Джеффри Дивер: The Final Twist

Years ago, during a bad spell, Ashton Shaw had insisted that Dorion, then thirteen, make a one-hundred-foot free-climb up a sheer rock face in the middle of the night. This was a test. All of his children had to make the ascent when they became teenagers.

Russell and Colter already had done so. But had come to believe that the rite of passage was pointless, especially for their sister. Dorie was as talented athletically as her brothers with chalk and rope, and more so than Ashton himself. She’d already proved her ascent skills, including night climbs.

With a mind of her own even then, Dorion had simply decided she didn’t need to... or want to. “Ash. No.” The girl never shied.

But her father wouldn’t let it go. He grew more and more riled and persistent.

The older brother intervened. Russell also said no.

The confrontation turned ugly. A knife was involved — on Ashton’s part. And Russell, using skills his father himself had taught, prepared to defend his sister and take the weapon away from the wild-eyed man.

Mary Dove, her husband’s psychiatrist and med-dispenser in chief — had been away on a family emergency, so there was no adult present to defuse the situation.

After a boilingly tense moment their father backed down and retreated to his bedroom, muttering to himself.

Not long after, Ashton had died in a fall from Echo Ridge.

The circumstances were suspicious, and more troubling, Shaw learned that his brother had lied about his whereabouts at the time of Ashton’s death. He was, in fact, not far from Echo Ridge. Shaw believed that Russell had murdered the man. He was sure it had been agonizing, an impossible decision on his brother’s part. But he guessed that at some point Russell had come to believe it was Dorie’s life or Ashton’s, and Russell made his choice. By then Ashton Shaw had become someone very different from the kind and witty man and teacher the children had known growing up.

Shaw had made his own impossible decision: accepting that his brother was guilty of patricide. The thought tore at him for years, and tore him and Russell apart.

Then, just weeks ago, the truth: Russell had had nothing to do with Ashton’s death. It was a BlackBridge operative responsible, trailing their father to Echo Ridge on that cold, cold night in October.

Ebbitt Droon himself had told Shaw the story. “Your father... Braxton wanted him dead — but not yet, not till she had what she wanted. She sent somebody to, well, talk to him about the documents.”

“Talk” meant torturing Ashton into giving up what he knew about Amos Gahl’s theft of company secrets and evidence.

Droon had explained, “Near as we can piece it together, your father knew Braxton’s man was on his way to your Compound. Ashton tipped to him and led him off, was going to kill him somewhere in the woods. The ambush didn’t work. They fought. Your father fell.”

But until that revelation, Shaw had indeed believed in his heart that Russell was their father’s murderer. Devastated by false accusation, even if unspoken, Russell had vanished from the family’s life. No one had heard from him since Ashton’s funeral, more than a decade ago.

Colter Shaw made his living finding people — good ones and bad, those lost because of fate and circumstance and those lost because they chose to be lost. He had devoted considerable time and money and effort to tracking down his brother. What he would say when he found him, Shaw had no idea. He’d practiced a script of one brother talking to the other, explaining, seeking forgiveness, trying to find a path out of estrangement.

But all his efforts had come to nothing. Russell Shaw had vanished, and he’d vanished very, very well.

Shaw recalled discussing this very subject with someone just last week, describing the impact.

The man had asked, “What would you say was the greatest minus regarding your brother? What hurts the most?”

Shaw had answered, “He’d been my friend. I was his. And I ruined it.”

Seeing this eagle now made him feel Russell’s absence all the more.

He set the statue on the kitchen table and returned to the stack of his father’s materials. For an hour he pored over the documents. He found two notes in his father’s fine hand. They didn’t relate to the eighteen locations, which meant he’d discovered these spots after completing the scavenger hunt of the map.

One note was about a commercial building in the Embarcadero, the district along the eastern waterfront of San Francisco: the Hayward Brothers Warehouse.

The other was an address in Burlingame, a suburb south of the city, 3884 Camino.

Shaw now texted his private eye, requesting information. Mack McKenzie soon replied that she could find little more about the warehouse beyond that it was a historic building dating to the late 1800s, was not open for business to the public, and was presently for sale. The Burlingame address was a private home, owned by a man named Morton T. Nadler.

Shaw also found a business card, which represented a third possible location as well, the Stanford Library of Business and Commerce.

The library was located not in Palo Alto, where the university was situated, but in a part of town known as South of Market. Maybe it had nothing to do with Gahl’s stolen evidence; it would be an odd place to hide a courier bag. Possibly Ashton Shaw had used it for research. He had never owned a computer, and certainly had never allowed one in any residence of his, so maybe he’d gone to the library to use one of its public workstations.

Shaw decided the library would be his first stop. It was the closest to the safe house. If that didn’t pan out he would try the house in Burlingame and then the warehouse.

First, though, some security measures.

San Francisco was BlackBridge’s turf. Odds were ninety percent that they didn’t know he was here. But that dark ten percent required some due diligence.

He called up an app on his phone.

It happened to be tracing the whereabouts of Irena Braxton and Ebbitt Droon at that very moment.

Just the other day — under a fake identity — Braxton had talked her way into Shaw’s camper and stolen what she thought was Ashton’s map marking the places were Gahl’s evidence was hidden and other materials.

Shaw had tipped to who she really was. What he’d intentionally left for her to steal was a map with eighteen phony locations marked and a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden , filled with code-like gibberish in the margins. A GPS tracker was hidden in the book’s spine.

In the past two days the tracker had meandered over various locations he’d marked on the map and spent time in a commercial skyscraper in downtown San Francisco, on Sutter Street, probably BlackBridge’s satellite office. This was its present location.

He now shifted to Google Maps and examined the neighborhood in which the Stanford library was located. He hardly expected trouble but it was a procedure he followed with every reward job. Information was the best weapon a survivalist could have.

Which didn’t mean hardware should be neglected.

Shaw checked his gun once more.

Never assume your weapon is loaded and hasn’t been damaged or sabotaged since the last time you used it.

The .380 was indeed loaded, one in the bedroom and six in the mag. It was a good dependable pistol — as long as you held it firmly while firing. The model had a reputation for limp wrist failure to eject: spent brass hanging in the receiver. Colter Shaw had never had this problem.

He seated the gun in his gray plastic inside-the-waistband holster and made sure it was hidden. The rule was that if you’re carrying concealed, you should keep it concealed, lest a concerned citizen spot the weapon, panic and call the cops.