Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (17 page)

“Zan—Harper—no.”

He scooted around her and blocked the door. “Let me think about this.”

“I'll help you if you help me.”

“Okay, okay. I just need someplace to stay.”

“Not at my place.”

“'Course not. Never.” He looked so obviously disappointed that she almost laughed. “Where?”

“There's a public restroom at Zuma Beach. I hear the last stall in the men's room is roomy and fairly unlikely to be broken into.”

“That's . . .” He rolled his eyes. “You haven't changed so much after all.”

“Listen closely. Zero knows where I live. I've seen his dog outside my building.”

Oscar's face fell. “Shit.”

The gears spun ever faster. “I don't want to go home. Much less take you there.”

“We could get out of town. Together.”

“I'm not going on the run with you, Oscar.”

He scraped his fingers into his hair. “Then what am I supposed to do? You can't go to the cops. No way.”

“You mean Susannah Flynn would not have gone to the cops. But we need protection. We need help.”

“I thought you would be the one to help. You always tried to.”

Her heart seemed to clench at that. “Do you have a phone?”

He patted his pockets and eventually found it.

“What's your number?” she said.

He recited it, and she wrote it on her forearm with a pen. He shook his head.

“Just enter it in yours,” he said. “And give me your number, too.”

The mischief Oscar might do with her phone number, she didn't need to imagine. Malware. Spoofing calls and making it look like she'd made them. She didn't even want to put his digits in her device, lest they activate a secret code and begin to burn through the electronics and turn her phone into an incendiary device.

She capped the pen. “No way.”

He nodded, as though imbibing the deepest secrets of the universe. “That's hurtful, but I can respect it.”

“Good.”

“Dude. So who can help us?”

She heard people in the hallway. Classes were getting out. They needed to go.

“You ever been to Santa Barbara?” she said.

H
arper slipped out of the classroom into the hallway and closed the door behind her. On her instructions, Oscar followed ten seconds later and headed in the opposite direction. She wanted nobody to see them together.

She hurried from the building to the parking lot where she'd left the MINI. She tried again to reach Aiden. Again got voice mail. She texted him as she walked.

Call me. Urgent.

She debated leaving a more detailed message. But
Forgive me. You were right all along
didn't sound compelling in text-speak. Neither did
Are you okay? Still attacking innocent bystanders?

A few minutes later, at the wheel of the car, she rounded a corner in Westwood and saw Oscar a block ahead, walking along the sidewalk. His head was down.

Oscar had figured out her identity from the cloned swipe card. As a hacker with a series of powerful search software tools and no scruples, he found out she was enrolled at UCLA. How he figured out her class schedule was a different matter. She needed to alert the registrar that their system had been compromised.

She edged through afternoon traffic, eyeing the mirrors for vehicles following her. Her countersurveillance skills were rudimentary. She turned the corner and zigzagged through village streets, past boho shops and restaurants and a movie theater. When she came around again, from the opposite direction, Oscar was crossing the street, just as she'd told him to.

She swerved to the curb. He hopped in and she punched it, rounding the corner as the light turned red.

“Anybody jump the light?” she said. “Anybody follow us? Anybody on foot watching to see where we're going?”

Oscar craned to see out the back window. “Clear. I think.”

She shifted gears and swung into an alley, bouncing along the rough concrete. “You think, or you're positive?”

He kept watching. “Positive.” He turned around. “Nobody's coming.”

She barreled along the alley. Despite her nerves and anxiety, she felt stoked. The streets looked brightly etched, high-focus, and the traffic ahead seemed to ribbon into a smooth flow. She could see holes opening up, lanes where she could swing in and pass slower cars. It was like slaloming on a glass track. She accelerated.

She skimmed the corner and came out on Veteran, heading for Wilshire and the 405 freeway.

The channel scintillated with light that kicked off the surface of the water. The ocean was a deep, cold blue. The
Carolina Gail
pushed through, ten miles offshore, heading for the harbor. At the stern, Aiden stowed gear. The wake spilled white behind the boat. Alongside, slipping fast just beneath the surface, two dolphins swam in tandem with them.

He didn't look at the wheelhouse. Kieran drove the boat toward shore, tired behind his sunglasses, and silent. His brother hadn't said five words to him all day.

