Fear could be crippling, but anger? That she could work with.

  Eva smiled at her captors and continued her descent, wondering what was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

  64

  At the bottom of the stairs sat the judge’s house.

  It was a mansion with a view to die for, but An hesitated only an instant before taking the stairs to the front door, her feet barely touching the flagstones. She rang the bell and rapped on the window alongside the door, then moved swiftly to the side of the house before anyone could answer. She didn’t want to be seen just yet, even by the man she was calling on.

  The neighborhood was quiet this time of day. Sea Cliff held the distinction of being the priciest neighborhood in a city known for exorbitant real estate. Prices were driven by the eponymous cliff abutting the neighborhood. Behind each home was a ribbon of backyard and a short path to a cliff overlooking China Beach two hundred feet below.

  The view of the Pacific had lured celebrities, musicians, artists, and billionaires. Most didn’t know China Beach was named for the immigrants who came with the Gold Rush to work the railroads and the mines. The rocky beach, sheltered but too rough for swimming, was a safe place to fish. Today’s residents simply knew they had an unbroken view of the Golden Gate Bridge and a resale value that would outpace inflation until the end of time.

  An crouched under a side window and listened, but no one came to the front door. Peering over the edge of the windowsill, she saw a large drawing room with leather couches and a desk fronting a bay window in the back. She counted to ten, then slid to the rear of the house.

  The back door was wide open.

  There was a screen door attached, so it hadn’t been left open for an ocean breeze. A path of bluestone cut across the backyard toward the cliff, but An noticed that grass alongside the stones was compressed, as if someone had veered off the path while walking in a hurry or, more likely, running.

  She could only think of one reason why someone would run toward a cliff.

  Ignoring the open door, An glided across the lawn to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

  The body of a man lay sprawled on the rocks below.

  Legs splayed at odd angles, he looked like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Blood mixed with seawater had painted a scarlet halo around his skull. As sunlight bounced off the rocks, a million rubies seemed to mourn his passing.

  An couldn’t see his face from this height, but the man’s identity wasn’t a mystery. She turned away from the cliff and headed toward the front of the house. It was only a matter of time before one of the neighbors took their dog for a walk along the beach.

  She had warned her associates this could go one of two ways after the son was put in jeopardy. The men working with the Triads assured her the judge wasn’t the self-destructive type. They were sure that once he got the message, he would play ball.

  An didn’t play ball, so the metaphor was lost, and she knew better than most that enough pressure could make anyone the self-destructive type.

  The over-confidence of men never ceased to amaze her.

  She took one last look over her shoulder at the Pacific Ocean. Almost seven thousand miles over the horizon sat Hong Kong, a city from which a secret society controlled her movements as sure as the moon did the tides. That sensation of being tethered remained even after An turned her back on the ocean.

  Maybe it was a view to die for, after all.

  65

  The view from Cape’s office didn’t tell him a damn thing.

  He could see the entrance to the pier, with people milling about as usual, and the aquarium, but he didn’t have X-ray vision. He wouldn’t know what was going on inside that place until he got over there.

  First, he had to find his gun.

  Cape figured the invisible shot that almost took his head off must have originated from the roof of the aquarium or the scaffolding on the side of the building. Initially he was more intrigued by the timing of the attempt than its source, but there was no way Cape was going to walk into the aquarium unarmed.

  As he rummaged through his desk, Cape put his phone on speaker and dialed Vera at her store. No answer. The store should be open, even if one of her assistants was minding the register. Cape tried her cell and it went straight to voicemail.

  He tried her cell again.

  It’s Vera…leave a message, but if you do, text me to let me know or I might never get back to you.

  Cape texted but didn’t wait for a reply. He’d be over there soon enough.

  The gun was in the middle drawer on the right.

  The revolver was a .357 Ruger with a three-inch barrel, matte silver frame with black grips. The barrel was angled below the front sight, as if the pistol’s chin was tucked into its chest and wanted nothing more than to head-butt you into oblivion. It weighed more than a guilty conscience.

  Cape wasn’t self-destructive but would be the first to admit that he put himself in far too many situations in which he was shot, stabbed, strangled, and punched. He bought the gun to scare the shit out of anyone he pointed it at—in hopes of never having to pull the trigger.

  He holstered the revolver and clipped it to his belt, then slid on a jacket and stepped into the hallway. He didn’t wait for the elevator but took the stairs two at a time. Cape had the feeling that no matter how soon he arrived, he was already late to the party.

  Either he had completely lost perspective on this case, or things were finally coming into focus.

  66

  Sally focused on the dwindling figure of An until it rounded the corner at the end of the street and vanished. Presumably a car was waiting a short distance from the judge’s house.

  Sally wasn’t overly concerned with following her. She might never see An again, or they might cross paths very soon. Her own desires meant nothing if fate had plans of its own.

  Sally slid off the roof, landing like a panther on the back lawn. She stayed on the stone path as she moved to the edge of the cliff to admire her handiwork.

