The Nightmare Thief

Autumn ran behind Dustin toward the beach. The speedboat, white and sleek, knifed through the glinting water straight at them. Ahead, Lark and Noah jogged to a stop at the water’s edge. Peyton was walking behind Grier, raspberry velour hips swaying, champagne bottle swinging in her hand. Up the sand in the distance, the tai chi practitioner stopped to watch.

Autumn caught up with her friends. The limo driver, Kyle, ran up behind her.

“All right, you all. Time to separate.” He pointed at the boat. “They’re coming to pick up Ms. Reiniger and her muscle.” He nudged Lark, Dustin, and Grier toward her. Then he pointed at Peyton and Noah. “You two federal agents—you best get lost, if you don’t want to get taken down in a firefight.”

The boat drew nearer.

“Or captured and interrogated,” Kyle said.

Grier adjusted his straw hat. “Listen to the man—he knows the score. If you can’t deny the charges or buy ’em off, you’d better split.”

Peyton worried the charm bracelet on her wrist. Grier took off his smiling skull ring and handed it to her. “My marker, Marshal. You want to change teams, you call me.”

Autumn rubbed her palms against her jeans. “The boat—they’re picking me up after my prison break?”

“That’s right. We are now on the clock.”

Kyle reached beneath his Edge Adventures windbreaker and pulled out a handgun that looked like something Colonel Quaritch would fire at aliens in Avatar. Matte silver, with a huge telescopic sight atop the barrel.

He smiled, a cool leer. “And I, Ms. Reiniger, am your nemesis. U.S. Marshal Kyle Ritter, tasked with apprehending you and preventing your crime spree. If I was you, I’d run before I got brought down like a deer.”

Autumn blinked. Then she turned and sprinted toward the water.

Twenty meters from shore Haugen slewed the boat sideways and brought it to a halt. Von leapt over the side, gun out, and splashed through the shallow water toward the beach.

The Reiniger girl was running toward him. Excellent. Her friends seemed confused. In the distance, sprinting over the park’s low hills, came the first members of Sabine’s team.

Up the beach, a man in drawstring pants was doing tai chi. Haugen catalogued him. Bystander. Along the path, toward the fishing pier, an elderly couple ambled out from behind the trees. The woman was rotund. She was pushing a baby stroller that held a white poodle. Every few seconds she leaned over to pet and coo at it.

Bystanders. Their presence was not a problem. Haugen had planned on having to take Autumn Reiniger’s group with people watching. That was the whole point of the way he had designed the operation.

They had waited to ambush the Edge Adventures crew until after the boss, Coates, had phoned the SFPD. So the cops now knew a scenario was running at Candlestick Point. They didn’t have to like it. They just had to believe that, whatever happened from this point on, it was all a game.

Sabine sprinted into sight. A ski mask covered her face. A very real SIG Sauer was gripped in her right hand. She pulled herself to a stop. Walkie-talkie to her mouth.

“Seventh person in Autumn’s group has a gun. Do we back off?”

Haugen raised his walkie-talkie and hesitated. Who was the man in the baseball cap, waving a toy science fiction cannon at Autumn Reiniger?

Chapter 8 (#u56a388bd-0a2b-5c12-a4f7-b9292ffe3811)

Autumn saw the alien-killer gun in Ritter’s hand, heard the “let’s play” snicker in his voice, and ran. The non-smile lingered on Kyle’s face. The speedboat bobbed in the cove, engine rumbling. A man in a ski mask was at the controls. Another was over the side and splashing through the water toward her. He was short and stout, with a huge round head covered by the mask. He too had some kind of gun in his hand, not as flashy as Kyle’s, and was holding it high so as not to get it wet.

He waved. “Autumn. This way. I’ll cover you.”

She dashed for the water, her heart racing. She realized she was smiling. Grinning. She yelled, joyful.

The stout gunman pointed at Dustin. “You too.” He reached shore and swung into a stance: arms straight, gun pointed at the other people on the sand.

Autumn heard Peyton shout. Noah cried, “Come on.”

She looked over her shoulder. Three more masked people, swathed in black, had appeared behind them, armed, charging toward the beach.

The stout gunman beckoned to her. “Hurry.”

She hesitated. Her boots were brand-new Stuart Weitzman black leather, buckled, gleaming, top-bitch riding boots. “I can’t get these wet.”

Peyton squealed. Autumn saw a masked attacker descend on her roomie, grab her around the waist, and sweep her off her feet. One of her little bow-covered ballet slippers flew off. Peyton threw her head back, squealing like a piglet.

Dustin splashed into the water.

“Wait—give me a piggyback,” Autumn said.

Dustin slowed, unsure. The stout gunman charged past him to the beach, crying, “Get in the boat.”

The man grabbed Autumn, hefted her into a fireman’s carry, and began trudging back toward the boat. She heard the water sluice around his feet.

“Careful.” She bounced up and down, her stomach thumping against his shoulder. “This is undignified. I’m the Queen of the Underworld.”

She raised her head. On the beach, Peyton lay facedown on the sand, a raspberry velour prisoner with her hands laced behind her head. Nearby, an attacker marched Grier and Noah toward her, gun aimed at their backs.

Lark was farther down the beach. She was waving at the elderly couple with the poodle. The woman, chubby and black with a foam of white hair, had a cell phone in her hand. Lark was undoubtedly explaining to her that this was all a joke.

With a grunt the stout gunman heaved Autumn onto the speedboat. She clattered awkwardly over the side and Dustin pulled her in. The gunman clambered aboard. A tall man stood at the throttles, completely sheathed in black, from his ski mask to his wraparound shades to his tactical clothing to his gloves.

Using sign language, he told the stout gunman to take the helm. Then he leapt over the side of the boat into knee-deep water and forged toward the beach.

“Awesome,” Dustin said. “Freakin’ awesome, man.”

The boat bobbed. Autumn grabbed the side of the hull to steady herself. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

The man at the throttles turned and glared at her.

“Come on . . .”

Why didn’t he say anything?

Haugen splashed through the water to the beach. The situation on shore looked like kindling, ready to ignite. Sabine’s team had three of the college students under control but the fourth, a crow-haired girl who had the earnestness of a librarian, was trying to soothe the old lady with the poodle. Lark Sobieski—Haugen recognized her from surveillance photos. Sabine was headed toward her.

The seventh man on the beach—the stranger—stood gripping a ludicrous toy gun in both hands. From seventy meters away his face was just a blur, but even so Haugen could see who the man was.

He was a damned Edge Adventures employee.

Haugen ran toward the tête-ê-tête with the poodle couple.

“. . . a role-playing game,” Lark was saying. “Honest. It’s a birthday party.”

Sabine reached Lark. “Get in the speedboat, quickly. Your principal is unprotected.”