The Memory Collector Part 39

He saw an SUV cruise up Palm Drive and begin to circle the Oval. It was a blue Chevy Tahoe, driving slowly. He put the phone against his leg and peered around the tree trunk.

Diaz rolled along University Avenue at exactly twenty-five miles per hour. The cops in genteel, leafy Palo Alto didn't have much crime to clean up, so they came down on speeders like a bunch of gorillas. Ahead, University became Palm Drive and cut through the campus to the central quad.

The GPS on the dashboard showed the road layout of the rendezvous site: Palm Drive aimed straight for the quad, but instead of dead-ending, it turned into a one-way loop, an oval about a quarter-mile long. At the top of the oval, closest to the quad, was the rendezvous. At the base of the oval was a cross road where they might be able to set an ambush.

"Let's scout it," Kanan said.

"f.u.c.king-A," Diaz said.

Kanan took the computer battery from his backpack and the Kbar from the ankle sheath. He carefully stuck the tip of the knife between the two screwed-down, superglued halves of the battery casing. As delicately as possible, he pushed the blade through the seal a few millimeters. Most of the way.

Diaz eyed him with calm interest. "Boss?"

"A researcher at Chira-Sayf told me what this stuff can do." He pulled out the knife and examined the seal. "Slick will eventually eat through any petrochemical-based container. Give it a week and it'll pretty much destroy it."

"So?"

"So now that I've slit it, Slick will also eat through this seal, in about an hour if I'm right. Then it'll get a taste of oxygen. At that point it gets dangerous." He looked at Diaz. "Don't worry, I'm just priming it. When it's time, I'll puncture it the rest of the way."

"What happens when it breaks through the seal?" Diaz said.

"Within a few minutes, whoever's holding it will get a nasty surprise. Though they won't live long enough to appreciate it." He slapped some athletic tape across the stab mark in the seal. "It's not as reliable as C-4, but it's as effective."

Diaz watched him put the container back in the backpack. "So we need to make sure Seth and Misty are out of range by then."

"I won't puncture the seal unless they're safe."

Diaz drove with one hand and set a timer on his watch for fifty minutes in the future. "Yours too."

Kanan turned the outer ring on his diver's watch. "Set."

Calder held up a hand, gesturing for Vance to slow the Tahoe. "Okay, nice and easy. Take us to the top of the Oval and pull over in the pickup zone."

They cruised again around the right side of the Oval, past parked cars, oaks, and bushes, past the darkened buildings of the chemistry and computer science departments, toward the golden stone of the quad and the Technicolor gleam of the mosaic on the facade of Memorial Church. Jo felt like she had a clamp around her chest.

Calder peered out the winds.h.i.+eld. "Now it's time for proof. We see if you're lying, or whether Ian's coming."

Jo wasn't about to tell her he wasn't.

Or that the police were.

She dug her fingernails into her palms. It was nine P.M. In one minute, maybe two, Calder and her goons would be in custody and she would be free. Rescue would be on its way to Alec Shepard.

If things went right.

She was terrified. Riva had a gun. Murdock had a gun. Alec was drowning. Time was running out, and she was in a vehicle with an armed paranoid in the front seat, an angry narcissist at the wheel, and a psychopath beside her.

And the police needed to take them alive and get them to confess where Seth and Misty were being held.

Jo breathed, trying to make sure her voice didn't shake. "Ian doesn't know you're behind it, Riva. He'll come after this vehicle without hesitation."

"No," Calder said. "If he sees me he'll think I'm innocent."

"Wrong. If he sees this SUV, and if he sees me get hurt, he's going to think just one thing. Bad guys inside. He'll take this vehicle apart. You don't think he has weapons by now? He told us on the phone at the lake-he sees his family and me, unhurt."

None of them replied. The Tahoe crept around the Oval. Calder took out her phone again and read an incoming message. She was as fidgety as a cat facing a bath. She was trying to set something up, Jo thought-a sale, or a getaway. With her impersonation of Misty blown, she was working on borrowed time.

"Ian will never simply walk up to a darkened vehicle and drop his lab sample on the sidewalk. He's going to need proof of life. At a minimum, he'll need to see me," Jo said.

Murdock said, "Don't try to pull anything on us. You're trying to save your own skin."

"Of course I am."

"You think we're about to let you out of this vehicle?"

"We'll all live longer, and you'll get away, if you let me convince Ian this is an intermediate stop, not a double-cross. He and his buddy Gabe and their armory will be out there."

And the cops. Please, Christ.

They neared the top of the Oval. Riva put up a hand. "Okay, this is it. Get ready."

Gabe checked his watch again. Five minutes had pa.s.sed. Sticking to the shadows, he crept closer to the pickup zone at the top of the Oval.

He was still on hold with the San Francisco P.D. Still saw no sign of any police presence. It made him feel goosey.

When the police took down the kidnappers, he didn't want to get in the way. And he didn't want to be mistaken for an unfriendly. But he also didn't want the entire campus P.D. showing up with lights blazing-not yet.

He pressed himself to the trunk of a tree, crouched down, and listened. His breath frosted the air. Around him, the night was quiet. In the far distance, beyond the brightly lit arches of the quad, a group of people strolled between buildings. Their laughter echoed off the sandstone walls.

He heard a vehicle coming up the Oval from Palm Drive. It wasn't the police. It was a blue Chevy Tahoe. Maybe the same blue Tahoe that had circled the Oval a few minutes earlier. Its headlights swept across the trees and brushed past the oak he was hiding behind.

