Dark Prophecy (32 page)

She refused to let go of the gun.

Constance had always modeled her career after Steve Dark’s. Taken her interoffice cues from him; learned how to piece together a difficult case from him. She wanted to be like him so badly, she even tried to inhabit his life in a weak moment. And now Constance knew what she had to do, because Dark would have done the same thing in this situation. Despite a six-foot-two, 220-pound man focusing his body weight onto the middle of her spine, hands wrapped around her head, arm broken in probably more than one place.

She aimed the best she could.

Then she fired her Glock down the stairs, blasting the cell phone into a million pieces.

 

 

Roger cursed himself for not thinking ahead. His commanding officers had always told him that he was a good soldier, but he didn’t have a mind for strategy. Roger Maestro was someone you deploy with a specific objective. You didn’t have Roger Maestro plan your war. Roger understood that, was at peace with that. Which was why he was glad to have Abdulia.

Only now, he’d failed her.

With an annoyed grunt, Roger slammed the FBI agent’s head into the concrete, knocking her unconscious. Then Roger stood up and made his way down the stairs to his broken phone. He picked it up, hoping that somehow it was operational . . . but no.

There were a few options—none of them good. One was to stay inside the building, make the calls from one of the hundreds of empty cubicles available to him. But their plan depended on the tower falling, and triggering the second—and more lethal—wave of explosives from the outside, across the street. He couldn’t do it from inside without it being a suicide mission.

Or Roger could make his way outside and make the calls from Abdulia’s phone . . . but no. She was already away, taking care of the details of the final card. Their plan depended on him holding onto his phone.

A disposable? Not enough time . . . even if Roger knew where to buy one. They’d spent a lot of time in the city, but he never thought to notice cell phone shops. Roger had worried about many details, but not about finding another phone.

Aggravated, he slipped his broken phone into his jacket pocket and marched down the stairs.

chapter 83

Dark was running down the fire tower when he saw the body, the FBI vest. He recognized her before he gently turned her body over and looked at her face. Spend enough time with someone and your mind files away hundreds of sensory details about them. So Dark knew it was her, even before he reached the landing. Even though it made no sense—how she could be here, in this building, in the middle of these explosions.

“Constance,” he said, crouching down next to her, pressing his fingers against her neck. Dark repeated her name again, yelling this time. He felt his blood catch fire, as if he’d mainlined napalm.

Constance’s eyes fluttered open.

“. . . Steve?”

Dark exhaled and leaned forward, kissing her forehead in utter relief. He couldn’t lose someone else close to him. Not like this. Not to these monsters.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Dark said, preparing to scoop her up into his arms.

Constance winced, then shook her head. “No. Because then I’d just have to arrest you.”

Dark looked at her quizzically for a moment, but then she reached up and touched his face, reassuring him that, yeah, she was of sound mind and all of that, despite the blow to the head. She understood Steve Dark, and his gift, better than anybody else.

“Go,” Constance said. “Go catch that son of a bitch.”

chapter 84

Outside, Dark brushed debris from his shoulders. News media were everywhere, along with fire trucks, police vehicles, and haz-mat teams. Instead of walking with a purposeful gait, Dark stumbled around like one of the many dazed victims on the perimeter. His face was covered in ash and soot, but if someone recognized him, it was over. The Maestros had managed to make Dark look like the psycho here. It probably wouldn’t take much to connect him to these blasts, too. Someone could even argue that he planted the bombs to make himself seem heroic.

Dark turned to steal a glance at the Niantic Tower. Smoke poured out of a dozen windows, and through the windows were a few visible fires. But the tower refused to fall. They’d managed to send enough of the packages down to the basement, after all. Roger Maestro had enough to spark fires and cause general panic, but he’d failed.

The Niantic Tower would needs millions in repairs, but it would not fall.

On the plaza, Dark glanced over at two men sitting in the back of an ambulance, oxygen masks pressed to their faces. They looked like they could be father and son, with the older man in an untucked white dress shirt, and the younger one in a gray coat and black jeans. Dark instantly recalled the Tower card and the two figures plunging to the earth. Could have easily been these two men, but that hadn’t happened. Fate
could
be changed.

Something else on the plaza directly in front of the building caught Dark’s eye. A man being carried, arms over two uniformed EMTs. At first the man seemed dead. Until he convulsed, then tore himself away from his rescuers. The man took a few steps, then stumbled to his knees and began to vomit, shaking his head and waving rescue workers away. Then, amazingly, the man climbed to his feet, and Dark recognized him.
Riggins.
He was trying to fight his way back into the building, no doubt to look for Constance. Two EMTs grabbed his arms; a third tried to slip an oxygen mask over his face. Riggins responded with a flurry of punches, pulling his arms away and tackling the EMT with the oxygen mask, knocking the guy on his ass before charging back into the building.

Dark knew why. Riggins would never rest until he made sure every member of his team made it safely home.

Every ounce of Dark’s being wanted to tear after Riggins and shout
No!
at the top of his lungs.
No! Don’t! You’re only going to get yourself killed!

But he knew such actions would be futile. You can’t stop a man like Riggins. There would be no time to explain. Dark would most likely find himself arrested.