  No wonder An neither lingered nor climbed down to the beach. The judge looked like a broken jar of tomato sauce that slipped from a grocery bag. Sally may have gotten overzealous with the letter opener, but there hadn’t been much time for finesse.

  Someone would have to treat the cut on his forehead after he revived, but a few stitches seemed like a good bargain compared to eternal rest.

  The judge had already heard about his son’s death when Sally arrived, which meant his handlers weren’t playing around. He was distraught, desperate, and in denial. He was convinced he could protect his daughter simply by playing along.

  Sally convinced him otherwise.

  She assured him there were only two options. Sally could help him fake his own death, or she would gladly kill him, now, with her bare hands. She gave him sixty seconds to decide.

  The judge chose Option A.

  They walked three houses away and took a switchback path to the rocks below. Once they reached a spot directly below his backyard, the judge looked nervously up the face of the cliff to see if they were followed. Sally punched him in the throat just hard enough to drop him to his knees. Then she struck both sides of his temple as if banging two cymbals together. He hit the rocks like a seagull’s leftovers.

  Sally took the letter opener and sliced his forehead laterally. The nice thing about head wounds is they bleed profusely, but with no arteries involved, it’s messy and not mortal. The rocks were damp but the tide was out, so it took Sally only a few moments to configure his limbs to suggest gravity had done its job.

  Ten minutes after Sally climbed the roof, An rang the doorbell.

  Things would have gotten complicated if An had visited the beach. A part of Sally had been rooting for complicated, but as much as she loved a challenge, she realized in that moment that she didn’t want to hurt An if she could avoid it.

  Clearly, An had somewhere else to be. So did Sally.

  Now she watched as the waves extended their fingers toward the base of the rocks. She estimated the tide would come in after two hours, and odds were the judge would regain consciousness within the hour. Sally decided to leave the judge where he was.

  She was always willing to play the odds.

  67

  Sergey knew he was playing the odds by climbing the scaffolding without a harness, but he couldn’t think of a better plan. No way he was going to leave his kid sister alone with a pirate.

  He agreed with Nastya to send Eva by herself, but that was before people vacated the aquarium. Sergey had watched from the pier as throngs of tourists exited the building, the front entrance was locked, and a sign taped to the door. Now Eva was alone in that cavernous building where no one could hear her scream.

  Sergey paused on the second level of the scaffolding and looked across the pier, holding tight to the metal pipes of the temporary structure. Painters didn’t work over the weekend, so no one paid any attention once he scrambled beyond the first level.

  Sergey paused to catch his breath. Where can no one hear you scream?

  It wasn’t underwater, so the answer wasn’t Jaws. Shark movies always featured someone screaming underwater, bubbles exploding from mouths gaping in terror. And it wasn’t a horror movie, because those tended to be nothing but wall-to-wall screaming.

  In Space. Sergey felt the endorphin rush of a puzzle solved, relieved that piece of trivia wouldn’t be gnawing at his subconscious as he climbed. In space no one can hear you scream. From the movie Alien. A classic.

  Then he thought of the scene when the alien bursts from the guts of the astronaut, and Sergey felt a sudden wave of nausea. Or maybe it was vertigo. Sergey resisted the urge to look straight down. Either way, there were creatures just as creepy as that alien, swimming around inside the aquarium.

  Good thing he was armed.

  Wrapping his fingers around the next rung of pipes, Sergey climbed past the third story, gritting his teeth as he reached the top. He managed to get his shoulders and then his torso over the edge of the roof where the scaffolding was anchored. Then he rolled from the edge of the roof to the skylight.

  Sergey patted his jacket pockets to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything. Eva had the only gun he could obtain on short notice, plus he had gifted her the switchblade. He almost brought the scissors they kept behind the register, but that seemed lame. Sergey decided his best weapons were the element of surprise and a handful of projectiles.

  He had grabbed the biggest and heaviest nesting dolls on display. After some stretching and tearing of fabric, he managed to fit four into his pockets. Much like in life, the figures with the biggest heads were politicians, so Sergey grabbed a Putin, a Bush, an Obama, and a Mao Zedong. (The Bush was a G.W., since the senior Bush matryoshka had been sold the week before to an elderly couple from Texas.)

  As a Russian, Sergey was naturally cynical about politicians, so throwing them away seemed both symbolic and pragmatic.

  The skylight was a rectangle twenty by ten feet, segmented into panes of glass just wide enough for a man to slip through. Sergey knelt down and peered through the nearest corner, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The floor was only ten feet down, and the room below appeared to be deserted.

  It was time to crash the party.

  Sergey pulled the sleeve of his jacket over his right hand and made a fist, cocking his elbow as he prepared to punch through the glass.

  68

  The glass would have broken easily but Cape decided to try the doorknob first. Lights were out in the front room of Vera’s store, and a printed sign on the door promised Back In A Few Minutes.

  Cape figured he could sidle up to the door and slip the latch, and if that didn’t work, punch through one of the glass panes. But there was enough foot traffic on the pier to make timing a bit tricky. Tourists were walking along the upper level, and stores adjacent to Vera’s were open for business.

