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.
Including the witnesses.
And in the process, they can avoid getting shot by charging Shaw.
With a crisp whoosh, the massive fireball fills the office and rolls into the corridor. Orange, black, yellow. Uncontrolled boiling, mesmerizing if it weren’t so deadly. The men vanish.
Down here, Shaw notes, there are no sprinklers.
Shaw calls 911 again and reports there’s now a fire.
For what good it will do. The entire building will be a pile of cinders in twenty minutes.
The stampede above them is a roar and is accompanied by muted screams. He believes he hears, “We have to get out. Help us!” The smoke will be rising to the dance floor.
The flames illuminate the basement. Shaw hopes he’ll be able to see another exit. There is one but it’s chained, and his lock-picking skills only go so far.
There’s one way out.
“Come on.” He takes Nita by the arm and leads her straight toward the conflagration.
“No!” she screams.
He tugs her more firmly. “Our only chance.” She comes along.
They approach the turbulent flames, the heat scraping their skin. Just before it becomes unbearable, Shaw turns to the right, into the storeroom across from the office. The flames are lapping at the outer wall but have not yet eaten through.
He moves to the side facing the stairs and begins to kick the Sheetrock. This wouldn’t work if he were in his rubber-soled Eccos but his boots’ leather soles, the heels in particular, make indentations in the wall. Again, again. Finally he breaks through. It’s a small hole. He ducks and looks through it. Yes, the area at the foot of the stairs — only ten feet away — is empty of hostiles. But soon it will be engulfed in flame.
More kicking. The hole grows slowly larger.
Nita helps. She’s strong. When Shaw cracks a piece, she pulls it free. The hole is now about eighteen inches around. Almost big enough to fit through.
Kick, pull.
Both are coughing. His eyes sting and stream. The fire is stealing the oxygen. He feels light-headed.
Kick, pull...
Now, finally, it’s big enough for them to fit through.
“Go on.”
She wriggles through and collapses on the other side.
The pounding feet on the dance floor above them have stopped. Everyone has evacuated. The roar of the flames is the only sound.
Shaw turns to the hole they broke open in the Sheetrock and says to Nita, “Up the stairs now, fast. There’ll be police.”
“But... what about you?”
He smiles to her. “Not yet.”
And turns back, jogging to the far end of the corridor.
Part Two
June 25
The Great Earthquake
Time until the family dies: thirty-two hours
25
The Shaw brothers had two missions, interwoven like ropes in a Gordian knot.
One, saving the SP family from the hitman who would replace Blond; the other, bringing down BlackBridge. In saving the family, they might find hard evidence linking the hit back to Braxton, Droon and maybe even Ian Helms himself. Or, finding that evidence in the first place might allow them to identify and save the family.
Their initial task was to try to identify Blond, and so after leaving the safe house they drove to Hunters Point, a neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city, jutting into the Bay.
Hunters Point and neighboring Bayview were among the toughest parts of the city, and the most densely populated with gangs.
Confirmation from Hunters Point crew.
6/26, 7:00 p.m. SP and family. All ↓
Which gang could the hit order mean?
Shaw had enlisted some help and this morning had sent a text to his friend and rock-climbing buddy, Tom Pepper, who, at the FBI, had worked terrorism and organized crime.
As Russell’s SUV — a Lincoln Navigator — idled in a parking lot, Shaw’s phone hummed. He answered, “Tom.”
“Colt.”
“You’re on speaker here with my brother, Russell.”
A pause. Shaw wondered what the man would be thinking. He knew of the estrangement, though not its basis. “Hello, Russell.”
“Tom.”
“Here’s what I’ve got. Two main crews in Hunters Point — Bayview. One’s Anglo. The Bayneck Locals. You know the Peckerwood Movement?”
Shaw replied, “Vaguely. White supremacists, prison culture, drugs. Started in the South, right?”
“In the thirties. Then spread, lot of the members ended up in California. Skinheads, yeah, but they have some alliances with Latinx gangs. The Baynecks aren’t technically Peckerwoods — there was some falling-out — but they’re cut from the same cloth.
“The second main gang in that area is Black. The Hudson Kings. It’s rap based, like the old Westmob and the rival Big Block. Okay, listen. They’re all businessmen first — drugs and guns mostly — but that doesn’t mean they’re not violent and territorial and will take out a threat in an instant. I’m saying: They won’t be inclined to cooperate.”
Shaw said, “I’m going to appeal to their better nature.”
Pepper chuckled. “Whatever you’re doing, make sure it’s during the daylight hours.”
“We’re here now,” Russell said. “They have a social club, hang someplace?”
“The Kings had an HQ in a storefront on Northridge. I think near Harbor. The Baynecks used to operate out of a biker bar on Ingalls. Bayview and Hunters Point have complicated boundaries, so I’m not sure which ’hood they’re in. I don’t know anybody in the Baynecks but there’s an O.G. high up in the Kings. Kevin Miller. He was a stand-up guy. Didn’t exactly cooperate, but he kept things calm. Nobody got shot. And that’s saying something.”
Russell was on his phone, checking GPS.
Pepper said, “I hope it’s a damn big reward you’re after.”
“No reward.”
“So. Last week you nearly got killed in a cult and there was no reward. And now you’re tap-dancing with the crews in Hunters Point, and there’s no reward.”
Shaw said, “Sums it up.”
“Good luck. Nice meeting you, Russell.”
“Same.”
Shaw disconnected. “Which first?”
“Hmm. Bikers’re closer.”
26
As they drove through the streets, both residential and commercial, Shaw looked around him. Hunters Point had always borne the brunt of commerce unwelcome in other parts of the city. At one time it was acres upon acres of slaughterhouses, power plants, tanneries and shipyards, all of which dumped waste into the land, the air and the water of the western Bay.
A hard place, battered and grubby, the Point was only somewhat improved over its nineteenth-century incarnation. Part workaday industrial, part slowly emerging residential and retail redevelopment, part weedy fields and labyrinthine foundations cleared of superstructure. Quite the mix: they drove by a series of vacant lots and a burned-out building right next to which was a small, Victorian-style opera house, painted bright green. Just past that was a construction site on which a sign announced this would be the future home of a division of a well-known internet company, whose headquarters was about fifteen miles south, on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley.