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“Dude, chill. Everything’s fine. This is almost over. I can’t believe you’re this nervous after where you just came from.”

“Well I am,” Michael said. “Believe it or not I felt safer in China.”

Fortress laughed. “Sometimes I feel the same way, bro. Remember it’s for a good cause.”

“That’s the only reason I went, Fortress.”

“I know. Tell you what, you get to my motel and we’ll smoke a bowl just like the old days. I’m at the Ritz-Carlton.”

“Sounds good. Where’s my car?”

“Sorry man, you’ll have to catch a cab.”

“Are you kidding me?” Michael drew a few stares and he lowered his voice. “I put my neck on the line for the last three months to get you these movies, and I don’t even get a goddamned ride?”

“Whoa, it’s not like that. Think about it. If I send a car for you, how many people are going to know? How many people are going to make that connection between you and me?”

“All right, fine. I’ll take a cab. How do I get to your room? Last time I tried there were fifteen security goons all over you.”

“Meet me at the bar. One hour.”

“Fine.”

Michael hung up and scanned the airport’s Main Hall. A janitor rolled a mop bucket up the aisle and into the men’s restroom. In the few seconds that it took, two dozen people crossed Michael’s path. Every one of them looked suspicious. Even the little kids.

“I’m completely friggin’ paranoid,” he muttered. He ran a hand through his thick dirty-blond mane and stepped away from the wall.
Just an hour
, he thought.
One more hour and it’s all over.

Michael saw a line of cabs waiting down the street as he stepped outside. He walked up to the curb and one of them pulled forward. Michael tossed his bag on the back seat and crawled in. The cabbie was a Jamaican man with dreadlocks. He had a silver cross hanging from the rear view mirror. The badge on the dash said his name was Bob. “Where ya goin’?”

“The Ritz.”

The man nodded and pulled into traffic. Michael clutched his briefcase like it was full of diamonds. He scanned the sidewalks and the traffic around them, looking for anything or anyone even remotely suspicious. Michael hadn’t come this far to get careless now.

The cab merged into traffic and headed north on 101 for about ten minutes. Michael wasn’t familiar with San Francisco, but when he saw the Bay Bridge looming ahead, he knew they were getting close. They flew past an exit and he narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t see much from his vantage, but it didn’t look like there were any more off-ramps nearby.

“Did we miss our exit?” he said. Bob ignored him and continued driving.

Michael gave him a moment and then tapped the bulletproof glass barrier between the seats. “I need to go to the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco,” he said. “We don’t need to cross the bridge.”

Bob kept driving. He didn’t even look back. Michael twisted around and glanced at the cars behind them. Traffic was thick and moving fast. They were headed straight for the Bay Bridge. There were no more exits. Something wasn’t right.

Michael’s adrenaline kicked in and his chest tightened anxiously. “Hey, are you listening to me? Turn around, dammit!” He made a fist and pounded on the glass. No response. He might as well have been a ghost.

Michael glanced over the cabbie’s shoulder at the speedometer. They were doing almost seventy. For a split second, he considered jumping out. He immediately dismissed the idea. There was no way he could jump out of that car. His head would hit the pavement like a ripe melon. Even if he managed to survive the fall, the traffic around them would finish him off. There was no way one of those cars could stop fast enough to avoid smashing him all over the road.

Then, one hundred yards into the lower deck of the bridge, Bob slammed on the brakes. Michael flew forward, slamming into the Plexiglas barrier so hard that his neck popped a dozen times. Stars filled his vision. He pushed himself back, dazed.

Bob stepped out of the car and opened the rear door. He reached in, and Michael saw a glint of steel behind him. It appeared to be a knife of some sort. Michael pulled away, and Bob crawled in towards him, eyes unblinking and determined. He looked like a zombie.

Michael pawed at the door handle until it fell open and he went sprawling out onto the pavement. He lurched to his feet, still clutching the briefcase. Bob lunged at him through the cab, but Michael was already out of reach. He turned and ran along the front of the car, up the outside lane of traffic.

Michael was dizzy. His head pounded. Stars swam through his vision and he felt nauseous. He threw a glance over his shoulder and saw Bob chasing him. The cabbie was brandishing a long, curved kukri knife in his right hand. He was gaining fast.

Michael made a calculated decision and rushed for the edge of the bridge. He couldn’t outrun the man. That much was already obvious. He just needed to survive, to stay out of reach of that knife long enough for help to arrive. The police would be there soon, he told himself.

Michael leapt over the concrete barrier and climbed around one of the massive steel girders. Bob snarled and swiped at him with the knife. Michael sprang aside, grabbing the opposing section. The blade clanged against the hardened steel and threw off sparks.

Michael tossed the briefcase strap over his shoulder. He stood on a narrow steel beam, not even wide enough to support his feet. He twisted his feet sideways, parallel to the bridge, and began to walk.

The cabbie hopped over the side of the bridge and followed him. Michael glanced back and saw the unfathomable hatred burning in the man’s eyes.

“What did I do?” he said. “Why are you doing this?”

Bob didn’t even blink. He raised the knife and lunged forward. Michael twisted aside to avoid the slash and lost his grip with his left hand. His feet went out from under him. A scream escaped his lips as he dangled off the side of the bridge, swinging by one arm.

The deep blue bay yawned below. It was a long drop. Michael had heard about drops like that. Hitting water from that distance was just like hitting pavement.

“Here,” he said. He pulled the strap over his head with his free hand. He offered the briefcase up in defeat. “Take it. Just don’t kill me.”

Bob reached out and took the bag. Michael threw his hand up around the girder and held on for dear life. He grunted as he pulled himself up. His heart was pounding so loud he couldn’t hear anything else. When he felt the solid steel beam back under his feet, he let out a relieved gasp.

The cabbie hefted the briefcase up onto the concrete ledge and dropped it. Then in one swift movement, he whipped out the knife and slashed at Michael’s throat. The movement was so fast that Michael hardly even saw it. Blood sprayed out in front of him, washing the side of the bridge in crimson and splashing across Bob’s face.

Michael’s grip gave way and he tumbled backwards, somersaulting through the air. He lost consciousness halfway down and was dead by the time he hit the water.

Bob vaulted back over the ledge. He grabbed the briefcase and walked back to the cab, ignoring the honks and the curses shouted by the drivers around him. He set the briefcase down on the hood of the taxi cab and then took a few steps back. The looks of the passers-by went from rage to horror as Bob raised the knife and plunged it into his own chest. He gave it an extra push, twisted it upwards past his sternum and deep into his heart. Blood erupted from his mouth and rolled down his chest. He dropped to his knees and then fell to the ground with a thud.

A split second later, a motorcycle roared through traffic and pulled up alongside the cab. The driver was dressed in jeans and a black jacket, and he wore a helmet with a dark tinted visor. He paused at the front of the car long enough to grab the briefcase and then roared up the shoulder of the road. He disappeared into traffic before the stunned onlookers could even register what had happened.

Chapter 3

Agent Smith insisted on visiting the murder scene with Brandy, even though his arm was in a sling and he was officially off duty for at least two weeks. Brandy drove. She tried not to take Smith’s diligence as a lack of confidence in her abilities. He didn’t seem to have much to say to her. Then again, he didn’t usually have much to say. Smith was all business.

Brandy wasn’t sure if his attitude was just part of his personality, or if it had to do with her probationary period. She got the same feeling from the other agents as well. Maybe they wanted to keep their distance in case she got fired. Or maybe they were hoping she’d just quit. Brandy couldn’t read them the way she could most people. They were a secretive, close-knit bunch, and because of that, Brandy still felt like an outsider.

When they got to the crime scene, SFPD had the lanes blocked in half of the lower section of the Bay Bridge. Michael Turner’s body was in the back of an ambulance. The cab driver’s body was still on the ground, covered by a sheet.

Smith approached one of the cops and asked who was in charge. The cop directed him to the SIU Chief Inspector, an Asian man named John Lee. Brandy followed along as Smith tracked him down, halfway across the bridge.

“I’m not sure what we have here,” Lee explained after they made introductions. “I called the Feds in because I thought you guys might be interested.”

