God.
“Anaphylaxis?”

The venom of a Mojave green could paralyze its prey and stop its breathing. But it should not cause a victim’s throat to swell shut.

But a severe allergic reaction might. Anaphylactic shock.

Gabe looked surprised and doubtful. “Allergic reaction to a snakebite?”

Anaphylactic shock was a rare complication in snakebite. It could only happen if the victim had been previously exposed to venom.

“Peyton said, ‘When I was little I almost got poisoned by a rattler,’ ” Jo said. “I thought she meant a snake got into the campsite. But—”

“Maybe the rattler actually struck her?”

Jo grabbed the first-aid kit. She foraged through it and grabbed the EpiPen.

Gabe sliced a hole in Peyton’s velour track bottoms and ripped the fabric to expose her thigh. Jo popped the cap from the back end of the EpiPen and jabbed the pen into Peyton’s quadriceps, injecting epinephrine directly into the muscle.

She pressed, counting slowly to ten. It seemed to take forever. She pulled out the needle and massaged the injection site.

They waited, aching. Jo monitored Peyton’s pulse. The buck knife hovered in Gabe’s hand, gleaming in the beam of the flashlight.

Peyton breathed.

She wheezed. Her chest rose.

Jo whispered, “Come on. Come on, honey.”

Gabe held the knife poised above her throat. She gasped. She was getting air.

“Recovery position,” he said.

They rolled her onto her side. Her lungs were working. Her airway was open. Her mouth opened. Her eyes opened.

“That’s it,” Jo said. “Peyton. Hang in there.”

Gabe sank back on his heels. Despite the chill, he was sweating.

Peyton looked at Jo. Whispered, “What happened?”

“Allergic reaction. We gave you an injection of epinephrine.”

She shut her eyes. “Thank you.”

Tentatively Jo reached out and with the tips of her fingers brushed tangled, wet strings of hair from the girl’s face. “When you were little, did the rattler bite you?”

“Dry bite.”

Jo frowned.

“Jerked my leg free before its fangs sank in. But this time …”

Jo and Gabe exchanged a glance. The childhood bite must have contained some venom.

Eyes still shut, Peyton said, “I’m sorry.” Her lips quivered. “My bracelet. Grandmother gave—I just … sorry.”

“Save the apologies for when we’re home. You can buy me a beer.”

“Buy you a case.” She took a breath. “When I turn twenty-one.”

Jo tucked Peyton’s hair behind her ear. “Deal.”

They kept Peyton in the recovery position for fifteen minutes. Her breathing eased. The flushing and itching subsided. Her face, though still drawn with pain, no longer looked puffy. Her pulse remained strong and her respirations became regular.

Gabe stood up and beckoned Jo out of the girl’s earshot. “We have a decision to make.”

Peyton rolled over. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“You just rest. We’ll figure it out.”

“No. Don’t make me stay here.” She struggled to a sitting position. “I can walk.”

They looked at her, patently doubtful.

“Really.” She held out her left hand. “Help me up.”

Jo thought,
First, do no harm
. Hiking out with a rattlesnake bite was far from ideal. Doing it in the aftermath of anaphylaxis was even more uncertain. But even more important than keeping Peyton still was getting her to an ER. Anything that reduced the time it took to get her to a hospital would improve her chances of survival and recovery. And staying here, where Kyle could find them, was the most dangerous option of all.

Peyton pushed to her feet. “I can walk. Please. We need to stay together. I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you say. I promise.”

Keeping Peyton in one place until she could be evacuated would be ideal, but she couldn’t be left alone. Jo could stay with her, but Gabe’s expression said in no uncertain terms that he would not let that happen. Either they all stayed, or they all went. And none of them was going to stay.

Gabe looked up the slope, into the forest. Jo felt certainty hover in the air between them. They were going to find the others.

“Let’s go,” she said.

E
van felt a finger poke her shoulder and smelled scorched coffee. She jerked upright in the plastic chair beside Tang’s desk. The windows reflected the humming fluorescent lights. Outside, the sky was black. Tang handed her a cup of coffee.

She took a harsh swallow. “Styrofoamy. Thanks.”

Tang had to be tired, but it showed only around her eyes. She had put on glasses with black frames. She looked like Buddy Holly. She handed Evan an eight-by-ten photo: a grainy shot taken by the dashboard camera in Deputy Gilbert’s cruiser. The camera had been aimed backward, through the wire mesh screen and out the rear window. It was adjusted for night vision, and the lighting was green and eerie. The Blair Witch Cop Car.

Parked behind the cruiser, headlights a screechy white, was the Volvo SUV.

Evan came wider awake. “Two people inside it. No, three—somebody’s in the backseat.”

The driver was a white man. A white woman sat in the front passenger seat.

Despite her fatigue, Tang looked pumped up. “Ragnarok Investments is a Potemkin corporation that hides a rat’s nest of businesseson-paper behind it.”

“And you found something,” Evan said.

Tang handed her a printout. “Sabine Jurgens. She’s listed as the minority owner of a company four layers removed from Ragnarok.”

“Who is she? The woman I spoke to on the phone this afternoon?” Evan held up the dashboard camera photo. “Her?”

Tang sat down at her desk and typed on her keyboard, quick and fluid. She brought up Sabine Jurgens’s California driver’s license. Jurgens had pixie-short red hair and a gaze that could strip things bare—assets, a machine gun, men—and leave them burning.

“She’s got dual U.S.-German citizenship. Looks clean, but there’s a strange flag on her file, waving deep in the background. I haven’t been able to crack it yet. It’s got an Interpol tag on it.”

“That sounds bad.”

Evan compared Jurgens’s driver’s license photo with the grainy green figure in the dashboard camera photo. She couldn’t tell whether it was the same woman.

Tang brought up new pages. “I also got the name of the company’s majority shareholder.” She hit a key, and a photo appeared on the screen.

He was in his early forties, handsome in a movie-star way. In the way of a man who plays the Nordic villain in a Bond film. Hooded eyes, thin lips, a patrician glare. His hair was Gordon Gekko after a romp in the sack, with all the Old Spice Guy’s arrogance and none of his charm or surreal sense of humor. The Iceman Cometh.

“Thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he?” Evan said.

Tang tilted her head. “I bet he plays Wagner on the stereo at the office.”

Evan held up the dashboard photo. “It’s him. Who is he?”

Tang started to speak but gave her a sidelong glance from behind her Rockin’ Robin eyeglasses. “I don’t want that remark about Wagner to go in your story.”

“Fine. Tell me about him. Please, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Amy.”

The phone on the desk rang. Evan jumped. They were the only people in a room of empty desks, and the sound jarred her.

Tang picked up. “Yes?” Her expression turned perplexed. She hung up and headed for the front desk, gesturing Evan to come along. “Ferd Bismuth’s here.”

When they arrived, the desk sergeant was giving Jo’s neighbor a visitor’s badge.

Evan said, “He looks like his puppy just fell down a well.”

Ferd had on a ’49ers cap and a distraught expression. And he had a capuchin monkey tucked in a Baby Björn sling on his chest. It looked like a tiny alien pilot, in the driver’s seat and perhaps controlling him.

Ferd scooted around the desk. “Tina’s at Jo’s place. I couldn’t rest. I’m so worried.” He held out a box of cupcakes. “For you two.”

“Appreciate it.” Tang took the box and pointed him at a sofa in the break room. “Hang out there for a minute.”

Evan took a cupcake. Tang reached for one but looked at the monkey. It had sprinkles stuck to its face. She withdrew her hand. Evan kept eating. She was too tired and hungry to care. The monkey peered at her and made a garish face, like a shaman gripped by a prophetic vision foretelling of
her doom.

Ferd rocked from foot to foot, unwilling to leave. Tang made a spinning gesture with her finger. “I’ll be right there. Go on.”

He trudged to the break room. Tang and Evan returned to the computer and the photo of the man who was driving the Volvo SUV.

“Who is he?” Evan said.

“Dane Haugen.”

“And who is he?”

“He’s a financier. He has a degree in mathematics and a gift for sliding in and out of financial industries that are largely unregulated. Mortgage bonds. Derivatives. His modus operandi has been to position himself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments he knows to be garbage. He slurps up money from investors—often average Joes, through their retirement funds—and creams off fees for himself. Millions.”

“Are we talking securities fraud, or plain old Wall Street slick dealing?”

“Sleight of hand. Financial three-card monte. Move the money so fast nobody can keep track, churn investments and rake off fees, bet against his own clients in the market—anything to line his pockets.”

Evan stared at the photo. “He’s a crook.”

“And he’s cold. Know how my source remembered him? From one of those Himalayan expeditions that hauls neophytes up peaks for a price. He paid megabucks to attempt Annapurna. Where he walked past two dying climbers without a second thought or a kind word. Later he gave an interview to the BBC. ‘They knew the risks and the consequences. Expecting my team to abandon a summit bid to save people from their own miscalculations is unconscionable.’ ”

“Great guy,” Evan said.

“And he’s pulling the strings here. He’s taken the Edge Adventures team off the board.”