Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

She walked the fifteen feet to the water’s edge and looked down. He joined her. He had plenty of questions, of course, but remained silent for a moment. Then:

“You got rid of the Honda.”

She nodded. “You spotted me. I had to.”

“So. How’d you get to San Francisco?”

After a moment she said, “At the camp? I talked to Journeyman Frederick and found out who you really were, that you’d been after this reward for Journeyman Adam, some crime they said he’d done. You were with him when he graduated.”

The cult’s troublingly sanitized term for suicide.

“He told me you had Adam’s notebook and that you were going to give it to his father, Mr. Harper. I drove to his shipping business in Gig Harbor and waited for you.”

Shaw couldn’t help but appreciate her clever, industrious detective work. And as for following him to San Francisco, if you’re going to be tailing a vehicle, when your subject is driving a thirty-foot motor home, your job is pretty damn easy.

“I was going to kill you. I didn’t have a gun. But I had my car. I was going to drive you off the road. I felt you ruined my life. You destroyed it. Everything he taught about coming back, it seemed so true. I believed it.” A sigh. “I remembered her face, her laugh, her little fingers — Jamie’s. My daughter’s... And all I could think was that you took away my chance to see her again. I wanted you to die. I was working up my courage. A couple times I almost hit you.”

“Eli did nothing but lie to you, to everybody. He wanted money and he wanted sex and he wanted power. Trying to sell immortality. It was all fake.”

“I know that now. Maybe I knew all along.” A sad smile. “Eli was pretty sharp. You can’t prove what he taught us doesn’t work.”

This was true. The only way to know for certain if there was an afterlife was to die, and nobody was going to send back social media pix from there, confirming the theory.

“The nails you threw into the street. You learn that from Journeyman Hugh?” The cult’s head of security.

“He said we needed to know how to stop enemies coming after us.”

“Why the change of heart, Adelle?”

She blinked, maybe at the use of her given name alone. In the cult you always used a prefix: at first “Novice,” then “Apprentice” and finally the coveted “Journeyman.”

Shaw had no idea what her last name was. Withholding those from members of the cult had been a way for the leader to control his sheep.

“I can’t really say. Maybe... Eli’s spell wore off.”

She’d hesitated again before mentioning the cult leader’s name. It was a serious breach of the rules to fail to refer to him as “Master Eli.”

She turned her eyes his way. “I kept thinking, you had to die... But I couldn’t get out of my head that you helped people. You saved lives. Hugh and Eli would have poisoned them. And you nearly got killed... So I couldn’t hurt you. It would just be wrong.”

Noise from the highway. A Lincoln Navigator appeared, paused and then drove to where Adelle and Shaw stood. Russell got out.

“This is Adelle. Russell.”

They nodded to each other and Russell looked over the BNGs. “How’d they make you?”

“Been here, asking about Blond. Maybe word got back.”

Now the same white van Shaw remembered from several days ago pulled up, and Karin and Ty got out. The other group ops weren’t present. Ty assessed one of the injured Filipinos and gave him an injection.

Shaw stirred.

Russell said, “Just a painkiller.”

The second man too was treated.

“We’ll drop them off at a hospital, take a picture of their licenses and tell them to get amnesia.”

Shaw said, “She needs to be safe. Out of the area. Where can you go?”

“My sister’s in Vegas.”

Russell said, “We’ll get you on a plane. It has to happen now.”

Adelle nodded.

“I’ll drive you to SFO.” He nodded at her Impala. “Report it stolen to the rental company.”

“But—”

“Report it stolen.”

“Okay.”

The car would be cubed within the day and in a scrapyard by tomorrow.

Russell asked, “You have things somewhere? A hotel?”

“Motel Six. Near the airport.”

Karin took a call, listened then disconnected. “Possible facial recognition hit on Blond from the alley. Came up at a joint OC task force in San Leandro. They’re cross-referencing. We should know soon.”

The brothers shared a glance. If they could get his ID, that might be enough to crack the code of the Hunters Point gang, which would lead to finding out who the SP family was and stopping the hit.

Shaw checked his motorcycle for damage — there was little.

He said to Adelle, “You know you’ll meet somebody, you’ll have children. You’ll never forget Jamie. But you can move on. Not in a cult. In the real world. We’re diminished by things that happen to us in life. But we can find a separate happiness.”

In his rewards business, Colter Shaw had on occasion had to counsel the grieving. Not all jobs ended happily.

There was a salute that was used in the cult, an open palm touching the opposite shoulder. By reflex Adelle started to do this now. Then stopped herself and gave a small smile and hugged Shaw hard.

After stopping along the way to make a purchase, Shaw returned to Pacific Heights to pack up. The brothers could now return to Alvarez Street, as the safe house was indeed safe once again. Mary Dove and Dorie and her family would not be in danger any longer either. There’d be no point in targeting them, though out of prudence Shaw texted them to keep Plans A and B in place for the time being.

Shaw brewed another cup of coffee, this one Guatemalan, and a fine brew it was, deriving from a grower that, in his opinion, had been sadly overlooked for years. He and the farmer knew each other. The man had suggested Shaw come to Central America, where abductions were common, and said, “You, Mr. Colter, can make a great deal of money, I would think, at rewards.”

Shaw had explained that he was familiar with Latin American kidnappings. They occurred for two reasons. One was snatching corporate execs. The bad guys throw a CEO or general manager into the back of a van, submit a demand for a quarter million and release him or her when the money is dropped. The victim’s company and family never post a reward offer; they buy kidnap insurance and in ninety-five percent of those cases the victim is returned largely unharmed.

The other reason people are kidnapped down there is because of politics or cartel business, in which case the vics are dead five minutes after they vanish and rescue is not an option.

This put Shaw in mind of SP and his, or her, family once again.

Confirmation from Hunters Point crew.

6/26, 7:00 p.m. SP and family. All ↓

Did SP have some connection with the voting tally? If so, the kill order might have been rescinded, now that the document was in Devereux’s possession. But Shaw and Russell couldn’t make that assumption. It seemed more likely that since the gangs in Hunters Point were involved, SP was targeted because they knew something about the Urban Improvement Plan. Maybe they had discovered the source of the opioids and other drugs being strewn around the city by BlackBridge and its subcontracting gangs.

He was lifting the cup to his lips when a knocking on the door resounded.

A man’s low, threatening voice shouted, “Police! Warrant. Open the door!”

Colter Shaw stood, leaning forward, with his hands against the yellow-painted living room wall of the residence, a pleasant shade. His feet were back and spread. His palms were in roughly the same spot that the Davis & Sons Rare Books frame had rested before it had been stolen. He was looking at the nail, eight inches away from his face, on which it had hung.