Alexandra Sokoloff - Goddess of Fate

He had enough to concentrate on without getting distracted by a fairy tale.

He shifted gears to head down the next hill, then reached for the phone and autodialed his lieutenant again. Still just voice mail. Luke shook his head and called dispatch. “This is Detective Mars. I need to reach Lieutenant Duncan, it’s urgent.”

He disconnected as the dispatcher assured him he’d find Duncan, and tried Pepper. Nothing there, either.

Worrisome.

Luke punched the phone off and drove.

* * *

There were ninety-six piers along the western edge of the bay, circling the city from the anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, along the Marina district, around the north and east shores of the city and southward to the city line just beyond Candlestick Park. Eight miles of waterfront lands, commercial real estate and maritime piers, some of them world-famous landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39. The active commercial piers, like Pier 94 on the southern waterfront, were leased out to companies throughout the world that needed to load or unload cargo.

Luke looked down from the top of the hill where he’d stopped the car a good distance from the pier’s entrance; this late at night the sound of the motor would tip off anyone just inside the gates. He’d have to work his way down on foot.

The fog was thick and enveloping, which was great camouflage; it not only gave him cover but it also muted his footsteps in that way fog had of swallowing all sound. The guard booth at the entrance to the pier was empty; that was the first bad sign.

The good news was, it meant Luke’s longshoreman was right; the empty booth was a clear sign something was going down. The bad news was, so far Luke was completely alone. There was no sign of any movement below at all, actually. No ship berthed, no cranes moving, no trucks, no workers. And yet everything in Luke said there was something going on down there.

He could feel the tingling again, a sense—no, a certainty —that something major was about to transpire.

He drew his Glock and felt its comforting weight. I’ll just have a look , he decided, and moved forward in the darkness.

Although the chain was on the gate, the gate wasn’t locked, another sign of something hinky. Luke carefully eased the chain out of the fence and slipped through the gate, repositioning the chain to look as if it was locked.

The pier was a labyrinth of towering shipping containers, stacked two and three and even five high on the dock, like a child giant’s building blocks in their bright colors—oranges and yellows and purples—now muted by the dimness of night. And the whole yard was dead quiet: no lights, no activity. If there was something going down, it would have to be in what the dockworkers called “the shed” but which was really a two-hundred-thousand-plus square-foot warehouse.

And as Luke thought it, he heard the muffled rumble of a truck starting up inside the warehouse.

“Shit,” he mumbled.

He ran into an aisle of containers, hugging the sides; it was like moving through a maze, and he had the unnerving feeling that he was being watched, like a mouse in a laboratory, a sense of being tracked from above.

He turned abruptly, and got a glimpse of a figure between stacks of crates, pale skin, red hair...

A woman? What the hell?

He ran forward to the gap in containers, stared down the aisle.

Empty. Nothing. No one. Just the fog...

Great. Seeing things now.

He turned back toward the warehouse.

As he started toward it in the dark, the woman stepped out of the shadows, watching him.

Approaching the warehouse, Luke could see light under the closed roll-up doors. Oh, yeah, there were people in there. And still no backup in sight.

Luke felt a surge of frustration—and recklessness. He wasn’t planning on bursting in and arresting the whole lot—the only thing that would get him was killed. But it was an incredible opportunity to find out about the operation.

He tensed as he heard another engine start up inside the warehouse, and he made a quick decision. He hopped up on a nearby steel drum and then scaled up one of the tall containers, where he dropped down flat on his stomach so he’d have a bird’s-eye view.

He eased his phone out of a pocket and turned on the camera. Anything he shot would be inadmissible as evidence, but this kind of thing could come in handy for identification.

There was a mechanical clunking behind him and he belly-crawled across the top of the container to watch as the metal warehouse door started rolling itself up.

His pulse began to race even harder at what he saw when he looked below.

There were a lot of guns down there. Four men on guard that he could see, each one with an automatic rifle, standing like soldiers as a tall, muscular man with white-blond hair signaled behind him and a container truck drove out of the warehouse, with no headlights on.

Not many legitimate shipments that need an armed guard , Luke thought to himself grimly.

But the next thing he saw was even more unnerving.

There were the sounds of some kind of struggle from the next aisle of containers, and another armed man came forward into the square light of the warehouse door, shoving a ragged man before him.

The tall blond man stepped forward tensely as the new man pushed his hostage down onto his knees. “What the hell is this?”

“He was sleeping back there.” The guard jerked his head back toward the container maze and shoved the barrel of his rifle into the man’s neck. The man whimpered.

“He stinks,” said another one.

“Didn’t see nothing, didn’t see nothing,” the ragged man stammered out, his voice shaky with fear. “Just trying to crash...” Luke could see his fingers were covered with torn gloves and his hands and feet were as filthy as his clothes. One of the city’s ubiquitous homeless, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably not just poor but mentally ill, as so many of them were.

“Waste him,” the blond man said. “Dump him in the bay.”

Above them, Luke was stiff with tension. He was badly outnumbered but he couldn’t allow what was clearly going to happen. He had to make a move.

He edged his way back to the other side of the container and lowered himself onto the steel drum he’d used as a stepladder, then dropped silently onto the ground.

He tucked his Glock in his belt and quietly lifted the drum—empty, thank God—and carried it carefully to the edge of the container.

Then he tipped the drum over and kicked it so that it rattled metallically down the concrete of the dark aisle, a startling, crashing noise. As the men spun toward the sound, he dodged back into the darkness, shouting out, “San Francisco PD. Drop your weapons. You’re under arrest.”

The homeless man bolted to life, leaping up and running, veering into an aisle of containers.

Good man , Luke thought. Survival instinct intact . He pressed himself against the container wall. “Drop your weapons,” he growled again. “You’re...”

Then he felt the cold touch of steel against his cheek, and in the same moment, caught a whiff of a strong acrid smell. Fresh paint?

“Don’t move,” a voice breathed behind him. “Drop it or you lose that hand.”

Luke opened his hand and released his weapon.

He turned slowly to face the blond man. Up close Luke could see he was hard-muscled, with a hardness to his face, too, a cruel coldness in his eyes.

Those ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You walked into the wrong operation, cop .”

Luke heard the shots a split second before he felt them tearing into his flesh.

The first would have killed him, if not for the vest. As it was, it felt like a wrecking ball had swung into him. The force spun his body around and the second shot hit his left shoulder. Another clipped his leg and he could feel hot blood instantly, a bad wound, possibly femoral...possibly fatal.