Aiden was sore. Beyond. His shoulder didn't so much ache as stab every time he moved. His cheek was abraded. He didn't want anybody to comment on his black eye.

His phone buzzed. He waited for it to stop. He'd ignored three calls from her. She'd left three voice mail messages. But this one was a text.

Call me. Urgent.

What did Harper want with him? Was she trying to break through his stubborn silence, or did she really have news for him?

The boat dipped in the afternoon swell and rose again. The bow lifted, spraying white water. He could see Kieran's silhouette, still and steady at the wheel. Seagulls followed the boat.

Harper. Maybe she wanted to play around. Maybe she just wanted to play him.

She always came to him with questions. With inquiries. Did she just want information? If so, she should know by now that he had no more information to give.

Did she want to use him for his connections to the sheriff's department, to find out what the department knew?

If she was involved in the events at Xenon, why would she do that? Did she want to screw it up?

Did she want to steal information about the evidence the department had collected? Did she have plans that none of them knew about?

Urgent.

Ex-thief with a new name and a clean reputation. And the way she had used that when she was released from custody was to become a cryptologic technician—stealing information from foreign governments. It was robbery wrapped in the flag. A hell of a rehabilitation.

Just happened to be on scene the night the club was attacked and destroyed. Just happened to claim to know the man he oh-so-helpfully told her he'd seen.

But maybe Erika was right. Zero didn't exist, except as his hallucination. What did you call that—a nonexistent nemesis?

Had Harper actually wanted to plant that idea in his head?

It didn't make sense to him, except that it was happening. And the woman who'd run from him the second his mind had let the monster out . . .

He guessed he couldn't blame her.

He watched the birds circle behind the boat.

F
orty miles northwest of Los Angeles, driving along the freeway through the flat strawberry fields of Camarillo, the MINI's fuel light came on. Harper checked the mirror for tails. She waited until the last possible second to veer across two lanes and hit the off-ramp. Oscar braced his hands against the dashboard.

“Dude.”

She downshifted sharply and took a right toward a big-box mall. Catty-corner from it, she pulled into a service station and drove the MINI to the center of the pumps, where she was surrounded by pickups and RVs.

Oscar leaned back. “Paranoid much?”

She climbed out. “Three minutes.”

Oscar got out. “Men's room.”

He looked frazzled, his hair flailing in the salt-laden sea breeze. His eyes seemed feverish, the circles beneath them darker.

“Get a sandwich,” Harper said.

Oscar headed inside the service station's mini-mart. Harper hoped he didn't plan to ingest other substances in the men's room. Maybe she should have searched him. She jammed the nozzle in the tank and began filling up.

She hadn't heard from Aiden.

She scanned the station forecourt and the road as the pump hummed in her hand. She took out her phone. No replies.

She finished filling up, replaced the nozzle, and headed inside to pay with cash. She didn't want any record of the transaction to go into a database. Walking across the forecourt, she knew she was on CCTV. But a silent, grainy film from a Southern California video camera wouldn't go anywhere, most likely. A credit card transaction would be easily accessible to the cops. Or to folks like Oscar.

Paranoid? Very much.

Inside the store, the door closed slowly, light and color sliding across the glass. She got in line to pay and called Erika Sorenstam.

Her stomach clenched. How had she walked—no, leaped—into a love triangle, even a broken one, with Aiden and Sorenstam?

The phone rang. She approached the register. The clerk, a woman in an orange top, said, “Number 12?”

The phone was answered. “Yes?”

Harper was fishing her cash from her front pocket. She put the phone between her shoulder and her ear. Another customer passed by, brushing her shoulder. The phone squirted out and dropped to the tile.

She tossed a wad of bills on the counter and bent to pick it up. “Detective, sorry,” she called.

When she straightened, Oscar was standing in the hallway by the restrooms, his eyes as round as quarters.

Sorenstam said, “Ms. Flynn?”

Oscar turned and disappeared down the hallway.

Damn. She ran after him. “Hang on,” she said to Sorenstam.

The back door to the mini-mart was closing, a hot slice of sunlight shrinking as it hissed on its hinges.

If Oscar got away, she had no proof of Zero's involvement. None. She ran down the hallway, hit the door before it closed, and slammed it open. Oscar was already across the street, running toward the mall, his green fatigue shirt beating behind him like a cape about to shred.

