Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

Shaw guessed that he probably had not stashed the entire courier bag, which he guessed from the name was not a slim piece of luggage; it would be conspicuous. He would probably have emptied it and put the contents — copies of incriminating emails, correspondence, spreadsheets, computer drives or disks, whatever it might be — in an out-of-the-way place. Maybe in the pages of a book or journal, maybe in the shadowy areas behind the volumes in the stacks or on top of the racks, maybe in the spaces beneath drawers in a workstation.

He strolled through the stacks, filled with such titles as Liability in Maritime Collision Claims: Bays and Harbors; Piercing the Corporate Veil; Incorporation Guide for Nonprofits . Easily four or five thousand books. He noted that many were outdated, like Who’s Who of San Francisco Commerce: 1948. What better hiding place for documents or a CD or thumb drive than a book of that sort? In plain sight, yet inside a volume that no one would possibly need to refer to.

Yet Shaw calculated it would take a month to go through all the volumes. And it would be impossible to do that without arousing suspicion... No, Gahl was not a stupid man. He hid the evidence because he knew there was a chance he would be killed. It would be hidden in a place that somebody, a colleague, the police, could deduce.

Shaw noticed the librarian was looking his way.

He nodded a friendly greeting to the man, walked to one of the workstations and sat down. A swipe of the mouse revealed the main screen to be an internal database of the library’s contents. Just what he wanted. He typed in Gahl, Amos. Nothing. Then Shaw, Ashton. Negative on that too.

But with BlackBridge , he had a hit.

The reference was to a book titled California Corporate Licenses, Volume I.

Had Gahl reasoned that Ashton Shaw or someone would do this very thing, run a computer search for the company, and accordingly hidden the evidence in the book?

An elegant and simple clue.

The listing sent Shaw to a stack near the librarian station. Yes, there was the book: thick and bound in dark red faux leather. He lifted the tome off the shelf and set it on the floor. Then he removed the adjoining volumes and examined the space behind them. Seeing nothing, he reached in and felt along the cool metal. Nothing. He returned the other books and took Corporate Licenses back to the workstation.

He began his examination, first opening up the book to see if Gahl had hollowed out a portion and slipped a thumb drive or chip inside. No, he hadn’t. Nor were there any folded documents or notes between pages. The book was simply a listing of corporations with licenses to do business in the state. Shaw turned next to the BlackBridge entry, thinking that would be a logical place to hide something or to leave a message about where the material was. Nothing. Shaw read the listing. The company was merely mentioned by name, without any other information. The headquarters was given as being in Los Angeles, which Shaw already knew, with offices in San Francisco and other cities.

He examined the hefty volume page by page. No evidence, no notes, no margin jottings. He probed into the spine too.

Nothing.

Hell. He re-shelved it and returned once more to the computer.

More searches. The councilman who’d been killed by BlackBridge: Zaleski, Todd . No hits there. Had Gahl been clever with anagrams or other subtle clues? He typed in variations on the search terms.

He tried UIP and Urban Improvement Plan.

Without success.

He deleted his search history then swiped the computer to sleep, deciding that it was likely the library wasn’t a possible hiding space for Gahl’s materials after all. Maybe Shaw’s other theory was correct. His father simply had used the library’s computers to do online searches.

So, a waste of time.

Colter Shaw, however, corrected himself. No, that wasn’t true; eliminating a possible lead is never a waste; the visit had gotten him one step closer to his goal. He’d learned to embrace this attitude in the reward-seeking business. Step by step by step.

It was time to get to the warehouse in the Embarcadero and the home in Burlingame, the last best chances for finding the evidence.

Before he left, though, he pulled out his phone and called up the tracking app, receiving data from the device he’d hidden in the copy of Walden , which Braxton and Droon presumably still had with them.

He was disappointed to see that the tracker was malfunctioning. The map that popped up showed Shaw’s, not the book’s, location. Well, he hadn’t believed the device would last forever. He then frowned and noticed that the pinging circle indicating the whereabouts of the tracker was coming not exactly from where Shaw sat but about thirty or so feet away.

A refresh of the system. The ping remained in the exact position it had been a moment ago.

No, impossible...

His breathing coming quickly, pulse tapping hard, he sent a text to Mack, including the code they used for immediate attention, asking her about the library.

In sixty seconds — the woman seemed always to be on duty — her response was:

Library has no affiliation with Stanford or any other university. Owned by an offshore corporation. CEO is Ian Helms, head of BlackBridge. R U there now?

He texted:

Yes.

Two seconds later his phone hummed with her reply.

GTFO.

This was a variation on the emergency plan all survivalists have, to escape when an enemy is coming for you. The more common, and less coarse, version is: Get the Hell Out.

The library was a cover.

It was the members-only portion of the building and not the high-rise on Sutter Street downtown that was BlackBridge’s base of operation in San Francisco.

Shaw gazed in the direction where the tracker indicated the book was, and he realized that Irena Braxton and Ebbitt Droon were the very people whose backs he’d noted through the glass door that opened onto the other side of the building.

He glanced once more that way and saw a fourth man in the conference room. He was pacing, arms crossed, as he appeared to be debating something. He posed a question, it seemed — his hands were raised and his face appeared irritated. Then, when someone must have answered, he nodded and he paced some more, gazing absently into the public side of the library.

It was the CEO, Ian Helms. The athletic, handsome man wore a well-tailored suit and a Rolex on one wrist, a bracelet on the other, both gold.

This was the first time Colter Shaw had glimpsed the man responsible for his father’s death.

Helms would probably have no idea what Shaw looked like but it was not the time to take any chances. He slipped from the workstation and disappeared into the far reaches of the stacks.

GTFO...

He started to circle around the perimeter of the library to the front door. He kept his head down, moving steadily but not too fast through the stacks.

Only twenty feet later he stopped.

He’d been busted.

From the shadows of the rows of books, Shaw saw a large security guard in a dark suit enter the public side of the building from the lobby. The well-tanned man’s head was cocked and he appeared to be listening to the Secret Service — type earpiece with a curly wire that disappeared into his jacket. He walked to the librarian at the central station. They shared some words, both of them looking around. The guard’s jacket parted and the grip of a pistol showed. A second guard joined them. He was slimmer and more pale than the first, but tall too. Also armed. Shaw noted his hand was near his own pistol.

How would they have learned about him?