The Nightmare Thief (7 page)

Dustin splashed into the water.

“Wait—give me a piggyback,” Autumn said.

Dustin slowed, unsure. The stout gunman charged past him to the beach, crying, “Get in the boat.”

The man grabbed Autumn, hefted her into a fireman’s carry, and began trudging back toward the boat. She heard the water sluice around his feet.

“Careful.” She bounced up and down, her stomach thumping against his shoulder. “This is undignified. I’m the Queen of the Underworld.”

She raised her head. On the beach, Peyton lay facedown on the sand, a raspberry velour prisoner with her hands laced behind her head. Nearby, an attacker marched Grier and Noah toward her, gun aimed at their backs.

Lark was farther down the beach. She was waving at the elderly couple with the poodle. The woman, chubby and black with a foam of white hair, had a cell phone in her hand. Lark was undoubtedly explaining to her that this was all a joke.

With a grunt the stout gunman heaved Autumn onto the speedboat. She clattered awkwardly over the side and Dustin pulled her in. The gunman clambered aboard. A tall man stood at the throttles, completely sheathed in black, from his ski mask to his wraparound shades to his tactical clothing to his gloves.

Using sign language, he told the stout gunman to take the helm. Then he leapt over the side of the boat into knee-deep water and forged toward the beach.

“Awesome,” Dustin said. “Freakin’ awesome, man.”

The boat bobbed. Autumn grabbed the side of the hull to steady herself. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

The man at the throttles turned and glared at her.

“Come on …”

Why didn’t he say anything?

Haugen splashed through the water to the beach. The situation on shore looked like kindling, ready to ignite. Sabine’s team had three of the college students under control but the fourth, a crow-haired girl who had the earnestness of a librarian, was trying to soothe the old lady with the poodle. Lark Sobieski—Haugen recognized her from surveillance photos. Sabine was headed toward her.

The seventh man on the beach—the stranger—stood gripping a ludicrous toy gun in both hands. From seventy meters away his face was just a blur, but even so Haugen could see who the man was.

He was a damned Edge Adventures employee.

Haugen ran toward the tête-à-tête with the poodle couple.

“… a role-playing game,” Lark was saying. “Honest. It’s a birthday party.”

Sabine reached Lark. “Get in the speedboat, quickly. Your principal is unprotected.”

Lark gestured to the poodle woman. “I’m explaining to them.”

“My responsibility, not yours. And I have the business cards.” Sabine put a calming hand on Lark’s shoulder. “Get going.”

With a final look at the elderly couple, Lark ran toward the boat. Young Ms. Sobieski, Haugen thought, was going to be an irritant. She had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

But right then she wasn’t the main problem.

The elderly couple glared at Sabine. From the baby stroller, their dog whimpered. Sabine lifted the mask from her face. Her expression was calm. With the blue contact lenses, dramatic makeup, and a blond wig, she was well-enough disguised. She handed the old woman a card.

“Sorry to alarm you. This is just a game,” she said.

The woman pointed at Sabine’s handgun. “Doesn’t look like fun to me.”

“Fake. It’s from Toys ‘R’ Us. Listen, this was cleared with the parks department and the SFPD. The rangers should have posted signs. I’ll speak with them about the oversight.” She got out her phone. “Could I have your name, so I can tell them whom they’ve inconvenienced?”

She had it under control. Haugen stepped away and beckoned to Pat Stringer, one of Sabine’s team. He was a black-clad little weasel of a man. Haugen drew him out of the others’ earshot.

“We have a problem,” Haugen said.

“Tell me about it.” Stringer glanced up the beach at the Edge employee who was guarding Peyton and Noah with his toy gun. “Edge changed the scenario at the last second. They brought in an extra man. And I think I know why.”

He nodded at the parking lot. Parked across four slots was the crassest, biggest Hummer Haugen had ever seen.

“Peter Reiniger asked Edge to pick up the kids,” Stringer said.

Haugen eyed the Edge man from afar. Black baseball cap, sunglasses, Edge windbreaker, that absurd toy weapon. “Have you seen him before?”

“No. He’s new. This is his first scenario.”

Haugen’s acid reflux flared. This should
not
have happened. This was not part of the plan. And it posed several difficulties.

His whole enterprise depended on keeping everybody in the dark—the public, the police, and of course the kids whose weekend was being hijacked. Perpetuating the illusion that the game was still in progress could not have been more vital.

He couldn’t let this Edge newbie—“What’s his name?”

“Ritter.”

He couldn’t let Ritter ruin his finely tuned scheme. But he couldn’t leave him here. Nor could he beat the man unconscious and throw him in the back of the Hummer—the beach was crawling with witnesses. And he couldn’t spare the time or the manpower to subdue Ritter and deliver him to the big rig in the truck depot.

And he could not possibly leave the garish Hummer parked there for the weekend. The vehicle couldn’t draw more attention if he put a giant ice cream cone on the top and played tinkling children’s music. The dog-stroller granny would talk about it. The rangers would investigate.

