The Nightmare Thief

Chapter 8

Autumn saw the alien-killer gun in Ritter’s hand, heard the “let’s play” snicker in his voice, and ran. The non-smile lingered on Kyle’s face. The speedboat bobbed in the cove, engine rumbling. A man in a ski mask was at the controls. Another was over the side and splashing through the water toward her. He was short and stout, with a huge round head covered by the mask. He too had some kind of gun in his hand, not as flashy as Kyle’s, and was holding it high so as not to get it wet.

He waved. “Autumn. This way. I’ll cover you.”

She dashed for the water, her heart racing. She realized she was smiling. Grinning. She yelled, joyful.

The stout gunman pointed at Dustin. “You too.” He reached shore and swung into a stance: arms straight, gun pointed at the other people on the sand.

Autumn heard Peyton shout. Noah cried, “Come on.”

She looked over her shoulder. Three more masked people, swathed in black, had appeared behind them, armed, charging toward the beach.

The stout gunman beckoned to her. “Hurry.”

She hesitated. Her boots were brand-new Stuart Weitzman black leather, buckled, gleaming, top-bitch riding boots. “I can’t get these wet.”

Peyton squealed. Autumn saw a masked attacker descend on her roomie, grab her around the waist, and sweep her off her feet. One of her little bow-covered ballet slippers flew off. Peyton threw her head back, squealing like a piglet.

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-ê-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.

Tick-tock.

“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.

Chapter 9

The entrance to the abandoned mine gaped in the mountain-side. 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 fif-teen 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.

She looked at the trail.

Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.

It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.

Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.

“Gabe.”

He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”

Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.

“Yeah. I need gloves.”

She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.

“It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.

She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”

“You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”

“Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”

She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.

Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”

“You never know.”

“And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”

“Let’s check.”

She pressed the Power key. Nothing happened.

Gabe took his own phone from his pocket. It was the same, extremely popular brand.

“Got any more gloves?” he said.

She handed him a pair. He got his key chain—a carabiner on which hung a Swiss Army knife. From the knife he slid a straight pin. He used it to eject the SIM card from the dead phone. He swapped the SIM into his phone and turned it on. The phone lit up.

“Yes,” Jo said.

The SIM was damaged. Only portions of the display showed up— if it had been a piece of paper, sections would have looked washed out from water damage. The entire display was weak and faded.

“It won’t be stable,” Gabe said.

Quickly she scrolled through the controls. She found the damaged SIM’s phone number.

“Write this down.” She rattled it off and Gabe scrawled it on his wrist. “The cops can get started with that.”

With increasing excitement, she checked the call register. The damaged SIM displayed only partial phone numbers. And there was no identifying information on any of the callers. But the numbers were all in the Bay Area. That strongly suggested to her that it was Wylie’s phone.

The screen flickered. “I’m going to lose it.”

She got her own phone. As quickly as she could, she sent it data from the damaged unit. Then she looked again at outgoing calls. A series of three-digit phone numbers had been called in rapid sequence. 6-2-2. 9-4-4. 8-2-1.

She felt chilly. “I think somebody was trying to dial nine-one-one.”

“Trying repeatedly to dial nine-one-one, and missing?”

The wind gusted around them. Gabe’s expression sobered.

“Yeah,” she said.

Somebody would miss if he was trying to dial 9-1-1 without looking at the display. If he was dialing for help surreptitiously— because the phone was in his pocket or behind his back. If he was in deep trouble.

The display faded briefly to white. It came back dimmer than before.

She needed to find everything she could before the SIM died. The sheriffs probably had tech experts who could revive it, but she couldn’t take the chance. Hurriedly she scrolled through the phone’s apps and found a dictation function.

She tapped Play.

She heard sounds. Noises. Scratching, muffled—the sound of the phone’s microphone recording from inside in somebody’s pocket.

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

She glanced at Gabe. His eyes were dark.

The man’s voice again: “Just tell me that much. How far should I plan to drive? Do I need to stop for gas?”

Jo closed her eyes. Her heart was beating hard. “It’s him. It’s Wylie.”

On the phone, a long pause. “Well?”

Finally, more distant, another voice answered. “Drive.”

“Please, I just want—”

“Shut up.”

The second voice was swaddled in ambient sound.

“Man or woman?” Jo said.

Gabe shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

They listened for another minute. They could hear Wylie breathing heavily.

“He’s scared,” Jo said.

Engine noise. Wylie spoke: “Stay on Five-eighty? We’re going to be at Altamont in a minute. How far—”

A sound like a dull slap.

Jo clenched her jaw. “Wylie’s driving someplace against his will. And he’s trying to leave a trail, to tell people where he’s headed.”

Wylie’s voice came through again, shaky now: “Why are you doing this?”

The other voice, distant, more muffled than before. Words too hard to make out. Jo held the phone closer to her ear.