The Memory Collector (25 page)

Jo stared at Alec Shepard. At once, the pain and confusion in Shepard’s eyes looked comprehensible.

“Your brother,” she said.

“Yes. And I refuse to submit him to arrest.” He took her elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”

She pulled loose and retreated behind the hanging garden of dry-cleaned clothing. “Okay, big bro—what’s he more likely to do? Drive in a straight line away from where he lost sight of us, or circle the block?”

“You said he’ll forget he saw us here.”

“He will. He can’t form new permanent memories. But he can certainly rely on training, instinct, and the problem-solving skills he’s honed over the course of his lifetime. He’s gotten this far so he must have figured out a system of some kind. So tell me—what’s he like, Mr. Shepard?”

She hit the last name sharply.

“I’ll explain everything.” Again he took her elbow.

Jo didn’t want him controlling her. She pulled free from his grip. “Why didn’t you disclose your relationship right away? Because unless you cough up a big dose of honesty, immediately, I’m not following you past the door of this store.”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you. And the fact that you didn’t already know we were brothers disinclined me to confide in you.”

And,
damn,
Jo thought—why hadn’t Misty Kanan told her? Why had she held that back?

“What’s the deal? Half brother? Stepbrother? Foster child?” she said.

“We’re full brothers. Our father died when Ian was a baby. Our mother remarried when he was six and I was a senior in high school. Her husband adopted Ian and gave him his name.”

She peered around the forest of plastic-shrouded clothes at the front window. The street was quiet. “Best guess. Gut instinct. Brotherly mojo. Which way are we least likely to run into him?”

“He’s unpredictable. That’s his genius and his problem.”

A hard nasal voice cut through the shop. “What the hell are you doing back here?”

In the hallway stood the owner of the dry cleaner’s. He was small, puffy, and wrinkled, like a beige comforter that had been squashed by the spin cycle of a washing machine.

“We’re being chased by a car. We ducked in here until the police arrive,” Jo said.

“Bullshit. Get out.”

Shepard put up a hand. “If you’ll let me explain—”

The man reached behind him and pulled out a baseball bat.

Jo spread her hands placatingly and backed toward the counter. “Two minutes.”

“Get out of my shop.” He raised the bat like Mickey Mantle stepping to the plate. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

Jo ducked around the counter and cast a glance out the front window. Cruising up the street toward them was the red Navigator.

“Alec,” she said.

The owner lunged toward Shepard and pulled back the bat, winding up to take a swing. “
Out,
I said.”

Shepard backed away from him. “I’ll give you fifty dollars to let us stay.”

He chased Shepard around the counter. “Out, goddamn it.”

Shepard reached for his wallet. “A hundred dollars.”

The red Navigator was approaching. Shepard thundered toward Jo. Close on his heels, the wrinkled little owner swung the bat. It swished the air.
Crap
. He swung again. Strike two missed Shepard’s head by inches.

The owner wound up again, his eye on Jo’s face like she had
Rawlings
printed on her forehead. She opened the door.

The store’s bell rang. Without looking up from his copy of
Guitar Player,
the cashier said, “Have a good one.”

Jo stumbled onto the sidewalk with Shepard hard behind her just as the Navigator drove past. She turned her face away from the street but heard tires scorch the asphalt.

“Run,” she said.

They took off. Jo looked for cover, but the building next to the dry cleaner had barred windows and a locked door. Beyond that, the apartment building on the corner was sequestered behind a security gate. A strangling sensation crept into her throat. She rounded the corner onto Valencia. Glanced back. Shepard was lumbering in her wake, tie and suit jacket flapping. Behind him, Kanan was skidding the Navigator through a hard U-turn in the middle of the block. The front wheels were locked, the back end swinging around, gray smoke boiling off the tires. He pulled a one-eighty, straightened it, and gunned it up the block toward them.

“Faster. Sixteenth Street,” she said. “Your car.”

Sweat was rolling down Shepard’s face into his salt-and-copper beard. “That puts us back at square one.”

But surrounded by a solid German frame and four hundred horsepower. She pounded along the sidewalk. This street offered no cover, just locked apartment buildings and glass-fronted businesses and budding trees along the curb. Ahead at the intersection with Sixteenth, the light was green. Horns honked behind them.

Jo looked back. The Navigator was stuck at the corner, blocked by cross traffic.

She pumped her arms. Ahead at the intersection, the light turned yellow. Pedestrians in the crosswalk jogged for the curbs.

“Go for it,” she said.

They ran into the crosswalk as the light turned red. Another horn honked, loud, in her ear, and Shepard danced out of the path of a rusty Honda Civic.

Jo belted across the street to the sidewalk. Up the block the Navigator was weaving through traffic, heading for the red light. She and Shepard had about thirty seconds to get out of his sight.

“Where’s your car?” she said.

Shepard shook his head. “No. Split up.”

“Alec—”

“He’ll follow me.”

He cast a look at her, hot and determined and somehow ruthless. Then he ran out into the middle of Valencia Street. He stopped in the crosswalk and turned to face the Navigator.

He spread his arms. She couldn’t tell whether the gesture meant surrender,
Come and get me,
or
Just try it, man
. The Navigator’s engine revved. Shepard turned and fled toward the far side of the street.

