The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
She didn’t have any hard copies but she uploaded one to his phone.
The young woman, with long dark hair, was striking. High cheekbones, broad lips and big eyes, deep brown.
“Has anyone else called about the reward?”
“A couple of people.” Her voice lowered. “They were just assholes. They didn’t know anything. Just making stuff up about her being here or there so they could get the money.”
“That happens. All right. I have other projects going on. But I’ll do what I can.”
She shook his hand warmly. “Thank you, Mr. Shaw.”
“Colter.”
“Thank you. Bless you.” She touched the silver crucifix at her throat. Then said brightly, “It’s more now.”
“More?”
“What I can offer. I looked at the GoFundMe page an hour ago. People’ve contributed another $234. And I’m praying that there’ll be more.”
Shaw said, “Let’s find her first. We’ll worry about that later.”
21
Never be blunt when subtle will do...
Colter Shaw was adept at guile. He liked outthinking the criminals he was pursuing, liked strategizing against the geography, the elements, the forces that conspired to keep him from finding a missing person.
But sometimes you just had to throw clever to the wind and go for it.
Blunt...
When he stepped out onto the pungent street in front of Maria Vasquez’s apartment he caught a glimpse of the green Honda.
In one sense, there was some subtlety involved, in spotting the car. The driver had not parked directly on Vasquez’s street, but around the corner. As he scanned around him he saw the Honda in a reflection — a newly washed plate-glass window was at the apex of a triangle, which also included Shaw and the green car.
Since there was no direct view of Shaw’s bike from the car, that meant that the driver wasn’t now in the vehicle but was one of dozens of people on the street, lying low and surveilling him. That population included shoppers, folks delivering packages and envelopes and restaurant provisions, shopkeepers hard at work in the never-ending job of scrubbing the sidewalks, some women and men who were probably sex workers, a few pushers hawking their wares, and their consumers, those just standing around, talking to others in person or on cell phones and a few talking exclusively, and with animation, to themselves.
Only one way to find out who.
Shaw made sure his holster was snug and turned in the direction of the cross street walking quickly toward the side street where the green Honda was parked.
He flushed the spy in one second.
Dressed in black jeans and a gray windbreaker, head covered with a black baseball cap, the spy — about two hundred feet from Shaw — turned instantly and ran back toward the car. It began as a fast gait, then a sprint, though he paused briefly to speak to two large workers, in T-shirts, one with a shock of curly red hair, the other with a black, unwashed ponytail. Colleagues? Shaw didn’t see how. They were unloading supplies from a battered cab truck, double-parked at the intersection around the corner of which sat the green Honda.
The driver continued sprinting, Shaw was closing in. He’d catch up before the man could leap into the car and speed off.
Or that would have happened, if not for one problem.
As he approached the delivery truck, the two men stepped directly into his path and held out hands. Curly growled, “Not so fucking fast, asshole.”
Shaw tried to dodge but Ponytail jogged in front and grabbed him by the arm.
“Out of my way.” Shaw lowered his center of gravity and got ready to grapple him to the ground.
Curly took the other arm and they pushed Shaw up against the truck. He was pinned.
“Going to break more bones? Lemme ask. That make you feel like a man?”
Ponytail, who bathed as infrequently as he shampooed, growled, “Me and him oughta break a few of yours. See how you like it.”
“Okay. Take it easy.” Since Shaw had no idea what was going on, he only offered those generic words. He relaxed a bit and when Ponytail did too, Shaw yanked his right arm free and got the man’s meaty wrist in a come-along grip, dropping him to his knees.
“Fuck no.” Curly casually slugged Shaw in the belly, and he too went down.
Shaw caught his breath, slowly rose and backed away.
He heard, from around the corner, a car start and tires cry.
Hell...
The men started toward him. Shaw backed up farther and lifted his left hand toward them, palm up, and with his right, pulled his jacket open and sweater up, revealing the gun.
“Fuck, you a cop?”
“Look, man... We didn’t know.”
The nausea faded. He snapped, “What’d he say to you?”
“Who?”
“The man I was chasing.”
The workers regarded each other.
“You got it wrong, mister,” Curly said.
“Wasn’t no man. Was a girl.”
“And hot, you ask me.”
He spent several hours in his search for Tessy Vasquez.
The music club where she worked didn’t serve lunch but Shaw was able to talk to the manager, a skinny young man in clothes two sizes too big and with a droopy Vietnam War — era mustache. He wore a stocking cap not unlike Russell’s, but in green. He couldn’t provide any helpful information and had never seen anyone fitting Roman’s description interacting with Tessy, who was a waitress and occasional performer at the club.
“I’ve asked the staff if they know anything about where she is,” the guy said, “and nobody does. She just didn’t show up for work. That’s when I called her mother.”
Outside the place, Shaw called the friends whose names Maria Vasquez had given him — at least those whose numbers he could find. Three answered but no one had any knowledge of where Tessy might be. One young woman, though, did tell him that Tessy was really into busking — street singing — lately. She’d mentioned she’d worried about some of the “pervs” in the parks and the squares she sang in, but she could provide nothing specific.
Shaw biked back to the safe house.
The place, which had seemed alive thanks to Russell’s presence, was now stark. A newly formed fog didn’t help much.
June gloom...
Shaw hung his leather jacket on a rack near the front door and tugged off his sweater, draping it on the rack too. The house was warm. He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a bag of ground Honduran coffee from the cupboard. He brewed a pot through a filter and poured a cup for himself. He hadn’t brought the milk from the Winnebago, but he found some powdered Carnation in the refrigerator. Apparently his brother liked coffee the same way he did.
And where was the man now?
On a private jet to Singapore?
In a bunker in Utah?
Tracking down a terrorist in Houston?
The survivalist skills that Ashton had taught the family were a double-edged weapon. They could keep you safe from intrusion. But they could also be used to get close to your enemies, eliminate them and then evade detection as you escaped.
He recalled the matter-of-fact expression in his brother’s eyes after he’d killed Blond in the alley. The only concerns were practical — getting his team there efficiently and quickly for the cleanup and getting away.
He sat on the couch and stretched back, boots out in front of him.
Thinking of the driver of the green Honda.
A girl...
And hot...
But who the hell was she? What was her mission?
One thing about her was clear. She was smart about keeping him from catching her: pitching the nails into his path. Smart too in using the two Neanderthals on the street in the TL. They’d said she’d been panicked and begged them to help; the man chasing her was an abusive ex, who’d put her in the hospital a dozen times. He’d broken her arm twice.