And every second they lingered on the beach bent his exquisitely tuned timeline further out of shape.

“Has Ritter asked questions?” Haugen said.

“He asked why we were late.”

Haugen turned slowly. “He thinks we’re the real Edge team?”

“Like I said, he’s brand-new. He was hired by Terry Coates and hasn’t met anybody else from the company.” Stringer looked at the ground. “But Ritter’s asking where Coates is—which brings up a third problem.”

“What?”

With a jerk of his head, Stringer led Haugen to Sabine’s Volvo SUV. He popped the tailgate.

The back of the Volvo contained their gear, including a six-foot army duffel bag with canvas tarps inside. One of the tarps had been removed and spread across a large lump in the back.

Haugen’s jaw tightened. “Coates …”

“Fought back when we tried to load him in the big rig. He grabbed for Max’s weapon and—”

“I warned you he was an ex-cop. I specifically told you—”

“That if anybody tried to attack it would be Coates. I know. It happened too fast.”

Haugen lifted the edge of the tarp. The man’s dead eyes stared through him.

It was not the first freshly killed body he had seen. But Haugen wanted to throttle Stringer, right there.

“You couldn’t have loaded this in the big rig?”

“People were coming. We had no time. And it’s too hot to leave him in the back of that truck. After three days …”

“Shut up.”

Sabine ran over. “Got Ma and Pa mollified. But we have to get out of here or we’re screwed.”

Haugen kept his voice flat. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I tried. You interrupted me.”

He held still for a cold moment, staring at the corpse. Then he looked down the beach at Ritter and at the Hummer.

He took Sabine by the arm. “You’re coming with me in the speedboat. We’ll ride herd on Autumn.” He pointed to Stringer. “You drive the Volvo to the dock. Von and Friedrich will take that Hummer, and Ritter, and follow you. We’re going to turn this to our advantage.”

“Extra man—Ritter’s a loose wheel,” Stringer said.

“We’ll decide what to do with him later. Right now, we need to get all these people and that limo off this beach and get out of San Francisco.”

Stringer slammed the tailgate and sprinted back to the beach, shouting, “Into the Hummer. Let’s go, kiddies.”

Noah Holloway, Peyton Mackie, and Ritter eagerly followed him back to the flame-riddled attention magnet.

Sabine faced Haugen, expressionless. She knew they were committed now. She pulled the mask back down.

Together they ran across the beach and splashed through the water to the speedboat. Von lugged them aboard. Autumn, Lark, Cody Grier, and a tipsy-looking Dustin Cameron turned toward Haugen eagerly.

“Ready to run?” he said.

“Finally. I have stealin’ to do,” Autumn said.

“Don’t we all.” Haugen slammed the throttles forward, spun the wheel, and sent the boat flying across the bay.

T
he entrance to the abandoned mine gaped in the mountainside. Jo held back. The mine’s wooden support beams were weathered and rotting. Inside was a void: gloom and mystery.

“It’s all wrong,” she said. “Everything about this.”

The idea that Phelps Wylie had randomly hiked here, or that he had committed suicide by pitching himself down the mine shaft, struck her as absurd.

Gabe took a Maglite from his backpack and crouched in the entrance. The flashlight’s hard white beam shone on rubble, animal droppings, an empty plastic water bottle. The mine tunnel looked like a throat.

“Do you want to go in?” he said.

She put a hand against one of the support beams. “Not without roping up.”

She turned and examined the pine-stabbed mountainside. A fresh gash had been torn in the slope; a raw wound where the ravine had eroded violently under the force of fast-flowing, debris-strewn water.

“The flood channel certainly runs into the mine. I can understand why the sheriffs thought Wylie was swept to his death. Without having access to the satellite photos, it’s a logical conclusion.” She wiped her palms on her jeans. “I need to see the drop-off where his body was found.”

She put on her climbing harness, tied the end of a rope to it, and handed the rope to Gabe. He slung it behind his hips and held on, ready to anchor her if the floor inside the mine gave way.

“Shout if you run into mummies,” he said. “Or a mutant with a chain saw.”

“Jackass.”

“At your service,
chica
.” He handed her the flashlight and secured his grip on the rope. He was smiling, which almost allayed her fears.

Cautiously, sweeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, Jo walked into the mine. Though the roof was several inches above her head, she ducked. A rivulet of cold warning ran down her back. Her throat constricted and the old, desperate dread threaded through her, hissing,
Small spaces collapse.
The wind moaned like a ghostly pipe organ.

Stop it. Calm down.
She forced herself to breathe. The walls were cool rock. Thousands of chisel marks were hammered into them. She wondered if anybody, ever, had gotten rich out of this hole.

Or if Wylie had thought he might.

Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.

Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?

She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fifteen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.

Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam—a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.

“You all right?” Gabe said.

She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.

“Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”

She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”

Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”

“I’ll hurry.”

She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.