Jo stood rooted to the sidewalk. The Navigator approached the red light. With barely a pause, Kanan put the pedal down and accelerated toward the intersection, toward cross traffic, straight at her.

19

T
he Navigator’s engine swelled in Jo’s ears. Its red paint flashed in the bright sunlight as the SUV veered toward her. Cars in the intersection and people on the sidewalk swerved like crazed fish scattering at the approach of a shark. She turned and ran.

She crashed into a cluster of trash cans by the curb. She went down amid a clatter like steel drums falling over, hands out, and pitched to the sidewalk.

“Look out,” a woman shouted.

Over the shining barrel of the trash can, Jo saw the Navigator bearing down on her.

Get your butt up off this sidewalk, Beckett
. She scrambled to her feet and aimed for the door of a Chinese restaurant. All around her on the sidewalk, she saw fleeing backs. She heard distant sirens. Through the window of the restaurant, people stared at her with alarm, eyes wide, chopsticks frozen halfway to their mouths.

A cry escaped her throat. If she ran into the restaurant, the Navigator would ram the window.

She jinked left and pitched along the sidewalk at a flat, crazed sprint. Her hands were clenched, her hair falling from the claw clip into her face. Behind her the engine revved. The street streamed by, trees and cars and shops painted with throbbing murals in rain forest colors.

She needed a cement wall to dive over. A bank with an open vault. A crack. A dime edge, a fire escape, a drainpipe to climb. Her feet pounded the sidewalk.

Ahead she saw a parking garage. She pinned her gaze to it. Reinforced concrete, tight turns, and a hundred metal chassis she could put between her and the Navigator—she aimed for the entrance.

In her peripheral vision she saw a black vehicle on the street ahead. It was barreling in her direction. She heard the Navigator, seemingly right between her shoulders. She swerved into the entrance of the parking garage, toward the ticket machine.

On the street, tires squealed. She heard the Navigator’s brakes engage, hard. She glanced back.

Gabe’s black 4Runner had skidded to a stop, half askew, blocking the entrance to the garage. The Navigator was stopped in the street beyond it. Kanan honked, a solid insistent blast. The 4Runner didn’t move. The sirens grew louder.

Kanan spun the wheel. With sunlight flashing off his tinted windows, he roared away.

Jo stood for a second. She couldn’t seem to move, could barely inhale. The world was throbbing in sync with her heartbeat.

Gabe climbed out of the 4Runner and strode toward her. She ran and threw herself against him. Without breaking stride he swept an arm around her shoulder and shepherded her toward the 4Runner.

“You okay?” he said.

She nodded tightly.

Eyes sweeping the street, he led her to the passenger side and opened the door. She jumped in. He jogged around, hopped behind the wheel, and pulled sharply back into traffic.

“How did . . . ?” She grabbed his shoulder. “Thank you.” Her hand was shaking. “How did you find me?”

“The phone. You never hung up. I heard you tell Shepard to head for Sixteenth Street.” He checked the mirrors and panned the street. His face was grim. “You hurt?”

She fumbled her seat belt into the buckle and scraped her hair back from her forehead. “Fine, Sergeant.”

He looked at her palms. They were scraped and black with grit from her fall over the trash cans. As she stared at them, the shaking in her hand spread up her arms and across her shoulders. Then her whole body began chattering.

“Shit, that was scary.”

He took her hand and held on tight. Anxiety fizzed behind her eyes, bright and bubbly. No—it was tears. She blinked and they fell to her cheeks. She wiped them roughly away.

She couldn’t believe she had admitted her fear to him. She could only recall confessing fear to her parents when she was five, and once to Daniel when they were four hundred feet above the valley floor in Yosemite, and to her sister Tina one desperate empty night after Daniel died. But it had just poured out of her mouth to Gabe. Yet she didn’t feel embarrassed or weak for having done it. Maybe she was in shock.

She looked around the street. “Did you see which way Kanan went?”

“South, out of sight. And no way are we going hunting for him.” He gripped the steering wheel. “My number one priority is to protect you. My other number one priority is to protect Sophie—she needs a father, not a hero.”

He slowed for the light at Sixteenth and signaled left.

“I’m unarmed and in no position to take the fight to Kanan. We talk to the police and get you home safe,” he said.

The sun was tipping toward the west. Lengthening shadows etched the road. She heard anger in his voice. He didn’t want her to think he was running from a confrontation.

As if. She touched his face. The light changed and he turned onto Sixteenth. Ahead, outside Ti Couz, an SFPD black-and-white was stopped, lights flashing. Gabe drove toward it.

Hearing a glass note in her own voice, she said, “What did you find out about Kanan?”

Another sidelong glance. Gabe didn’t speak, just put a hand on her arm, half to reassure her, half to see if she was clammy and about to hyperventilate. P.J.s. What could you do?

“He wasn’t a security contractor?” she said.

“It’s worse.”

20

S
eth Kanan was scared. He was tired and felt alone, because nobody would tell him anything. But mostly he was scared.

Everybody wanted to keep him in the dark, it seemed—in such absolute night that he couldn’t tell whether his eyes worked anymore. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t talk to his parents. Even though he was all by himself, he felt absolutely controlled. He couldn’t do anything except worry.

He kept waiting for his dad to walk through the front door, but he hadn’t. It had been another night without him. And the men were out there.