Meg Gardiner - The Nightmare Thief

Reiniger turned to Autumn. “You’re half an hour late.”

“My car isn’t working right. There’s a light on the dashboard.”

“Which light?”

“The one that tells you it’s time to buy a new car.”

“You mean 'Service’?”

Laughing, she stretched and kissed his cheek. “Joking, Dad.”

“Sure you are.”

Autumn was a month shy of turning twenty-one. She bounced on her toes, knowing he would get the message. Big birthday. Better think big gifts.

She nodded at the scene on the driveway. “You wanted me to watch the grand finale why , exactly?”

“To see how things work.”

“Work? You’re playing Ocean’s Eleven . And Name That Phobia. ” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t deny it.”

“I don’t.”

“But you wanted me to sit on the sidelines. And what, cheer?” She crossed her arms. “Put Band-Aids on their boo-boos?”

He crooked his index finger and beckoned her to follow him. Inside, the house was gauzy with sunshine. The view through the living room to the terrace showed windswept Monterey pines and the blue waters of the bay.

Reiniger said, “Hold out your hand.”

Lightness, anticipation, winged through her. About time. She raised her hand. And Reiniger slapped a heavy manila envelope into her palm. She eyed him uncertainly.

“Open it,” he said.

Autumn tore open the envelope. Inside was a memo. It was stamped, in red, CLASSIFIED .

From: Edge Adventures

To: Autumn Reiniger

Re: Your assignment

“Welcome to adulthood,” he said. “You bought me a game?”

OUTLAW is an urban reality scenario that off ers a variety of roles for you and your closest friends. Crime syndicate boss, bounty hunter, prison escapee. Edge employees will take other roles and run the scenario.

“A three-day weekend, for six of you.” Reiniger smiled. “It’s a designer crime spree.”

Her confusion began to clear. Ultra-deluxe. Outlaw. Prison break.

“Oh my God. Do we get a speedboat?” she said.

“If you want one.”

Helicopter rescue.

“Dad—is this for real?”

Hunt down the crime boss, or BE the boss and escape the long arm of the law.

“And this is totally plush, right? No team building. No 'get in touch with your inner hero.’ ” Her voice turned hard. “No 'fight your demons.’ Just fun. And five star. Right?”

He pointed to the location of their syndicate headquarters: the Mandarin Oriental.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

As Autumn hugged him, a Corvette revved into the driveway. Reiniger patted her on the back. “Go on.”

It was her boyfriend. She ran outside, smiling like a cat that had just cornered a mouse.

Fight your demons.

She would know about phobias, Reiniger thought. Too bad hers didn’t include fear of shopping.

His daughter was adorable: quick, clever, winning. And such a pretty girl, with the tumbling brown curls of a Victorian aristocrat. He’d never been able to deny her anything. She always wore him down. Her relentlessness was a quality he admired. So why did he get a nagging feeling of unease when he gave in?

Because he had acquiesced to assuage her heartbreak when he and her mother divorced. And to salve her grief when her mother died. He had lavished her with gifts. And what did that get him? Demands for more.

Autumn had the BMW. She had an apartment he’d bought her in the city. She had a spot at the University of San Francisco, a college to which he gave generous donations. And she regarded classes as a hindrance to her tanning schedule.

No team building. No “get in touch with your inner hero.”

But heroism was precisely what he wanted her to discover.

Nothing compared to going out on the rim and facing your deepest fears. And Edge offered a red-in-tooth-and-claw experience, rarely found in twenty-first-century America, of feeling truly, deeply, alive. Its full-immersion adventures were the modern world’s closest equivalent to primitive initiation rituals.

He paid through the nose, but it was worth it.

For years Autumn had asked to take part in an Edge scenario. And, abruptly, Reiniger didn’t want to give her the thrill she coveted. He wanted to give her a wake-up call. She had peculiar fears. She wielded them as a weapon to manipulate him whenever her sense of entitlement was threatened. It was time to quash them.

Coates rapped on the open door. “You got a question about the SFPD?”

Reiniger waved him in. “Yeah. Why did they show up at exactly the wrong moment today?”

Coates was a former Oakland cop. He was Mr. Law-and-Order and always alerted the authorities before a scenario was about to run. If a client was going to be grabbed off the street, Edge wanted the cops to know it was a party, not an abduction.

But the San Francisco police had nearly derailed today’s scenario, right at the start. As Nakamura was being dragged toward the kidnap van, an SFPD patrol car had screeched up, lights flashing.

Coates shook his head. “Pure chance. No way to grab people off the street without being seen.” He eyed Reiniger warily. “They left. I squared it.”

“That cruiser arrived thirty seconds into the kidnap. Almost like they had a heads-up.”

Coates stiffened. “From Edge? No way. We have zero motive to stall a scenario.”

He glanced out the door at Reiniger’s team.

“It wasn’t one of them,” Reiniger said. “They didn’t know when the kidnap was going down.”

“So it was nobody. Like I said—chance.”

Reiniger wasn’t convinced, but let it go. “I want to ask you something else.” He checked that Autumn was out of earshot outside. “I want to add a layer to Autumn’s birthday scenario. It needs to be more than a party.”

“You want us to heighten the scenario’s intensity?”

“It will do her good.”

Coates considered it. “We can add a twist to the crime spree. Does she have an issue you want her to work on?”

Reiniger wanted Autumn to learn the value of teamwork. And with her stubborn streak, she would need to be scared into learning it.

“There is something,” he said.

There was a big red button. Push it, and Edge would trigger a childhood loathing that had become a mulish dread.

“You know how some people hate clowns?”

“A not-uncommon childhood fear.”

“Autumn hates cowboys.”

“That’s a new one on me,” Coates said.

“It goes back to when she was little. This guy scared her at a party.”

“Luckily, a cowboy phobia is unlikely to impinge on modern life.”

“But it’s silly, and she’s let it grow out of all proportion. She calls him the Bad Cowboy.”

Reiniger had barely seen him: a staff member at the party venue, corpulent and sweating in his boots and Stetson. He had stopped unruly kids from running in front of vehicles in the parking area.

That, apparently, was the origin of Autumn’s loathing. The man had scolded her. Sharply—which shamed and spooked her. And for a dozen years since, she had complained about it, usually at awkward moments. The Bad Cowboy had scared her. Naughty children got punished, he said. Careless children got hit by cars and killed , he said. He was creepy. Why wouldn’t Dad take it seriously?

Reiniger heard the subtext: Pay attention to me, Daddy. Indulge me.

“Guy was some ex–rodeo rider. Hefty kid with stitching on his shirt that said, 'Red Rattler.’ ”

“And he dressed like he was still at the rodeo?”

“Fourth of July party. The staff wore Americana outfits,” Reiniger said. “Here’s my point. If Autumn could confront the Bad Cowboy during the weekend—and defeat him—it would be the icing on her birthday cake.”