“Why is that?” said Smith. “From what I gather this was a random homicide.”

“Maybe. I think you should look at our witness reports before you decide. Follow me and I’ll give you a quick rundown of what happened.”

Lee led them through the scene, describing the scenario in detail. They stopped at the edge of the bridge with the victim’s blood splattered all over the beams.

“What was Turner doing in China?” Smith said absently.

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got an investigator on that. We also don’t know what he was doing in San Francisco. He didn’t live here. He was from Texas. We’re trying to locate his family right now. Judging by the location of the crime, we’re assuming he was headed into Oakland or somewhere else in the east bay.”

Lee guided them over to the ambulance, and gave them a moment to inspect the body. Brandy didn’t see anything unexpected. The corpse was drained of blood, the skin tone an icy blue. A grisly-looking slice marred the throat, and Brandy cringed when she saw it. She’d patched up some fairly nasty wounds during her tour in Iraq, but this was different. This was a corpse.

“There was a fishing boat under the bridge,” Lee said. “The workers pulled him up; otherwise we might have been dredging the bay for hours. All of his personal belongings are in the cab, except for the briefcase.”

“Briefcase?” said Brandy.

“Yeah. I didn’t get to that part yet.” Lee described the cabbie’s suicide and the motorcycle rider. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. The biker swooped up and took the briefcase, like he’d just been waiting for this to happen.”

“Do you have any leads on him?” Brandy said.

“No, witnesses didn’t see his face, nobody got a plate.”

Smith glanced around. “No cameras on the bridge?”

“We have cameras on the upper level, and at the entrances. We’re pulling the video now but my hopes aren’t high. We might get a plate number off the bike, but I doubt it. The camera images are low resolution, and they’re constantly affected by the weather. Fog, glare, fuel vapors; it all disturbs the imaging.”

Smith took a deep breath. “Okay, Brandy let’s start by looking into that video. We’ll let the SFPD handle the phone calls to Turner’s family. Later, we’ll go over to the taxi company.”

“You know, Agent Smith,” Brandy said, “I could probably handle these interviews myself. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”

Smith stared at her stone-faced. There wasn’t even a flicker behind his dark glasses. “I’ll be fine Agent Jackson. Thanks for your concern.” He turned and started walking towards the car. Brandy tried to conceal her disappointment. She thanked Lee for his help and then followed the senior special agent. She caught up with him halfway to the car, and stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” she said. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The hell you don’t. I’ve been busting my ass for two years now. I’ve worked on every type of criminal case imaginable: arson, robbery, murder… right down the checklist. My probation is over, but you’re still treating me like a rookie. You won’t even let me handle a few interviews on my own. So what’s it about?”

Brandy was a little shocked by the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t even realized how upset she was until that moment. Surprisingly, she sounded more confident than she felt. She was terrified. After her tour in Afghanistan and Iraq, Brandy had thought she was prepared for anything. What was it about Smith that disarmed her?

Smith methodically removed his sunglasses, folded them, and dropped them into his breast pocket. Then he fixed Brandy with a steely gaze. “What do you think it’s about, Agent Jackson?”

“How should I know?”

“Do you think it’s because you’re a woman? Do you think it’s about you being black?”

Brandy narrowed her eyebrows. “Well, I didn’t think that… actually the thought hadn’t even occurred to me until now. Should I think that? I’ve never had any reason to believe you were a bigot or a racist.”

“But now you wonder?”

“I don’t know. You brought it up.”

Smith nodded. He glanced up the bridge, towards the crime scene, and then at the traffic flowing down the far lanes. “Let’s take a look at that video, shall we?”

Brandy clenched her jaw and forced back the string of curses on the tip of her tongue. If Smith was trying to test her patience with his head games, it was working.

Chapter 4

Friday, 7:00 AM

They’re not real. None of it is real. The dishes aren’t clean, they’re shattered in the sink and scattered across the house. The garbage is spilling over, flowing out of the kitchen and into the living room. The toilet in the guest bathroom is broken. There’s a swarm of flies trapped behind the closed bathroom door. Mostly.