“You saw them?”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure they were Kline’s people. I hiked during the night the next two days. I didn’t get home until late that fall.” She already knew the rest, but he said it anyway. “I hiked north to the end of the trail in Washington and you and I didn’t meet for another two years. By then, I was trying to put it behind me.”
“You should have talked more to me, John.”
“If I could do it over again, I would.”
“And now he’s asking for you by name. You can’t go, John. You just can’t do it. Think about Maria and me. Ask yourself what you’re doing. You’re carrying the same guilt you had when I met you and now you’re going to risk sacrificing yourself. This is crazy, really crazy.”
“The Feds will be close by.”
“How do you know?” He didn’t and Douglas didn’t either. “Maybe you want to die, John. Maybe then everything is even and you’re with your dead friends. It’s all even and fair again.” Her face flushed and tears flooded her eyes as she shook her head. She stood and moved away from him. “You’re going to go even though Douglas said he’d get an FBI volunteer.”
“I think her only chance is if I show.”
“I can’t wait here and I can’t be a part of this.”
She stood and shook her head. Then she walked out the front door and he heard her car start, gravel kicking up on the driveway as she drove away. He watched her headlights hit the road.
Near midnight he checked his e-mail, found nothing, and opened the Web site again. Petersen’s face had changed, the bruis-ing had darkened. Some sort of necklace hung from her neck and he focused there, saw the iridescent green, the cut triangular shape and he was sure it was similar to the abalone piece he’d taken from Bailey’s boat. He fought the terrible heaviness inside and reached for the phone to call Douglas.
“I recognize what’s around her neck,” Marquez said. “I pulled something similar off Bailey’s boat.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Maybe nothing. It’s abalone shell, so maybe it’s a statement.”
“Do you have it still?”
“No, it went back to Bailey. His lawyer got everything released before we had probable cause on Bailey.”
“Is it the same shell?”
“It could be.”
“Incoming,” Douglas said, and Marquez saw the mail icon flash. He clicked to the e-mail as Douglas cleared his throat. “Are you reading?”
“Got it,” Marquez said. “I’m reading now.”
John Marquez, you’ll be in Humboldt Bay at 7:00 a.m. tomor-row. You’ll need fuel for a 400 mile range. Money in waterproof bags. Any surveillance and she’ll be executed.
“The bags you carry will transmit position,” Douglas said. “We’ve got two fishing boats we’ll get there before you arrive, but why Eureka, Marquez?”
“It’s been fogged in for two days and it’s big enough to where you wouldn’t pick his people out as easily. The four-hundred-mile range could mean he’s going to burn a lot of time determining who’s following.”
Marquez gave Douglas Katherine’s numbers and then called her as he drove down the mountain. He stayed on the phone with her until he was almost to the boat. In San Rafael he hooked the trailer up to the Explorer with the help of an FBI agent, then started north with the FBI following and the SOU leading. Cairo and Roberts would get into Eureka by dawn. Shauf and Alvarez were heading to Shelter Cove with another Zodiac. The Marlin had left the Berkeley marina and was already five miles north of the Gate. He drove slowly up 101, towing the boat, taking the occasional phone call from the team and Douglas. He talked to Kath again and Keeler, then to Baird as he came into Eureka. It was cold and the light flat this morning, the pavement wet, fog rolling in from the bay. Foghorns sounded and a nervous energy burned in him as he put the boat in the water and called the number they’d given him, what the FBI had confirmed was a cell phone activated yester-day morning in San Francisco.
“I’m in the harbor. Where do I go?”
“All business, are you?” An Irish accent, he thought. “Leave the bay and go south. Give me your phone number.”
Marquez read it off as the boat bounced in the first swells. “How far south?” The Irishman didn’t answer and after the line went dead Marquez positioned the phone where he could keep it dry and still reach it. It was a satellite unit and he had backup in case this one went down. The bags of money were near his feet and cabled to the boat. When he left the harbor he skirted the coast, passing the mouth of the Eel River and moving out to sea a little farther before Douglas called.
“We’re with you, but keep your speed as steady as you can. How are you doing?”
“It’s going to get a little choppy ahead, but I’m good.”
“When you made the call they were in a car probably on High-way 101 near Santa Rosa. They didn’t stay on long enough to deter-mine their direction. In case you were wondering, he recruited out of the IRA, got a handful of ex-IRA working for him.”
“Kline did?”
“Yeah, in the ‘90s.”
“I heard the one I just talked to as Irish.”
“So did we.”
When he hung up with Douglas he wiped water from his face and sealed the Velcro at his wrists after putting on gloves. With the lack of sleep the cold reached him a little faster and there was more wind out here. He went south now for two hours and hit a patch near Cape Mendocino where the wind was cross and fog shredded through the rocks that the wind was trying to drive him toward. Waves pitched the Zodiac and it slapped hard on the water. At half-hour intervals, Douglas called.
“You’re doing all right?”
“What are you, my mother?”
But he had a tightness in his chest and the cold seemed to come from inside out. Katherine’s voice echoed in his head.
“Your chief is here with me now. We’ve got a copter inland, moving with you. You’ve got another thirty miles of fog and you’ll hit blue.”
Unless he turns me around, Marquez thought, or heads me out to sea. The reassurances were nice but meant nothing. He cut his speed and got off the phone with Douglas, called Shauf. Her father had been a fisherman up here. She’d gotten into resource management because she’d heard her father talk all the time about how the fisheries were collapsing. He’d railed against the bottom-raking industrial trawlers that took everything, and he’d had names for them, would point to a trawler and tell her that one is named the Antichrist. She’d gone through her childhood thinking there was a boat out there named that.
“I’m coming onto Punta Gorda,” he said. “What’s your guess?”
“Somewhere along the Lost Coast and we’re already here. We’re in the King Range on that main dirt road.”
The Lost Coast was his guess, too, because it was empty, because you could follow one of the creeks to the water and pack the money back out through the mountains on foot, and because Kline had trafficked drugs out of Humboldt for years. Along an empty stretch of the Lost Coast, a quick execution after the money was handed over, but better not to think that way. Better to think it’s going to work out. He swept past Punta Gorda, continued south, reached Shelter Cove and the phone rang.
The Irish voice said, “Where are you?”
“Still going south.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Shelter Cove.”
“Circle.”
“How long? I’m burning through my fuel.”
He circled an hour, half of it talking to Douglas, ate a dry roll and a Payday bar, drank hot tea from a thermos. He’d heard an edge in the Irishman’s voice that said killing came easy to him. Another call came and they moved him farther south, then back north five miles before turning again. The thrum of the engines vibrated in his bones now. The cold ran deeper and he was close to Fort Bragg. More phone calls and the Marlin had him on radar, so did an FBI copter and a spotter plane and a fishing boat carrying FBI agents, so he knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near here. He was through half his fuel now and ran on one engine only, conserving out of habit, crouching in the boat to loosen his muscles as the fog began to sweep back in the late afternoon. Two hours now since he’d heard from the Irishman, so maybe they’d called it off. Then the call came.