They kept going and illuminated the silhouette of a man in the shadows ten yards from him.

They glinted off the pistol in the man's hand.

Gabe's reflexes went into overdrive. The man was standing still and alert, watching the Tahoe circle the Oval. He was trying to see who was driving. And whether to shoot.

The man was dressed in civvies, not uniform, not tactical gear. He had dreadlocks. That big mother of a weapon in his hand didn't look like departmental issue.

He wasn't a cop. That left bad guy, wild card, or crazy m.o.f.o-armed and lying in wait.

Gabe charged at him. Two steps, three, sweeping the crowbar low, and he wasn't quiet, didn't even try to be, just covered the ground between them. Fast.

The man was aiming the gun at the car.

Gabe had the drop on him. He hooked the crowbar around the man's ankle and yanked back; at the same time he smashed the guy with the flat of his palm just above the small of his back.

The man flipped forward and went down hard. The gun was knocked from his hand. Gabe shoved a foot down on his back, grabbed his collar, and pulled up, arching the man's back so he could barely breathe, much less maneuver.

"Show me a badge or I'll kill you," he said.

The man struggled, stunned, beneath him. He was a little springy black guy with an infuriated look in his eyes. He reached for the gun. Gabe struck his arm with the crowbar and hauled up harder on his collar.

"I'm Gabe Quintana. I'm the one who called the cops about the rendezvous. Show me a badge or I break your neck. In four. Three. Two."

"I'm Nico Diaz," the guy choked out. "I'm with Kanan. We're-f.u.c.k, man, we're here to get his family back."

The Tahoe stopped in the pickup zone at the top of the Oval. Vance put it in park and left the engine running.

Calder turned to Jo. "Okay, this is it. Murdock, let her out."

"What? She'll run."

"Not if we point our guns at her head."

"She'll still run."

Calder sighed in annoyance. "Tie her up. The back of the car's full of camping and fis.h.i.+ng gear. Find something. And one of your plastic zip ties."

Murdock kneeled on the seat and leaned into the far back of the Tahoe. He grunted and came back with a coil of white nylon rope.

"Put your hands up," he said to Jo.

She raised them in the air. He looped the rope around her waist. Then he took a heavy-duty zip tie from his jacket pocket, the kind police officers used for plastic handcuffs. He ran it around both halves of the rope and pulled it tight, cinching the rope around the outside of her sweater. He reached down and tied the ends of the rope to the support struts for the front pa.s.senger seat.

"Set," he said.

Calder looked at Jo. "Get out. Stand on the sidewalk in front of the car. Hands up. Call Ian's name and let's see what happens."

Murdock opened his door. Anxiously Jo climbed over him and hopped out into the cold night air. The engine was rumbling. Exhaust poured from the pipe and swirled around her feet.

Murdock stared at her through the door. "If you try to run, one of two things will happen. You'll be shot, or Vance will put the car in gear and we'll drag you to death."

Slowly, hands up, Jo walked toward the front of the vehicle. Murdock played out the rope like a fis.h.i.+ng line. She was the lure.

Pinned to the ground beneath Gabe's foot, the man called Diaz spoke through gritted teeth. "You called the cops?"

"Kanan's here?" Gabe said. "How the h.e.l.l-"

"Text message. It listed the time and place for the rendezvous."

A chill came over Gabe as fast as if he'd jumped into a freezing ocean. He said, "'Exchange: Kanan's wife and son for Slick. Stanford quad. Top of oval 9 pm.'"

"Yes."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it. G.o.d-" He stepped off the man's back. "Who'd you get the message from?"

Diaz sat up, hand to his throat. "The sarge found it on... f.u.c.k, man, who did you send the message to?"

Gabe pulled out his phone. He had three messages from the SFPD. He called the station. "It's Quintana."

He looked past the trees. The Tahoe had stopped at the top of the Oval.

"Mr. Quintana, yes-we've been trying to reach you. Lieutenant Tang isn't responding and we have no report of a hostage situation at Stanford."

The chill washed over him like a wave. He glanced at Diaz. "The cops never got the message. G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

He hung up and dialed 911.

Diaz got to his feet. He pointed at the top of the Oval. "Look."

In front of the Tahoe they saw Jo standing in the glare of the headlights, hands up.

"We have to do something. Fast. Come on," Gabe said. "Where's Kanan?"

"In my truck, parked back in the brush on the far side of the Oval."

"Can you call him?"

"No, his phone is set to activate at ten P.M. What are you planning to do?"

"Improvise. We have to get the cops. And we can't let that Tahoe drive away before they show up."

They took off through the shadows, circling toward the Tahoe. The emergency operator came on the line.

"What is the nature of your emergency?"

"I'm at the top of the Oval at Stanford and I hear a woman screaming for help. Somebody's being attacked," Gabe said. "Hurry."

He ran with Diaz through the trees.

Jo stood in front of the rumbling Tahoe, hands in the air, rope leading from her waist to the open back door of the vehicle. In the blaring headlights, her shadow stretched across the ground before her like a black scarecrow. The vast campus, the inviting warm stone of the quad, the gleaming promise of the church, the landscaped flower beds in the center of the Oval all dimmed. Her world seemed circ.u.mscribed by the glare of the headlights.

"Ian," she called.

She heard no response. Of course she didn't.