Roger and Abdulia were still at large. Here, somewhere, within eyeshot of the Niantic Tower. They’d be hoping for the building to come tumbling down.

So where?

Still ambling like a traumatized office worker, Dark scanned the corners, the sidewalks, the windows of street-level cafes. Would they be sitting, sipping a coffee, as they watched the mayhem across the way? No. Stop looking for pairs. Roger would still be busy. Abdulia would be the one watching, her dark, deep eyes studying every detail. She was the mastermind. Her husband was the muscle, the executioner, the pilot, the provider. But it was Abdulia who laid out the plan. Just like she’d laid out the path for Dark. The need to bring Abdulia down was urgent, almost painful.

As Dark moved, he felt a fluttering in his upper thigh. He patted his pocket, then remembered. His phone.

There were seventeen missed text messages. Several were from Graysmith. But the last few were from a strange number he didn’t recognize:

Graysmith answered. Dark gave her no time to speak.

“Tell me you’ve got transport,” he said.

“Get to Pier Fourteen, right off the Embarcadero,” she said. “I’ll have a chopper waiting. So where are they? If this isn’t the worst of it, where are they dealing the Death card?”

“I’ll tell you once we’re on board.”

X

death

To watch Steve Dark’s personal tarot card reading,
please log in to
Level26.com
and
enter the code: death.

T
ransmission picked up by U.S. Coast Guard, Vessel Traffic Service, Sector San Francisco. Lt. Gen. Allan Schoenfelder, Director, Operations Center Supervisor.

Rest, just like the bodies in that tower were supposed to rest.

But Steve Dark had ruined that, just like the young agent—Paulson—had threatened to ruin their earliest efforts. You step into the path of fate, and fate will find a way to step into your path.

Abdulia wondered if the person they’d originally chosen to play the role of the Fool knew how lucky she was to have avoided her fate.

But now Dark pieced their story together too soon, laying their plans clear. The authorities were supposed to analyze the murders, write books about it . . . and most important, spread their message to all corners of the globe. Embracing your fate brings balance to the world. Fighting fate was as futile as fighting the currents of a mighty river. You try to swim upstream, and you only end up hurting yourself and others.

Hadn’t humanity learned the lesson by now? The major corporations of the world were founded on the principles of challenging the natural order of things—squeezing the resources out of the struggling masses, being allowed to absorb an amount of wealth that would have shamed the Roman Empire. These same corporations were allowed to destroy the natural world in the process. Witness the growing mass of oil in the Gulf, and the corporate entity responsible shrugging its shoulders like some spoiled teenager.

The world needed a wake-up call. Abdulia would give it to them.

Everything depended on the final card.

chapter 85

Cape Mendocino, California

 

 

Cape Mendocino is the westernmost point on the California coastline, with a squat lighthouse that had been attempting to warn sailors away since 1868. One flash of white, every thirty seconds. Maintaining its lighthouse over the years wasn’t easy. The area was notorious for seismic activity, as well as being exposed to the brunt of Pacific windstorms. The lighthouse, only three stories tall, was constantly broken, shifted, shattered, and at times destroyed by the worst nature had to offer. Still, the lighthouse was rebuilt time and again. The sharp rocks and sea stacks protruding from the Pacific coast were too dangerous, the risks too great. In recent years, however, modern navigation technology rendered the Cape Mendocino lighthouse obsolete. It was abandoned to the wind-swept salt during the mid-1960s, and was currently awaiting funding for renovation.

Inside its rusting hulk was Hilda. And the killers.

Abdulia’s second text had been brief:

Dark’s stomach churned at the thought of Hilda being held captive by these maniacs. She had been patient with him, even when Dark had lost it and began tearing up her shop. Hilda had saved him, and she’d asked for nothing in return. Not even the price of the reading.

He couldn’t let anything happen to her.

Now they raced over northern California in a Piper Tech chopper. Dark would have be to dropped somewhere within walking distance of the lighthouse, but no closer.

“That’s incredibly stupid,” Graysmith said. “You set foot inside that thing, you’re dead, along with that tarot-card-reading friend of yours.”

“If they see a chopper,” Dark said, “Hilda’s dead. At least this way I have a chance to bargain for her with my own life.”

“Let me put together a strike team. I’m good at this.”

“There’s no time. And besides, Abdulia wants me. If she can’t have me, she’ll settle for Hilda.”

Graysmith bit her lip. “I don’t like it. Give me fifteen minutes and I can have a gunship up here to blow those killers off the top of that cliff.”

But Dark thought that was probably what the killers wanted. After all, Hilda had explained to him that the Death card signified a new beginning as much as it did the end.
One must sacrifice oneself to be born again.

He couldn’t let Hilda go to her death with these psychos.

“No,” Dark said. “It has to be me, alone. You brought me into this. Let me finish it.”

Graysmith looked at him for a long moment before she sighed. “You know, I’m doing it. Letting my feelings get in the way. And people used to think I was blithe.”

Before he left, Graysmith outfitted him in the bulletproof gear she’d acquired back in Fresno—as much as she could convince him to wear. It added weight, but Dark would deal with it. He checked his Glock 22, slid it into a holster clipped to his belt at the small of his back. He didn’t want anything dangling from his body. For a crazy moment he wished he had a version of the Sqweegel suit that fit him.