Nothing I could do on the Bridge.
Once past, the Bay Bridge split again from its under-over configuration to a side-by-side concrete causeway just a score of feet above the water. Half a mile ahead I could see ships at anchor in Oakland’s outer harbor.
Bastard. Where is he leading me? An ambush maybe, and I might be risking the girl, but...it just feels right, where other things about this client felt wrong. Who can stand to wait an extra day with no word from kidnappers? Why drop me a card instead of just phoning her office? Why not save the time of me driving to Mill Valley and just explain the situation on the untraceable prepaid phone?
Hidden elements, incidents and accidents and things left unsaid...but I was convinced there really was a child in danger. Mira hadn’t been faking that, even if some of her responses seemed off, and sometimes...sometimes the best thing to do is go for the throat, get a bulldog grip and hang on, just choke the life out of the problem.
It had worked before.
Sometimes.
So here I was, with my foot to the floor like a modern remake of Bullitt.
Exiting the Bay Bridge, the Audi took 580 northbound and accelerated to over a hundred again. I matched him easily, Molly’s tires humming and the wind rushing. I kept it in fourth, the engine revving high, a song of more than two hundred horses. Molly was so light that was all she needed.
When I crossed one hundred thirty I shifted into fifth and started to worry. Even on dry pavement, any error at this speed could be instantly fatal, and the freeway was rough and ill-maintained in spots.
Molly took it all with perfect equanimity until I had to slam on the brakes, ABS pulsing beneath my foot to avoid a damn fool who had pulled into the passing lane without clearing his rear. Instead of laying on the horn, I just swerved and blazed past him on the right at ninety, then kept going.
The straight stretch along the waterside lasted only four miles and two minutes as we screamed up to autobahn speeds again. The Audi suddenly slowed to eighty, threading between cars and trucks as the freeway split.
Ignoring I-80 toward Sacramento, my white rabbit took 580, a route that would lead him across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and back into Marin County. If he did, I would have nearly completed a vast loop around the north Bay.
I leaned on the horn and shot a narrowing gap as another idiot tried to cut me off.
This whole thing is crazy, I thought. I ought to have Mickey call the cops and, oh by the way, where’s the damned CHP when you need them?
Around the wide curve into Richmond we blazed, Molly’s wipers working furiously to keep the windshield clear. A mile later, just before the bridge, the Audi took the last exit, dumping straight into an industrial district next to the railroad terminus. Two hundred yards behind, I decelerated smoothly to seventy before fishtailing onto the surface streets in hot pursuit.
Horns blared as I ran the red light crossing Richmond Parkway. No way I was going to let this son of a bitch get away.
Weaving deeper into the warehouse park, the Audi led me past petroleum tanks and cracking towers of the refinery complex that filled most of the peninsula. Chemical smells sucked into Molly’s interior made my eyes water.
Rounding one final corner, the Audi slewed through the open gate into the parking lot of a rundown warehouse that backed up to a dozen huge oil tanks looming like fat cylindrical high-rises. Between the petroleum containers, tall uncut grass provided ground cover for the sandy coastal soil.
I was about to follow the Audi in when I finally came to my senses.
While there might be a back gate, as far as I could tell the big building was ringed by a ten-foot fence. I pulled over at the gap and watched my quarry drive up a ramp and into the warehouse itself.
Calming my breathing, I dialed Mickey. “Mickey, you got me on GPS?”
“Yeah, boss, I got you.” Molly updated her location in Mickey’s computer once a minute. It was a very cool system that he had built himself. He’d said someday everyone would be findable on GPS, day or night, but I didn’t really believe that either. At least, not in my lifetime. Where would the thing go? It’s not like you can cram it into a cell phone, after all. Maybe cars, sure, but...that was for the year 2050, not the 2000s.
Yeah, funny, I know. But that’s what I thought at the time.
“Get the cops out here right now,” I told him. “Warehouse fifty yards north of me. Anonymous tip, kidnapped child, perps armed and dangerous. Give them the Audi, too. Tell them female officer on scene.”
“But you’re not an officer anymore, boss.”
“So lie. It’s better than getting shot on sight.”
“Righto. You going in?” Mickey sounded eager, like this whole thing was a video game. Maybe to him it was. Cal Corwin, avatar...only real life had no respawns.
“I shouldn’t...but I am.” Just like with the bomb, and falling for Cole, and a dozen other things I could name in my life, pushing all in and hoping the right card fell.
“You crazy, girl. Stay low.”
“Doubtless.” I hung up.
Mickey was right. I was crazy, but the thought of the child kept me in that zone where it seemed like I could do anything, like in a perfect rally, like a hot streak at the tables, like that one sweet break in a case.
Riding the tiger.
PD would take from three to ten minutes to respond with a couple of cruisers, and they would be alerting the tactical team in case they were needed. With plenty of crazies calling 911 every day, they had to confirm the tip before committing resources. That left me just enough time.
Dropping Molly into first, I accelerated smoothly along the outside of the fence line. It met another barrier at the corner, one more warehouse, but that was fine. It gave me a chance to get out of sight. I swung wide around the second building and passed behind it along the old access road that dead-ended at the oil tanks in the back. Nothing barred me from driving straight into the deep grass between the painted white cylinders, though I slowed to under twenty. It wouldn’t do to blow a tire slamming into some hidden chunk of concrete.
With rally clearance and four-wheel drive, Molly powered through the scrub.
Gonna be hell to pay on the undercarriage, I thought as something banged up into a wheel well and a hidden hole made Molly bounce hard. Not at all what I figured I’d be doing when my day started.
One minute.
I drove deeper into the forest of cylinders and parked behind one of the tanks, out of sight of the back of the warehouse the Audi had entered. Once hidden I hopped out, hurriedly stripped off the blazer and opened the hatchback. Shrugging on a Kevlar vest, the one with SECURITY in big white letters on the back—technically I wasn’t impersonating a law enforcement official—and a ball cap with the same, I grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and a set of bolt cutters.
Crouch-running in the high grass, I reached the back fence to the warehouse and began cutting. The cyclone wire popped with metallic pings as I worked the cutters as fast as I could from the bottom up. As soon as I had a little door of fencing material I bent it out of the way, dropped the tool and wormed through, and then ran for the building.
Two minutes.
A loading dock ran along this side of the warehouse, with the big doors all closed. At each end a personnel entrance beckoned. I made for the left one, the closer of the two.
Sirens wailed in the distance. I hoped it was the response to Mickey’s call coming in hot. If so, they would provide a distraction. If not...well, I’d do the best I could.
At the door I paused and racked a beanbag round into the shotgun. Useful for taking down wanted criminals without killing them, I used it for the occasional bounty hunt. The attached sling held slugs and buck in case things turned ugly, and then there were my handguns. I was as ready as I could be.