  The door was unlocked, which in itself was a bad sign, but as soon as he stepped inside, Cape realized it wasn’t the only one. On every previous visit to Giraffe’s Best Friend, the store had been immaculate. Clothes were refolded the instant a customer set them down, the diorama of stuffed animals rearranged every night.

  The first thing Cape noticed was disarray around the register. A pencil holder had been upturned, a pair of scissors a few inches away from the cup. Papers were scattered as if someone had swept an arm across the counter. There was also a faint whiff of decay, as if the window had been open during an algae bloom in the bay.

  He moved to the back room, but no one was there. Vera’s cell phone lay on her desk, near where he’d seen it last. He turned it over. On the lock screen, two missed calls from a local area code. Cape took out his own phone and Googled the number.

  Sparing a glance at the cot, he crossed the room to stare out the broken window. The roof of the aquarium was just a stone’s throw away, the near wall covered by scaffolding that anyone could climb.

  Cape pocketed the phone and locked the door on his way out of the store.

  He took the stairway to the main thoroughfare and headed in the direction of the aquarium. As he passed the window of the left-handed store, he caught a glimpse of Harkness standing behind the counter, berating one of his customers. Cape glanced to his right toward the magic shop and wondered what feat of legerdemain Davik was performing.

  Farther up the pier was the smoldering crater that had once been the donut shack. Tourists circumnavigated orange cones marking the perimeter. The banana stand and pretzel cart had filled the void and were doing a brisk business.

  Cape arrived at the aquarium to find the stairs empty of the usual throngs, only a handful of people sitting on the steps, eating. The sign on the front door raised his suspicions even more. Why close an entire aquarium just because one room is under repair?

  He circled around the east side of the building, where the freight entrance opened onto the service road that ran along the marina. The exact spot where the armored car had crashed through the railing of the pier into the bay.

  That car had pulled on an invisible thread as it sank, unraveling a conspiracy that was hidden until now. Cape was back at the beginning, and he still didn’t know how the story was going to end.

  He moved along the building until he reached a rectangular window set adjacent to a metal door. The window was two by three feet, broken into six squares, the top of its frame at the height of his shoulder. The room beyond was dark. Peering inside, Cape could just make out a desk and phone. On a normal business day, someone manning the desk could look outside and see when their delivery arrived.

  The rays of the afternoon sun were blocked by the building, the road in shadowy half-light. No cars were around and only a few people could be seen farther up the narrow strip of asphalt—employees from one of the shops on a smoking break.

  Cape didn’t care if the window was wired for a security alarm. There was an upside either way. He didn’t want anyone inside to know he was coming, but a little backup never hurt. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around his right arm, with the thickest part of the fabric at the elbow. Turning his back to the window, he snapped his arm and broke the glass.

  Cape listened for distant sirens or nearby footfalls. The only sound was the bay sucking hungrily on the pilings of the pier.

  Cape thought about the unrelenting hunger of the sea. He almost drowned once, after someone cut his brake lines and he drove off the end of a pier. Maybe that was why everything in this case felt out of his control. There was a familiar undertow of inevitability.

  As he cleared glass shards from inside the frame, Cape looked at the water the way a deer stares at a passing car. He knew it was only a matter of time.

  Swinging a leg over the windowsill, he climbed over the desk and stepped into darkness.

  69

  Eva stepped into darkness and felt a fleeting sense of panic.

  The hallway between the bottom of the stairs and the undersea grotto was pitch black, but Cragg knew precisely how many steps until they reached a steel door. As he yanked it inward, an ethereal light danced across the floor and dappled the toes of Eva’s boots. The light was moving in waves, gentle sine curves of indirect sunlight interspersed with bluish-black stripes.

  As soon as they crossed the threshold, Eva held her breath, an involuntary response to being underwater.

  “Welcome to the grotto,” said Cragg, amusement in his voice. “Normally we would’ve entered from the other side, just like the tourists, but the fire door was closer to the stairway. Go ahead, take a gander.”

  Eva nodded absently as she stared at the ceiling—or what should’ve been the ceiling. At first she didn’t know where to focus, up at the ceiling or along the Plexiglas walls. Fish as small as her fingers swam in tightly packed schools, followed by a random assortment of larger fish in hues of silver, blue, and red.

  “One fish, two fish, red fish…” the Doctor sang softly. “Cragg, can we get down to business?”

  Cragg held up a hand. This was his temple, and he demanded a moment of awe and wonder as tribute.

  The Doctor shrugged. Eva ignored them both.

  Eva knew she should keep her eyes on the pirate and the doctor, but a childhood fascination with the sea hypnotized her a moment longer. Seaweed waved in the half-light, warning her to look over her shoulder. She pivoted on her heel and made sudden eye contact with Oscar.

  Involuntarily, she took a step backward and heard Cragg chuckle quietly.

  The giant Pacific octopus moved a tentacle in greeting, or maybe Eva was being dismissed. It was hard to tell. Oscar seemed to settle lower on the ceiling, the way someone might sink into a couch after a long day. The width of the tentacles expanded against the Plexiglas.

 

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