Meg Gardiner - The Nightmare Thief

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 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Meg Gardiner Copyright About the Publisher