She ran across the street and into the mall parking lot with the phone in her hand. Sorenstam's voice swung back and forth, tinny.

“Hey, Flynn.”

Oscar's flapping green shirt vanished through the doors at the mall. Harper put the phone to her ear.

“I'm here. Got . . .”

A car passed nearby. She pulled up and veered.

“What's this about?” Sorenstam said.

The driver honked at her, long and annoyed. She kept running.

“I have evidence that Eddie Azerov was involved in the Xenon attack,” she said.

“What now?”

“The swipe card. Somebody cloned it. With my employee ID.”

“Who? What evidence do you have?”

Harper bounded toward the mall entrance. People were streaming in and out the doors. She ran inside, into echoes and air-conditioning and Muzak. The place was packed—with families ambling with strollers and hanging banners advertising a chance to win a new Corvette and a popcorn vender at a kiosk in the center of the concourse. The mall had three levels and escalators, and the noise and crowds extended overhead. A wallpaper version of the Chili Peppers's “Give It Away” was playing. Briefly, she felt the urge to hunt down whoever had recorded it and beat them senseless with a shoe.

Harper hated malls.

She hated crowded public places, hated people pushing against her, and amplified music, and the smell of anything burning, even the cheap-ass popcorn being shoveled, greasy and yellow, into paper bags directly ahead of her.

Oscar was barely visible a hundred yards ahead, heading for the department store at the end of the concourse.

She barreled after him. Sorenstam was still on the line.

“I'm chasing a guy I knew back when. Hacker. Turned up this morning.”

“Who?” Sorenstam said.

“Oscar Sierra.”

There was a pause.

Harper kept running. “He told me he'd been hired to clone my employee ID.” Still no answer. “Detective?”

Sorenstam said, “Where are you?”

At her desk in the Lost Hills station, Erika Sorenstam heard ambient noise and Harper Flynn's hard breathing. Sounded like she was running.

“Harper, where are you?” she repeated. She got no reply.

She muted her end of the call so Flynn couldn't hear her. Staring at her computer screen, she picked up her cell phone and dialed the number for the Kern County Sheriff's Office.

“Detective Erika Sorenstam, L.A. Sheriff's Department. I just got your bulletin. I may have a lead on your missing person.”

“Oscar Sierra?”

“What more can you give me?”

The Kern County deputy ran it down. An anonymous tipster had phoned 911 to report that a friend's mobile home near China Lake was trashed, the friend's car on fire. The friend was missing. When deputies arrived, the trailer's door was pried open. A car outside the trailer was smoldering, nearly burned out. They could find no sign of Oscar Sierra.

Sorenstam asked if they could send their report to her.

The Kern County deputy said, “You say you have a report of Sierra's whereabouts?”

“I have a woman on the other line who claims Sierra is alive. She says she's pursuing him.”

“Name?”

“Harper Flynn.”

The Kern deputy said, “Flynn. You sure?”

“Positive. Why?”

“That name has come up in our investigation.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Sorenstam's computer pinged. She opened the files Kern County had sent and saw photos of the scene: a trailer home, run-down even by desert trailer-home standards, door off the hinges. Inside, sofa sliced open, cushions gutted. Chairs overturned. Computer monitors all smashed, cables pouring onto the floor like viscera. What looked like blood on the wall, near a bent door frame.

The Kern deputy said, “We found evidence at the scene that links to Harper Flynn. Messages in a cell phone we found in the trailer. Indicating that Harper Flynn was waiting for a delivery—of cash, drugs, we don't know what—from Sierra. And asking him to be at the trailer last night between eleven
P.M.
and one
A.M
.”

Sorenstam straightened. “What time did you get the 9-1-1 call?”

“Eleven forty-five.”

“You think Flynn set Sierra up, making sure he was home when somebody came knocking?”

“That's our working assumption. If you have Flynn on the line, I suggest—”

“I'm on it. I'll report back to you.”

She hung up and returned to the call with Harper. She clenched her jaw and slowly exhaled to modulate her voice.

“Harper,” she said. “Are you still there? Is everything okay?”

“He's trying to get away,” Flynn said.

Sorenstam snapped her fingers to get the attention of two other detectives nearby. They looked up. She motioned them to her desk and pointed at the computer screen. Grabbing a pen, she scribbled on a piece of paper:
Triangulate this call.