Play Nice (20 page)

He nodded, pulling the stack from his back pocket. He handed the one for Ghirardelli Square to her.

Anna read over the script again. “The magazine she bought. Do you remember what it was?” she asked the man.

He shrugged. “One of those gossip magazines.
People
, maybe?”

Anna stabbed her finger at a line on the postcard.

You must come next time to check out the people.

“There! The postcard was telling her what magazine to buy.”

Dade nodded. “Her instructions were in the magazines.”

“No wonder Shelli didn’t care about leaving the postcards behind. If she came disguised as me, there’d be no link between her and the drop spots, and there’s no information left at any of the points,” Anna said, disappointment welling inside her at losing their only lead.

“So Shelli’s a dead end,” Dade said, voicing her thoughts as they walked back to his SUV.

She nodded.

“What about the guys at the motel last night? Did you get a good look at them?”

She shrugged. “They were all in black. They got into an electric Roadster, that’s about all I could see from that far.”

“License plate number?”

“B 7. The rest of the numbers were covered in mud.” She tried to call up the image of the car. “But,” she said, suddenly feeling a little lift of hope, “there was a clean-air access sticker on the back of their car.”

“Lots of cars have those,” Dade pointed out.

Anna nodded. That was true enough. California traffic being what it was, diamond lanes had been constructed to encourage drivers to carpool. In the Bay Area, only cars carrying two or more persons were allowed in the diamond lanes during peak traffic hours. While the intention had been to help the flow of traffic, most Californians were so firmly in love with their cars that carpooling was tantamount to walking. So, instead of helping the flow of traffic, the diamond lanes pretty much guaranteed that as soon as 3:00
P.M.
hit, the roads were gridlocked, all traffic fitting into the few remaining lanes.

The exceptions to this were clean-air vehicles, electric cars and other certified super-low-emission vehicles. They could apply for a diamond access sticker which, once affixed to their bumper, allowed them access to carpool lanes even with a single driver, any time of day. In California, that was priceless.

“My last employer had one,” Anna said. “It saved her half an hour on her morning commute. I remember she had to apply separately to the DMV in order to get the sticker.”

Dade nodded. “So, whoever the owner of the Roadster is, they must be on file with the DMV.”

She grinned. Bingo.

*   *   *

Anna walked up to the DMV’s registration counter. Behind it sat a woman in her mid-fifties, her hair sprayed into a fluffy bob that said she was making the most of her postmenopausal hair loss. “May I help you?” she asked as Anna approached.

“I hope so. I’m Anna Smith,” she said, pulling out her ID. “I work for the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford,” she said, rattling off the info she’d looked up on Dade’s laptop on the way over. “We’re doing a study on the effectiveness of the clean-air sticker program on California highways.”

The woman nodded, looking like she couldn’t care less. Clearly the only thing on her mind was how many minutes left until her next coffee break. “Yes?” she prodded.

“I need to get a look at some of the applications for clean-air stickers.”

“Okay, what dates do you need?” the woman asked.

“Actually, I’m more interested in the make and model of the cars than dates. Is there some ways to look up applications based on that criteria?”

The woman nodded. “Sure. What make?”

“Tesla Roadster,” Anna told her. “All registered models in the city of San Francisco.”

The woman nodded again, hitting a series of keys on her keyboard. A few moments later she said, “Just a minute. I’ll have a list printed out for you in the back.”

She disappeared behind a wall of fabric partitions, and Anna counted off the seconds while she waited. The chance of anyone catching up to her here was slim. But the past twenty-four hours had put a constant feeling of paranoia in her that wasn’t dissipating any as she stood inside a government office.

Ten minutes later the woman finally returned with a sheaf of papers in hand. She passed them across the counter to Anna.

“Here you go,” she said. “Anything else I can help you with?”

Anna shook her head. “No, thank you. This is perfect.”

Anna grabbed the printout and quickly made her way outside, where Dade still sat parked at the curb, the windows down in his SUV. Anna was surprised to see Lenny sitting on his lap, his tail wagging as Dade scratched him behind the ears.

“Well?” Dade asked.

“These are all the owners of Tesla Roadsters in the area with clean-air stickers.”

Dade took the printout from her, scanning down the list of names. There were hundreds.

“Let’s start narrowing them down,” he said.

He opened the glove box, pulling out a pen, and immediately narrowed their search to only black vehicles. Next he scanned license plate numbers, homing in on only ones with a 7 and a B. Which left them with one car, registered to an Ace Industries, with an address near the marina.

Dade put it into his GPS and twenty minutes later they were parked outside a warehouse situated along the Bay, just below the freeway overpass. It was an older building, originally painted white, though rust had long ago taken over as the predominant color. The building was two stories tall, squatting in the middle of an industrial area, with a corrugated roof and an abandoned forklift parked outside.

“You think this is it?” Anna asked. Honestly, it didn’t look any different from dozens of other buildings along the water. And the Tesla Roadster was nowhere to be seen.

But Dade nodded in the seat beside her, his eyes focusing on the far side of the warehouse. “I know it is.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Dade lifted a hand and pointed at the building. “Because Shelli just came out of the side door.”

CHAPTER 14

Anna watched a woman with long, chestnut brown hair emerge from a side door, then put a cell phone to her ear, speaking rapidly into the device. She’d changed her clothes since the airport yesterday, swapping her baggy sweatshirt for a fitted trench, along with the obvious addition of a wig, but as she turned her face toward the sun, Anna could clearly make out Shelli’s features—upturned nose, bright green eyes, and a smattering of freckles that gave her face a deceptively friendly appearance.

She talked rapidly into the phone for a minute, then stabbed it off before reentering the warehouse the same way she’d come out.

Dade reached across Anna’s lap and opened the glove box, quickly pulling out a box of ammo. As he loaded bullets into the magazine, Anna felt the weight of the one shot left in her own Glock. She hoped it would be enough.

“You have a plan?” Anna asked.

Dade shook his head. “Not necessarily. But whoever is bankrolling Shelli also hired those guys to come after us last night.”

“And you think he’s in there?”

Dade shrugged. “I don’t know. But I want to be prepared either way.”

Dade locked the magazine into place and stuck the barrel of the gun into his waistband, before jumping from the vehicle. Anna followed his lead, a step behind him as he casually walked the few yards between the SUV and the chain-link fence surrounding the property. Dade glanced over both shoulders before quickly scaling the fence, dropping easily on the other side. Anna followed, hitting the ground a few seconds later.

Dade didn’t speak, but pointed her toward the right side of the building, while he disappeared around the left side, his 9mm held tight to his body, a deceptively relaxed grace moving his limbs as he circled around to the back of the warehouse.

Anna tried to match his stride, but relaxed wasn’t in her repertoire at the moment. Nervous, anxious, unprepared for whatever lay ahead. She looked down. God, her hands were even shaking. She shifted her weapon to her left hand, shaking the right vigorously, trying to gain some control over herself again. She’d had control once. But that was way too long ago now for her body to recall on its own.

Anna moved quickly, rounding the right side of the building. Windows lined the upper story of the warehouse, likely giving way to offices of some sort. Halfway down the length of the building Anna spied a door with another small window at the top. Silently, she jogged toward it, and stood on tiptoe to see inside.

The interior of the warehouse was stacked with cardboard boxes. It was hard to tell the contents from here, but from the varying sizes and shapes and Asian lettering printed on the sides, she guessed it to be some sort of importing business. Though whether it was legal or not, she couldn’t say.

No people were visible from her vantage point; though, as suspected, she spied offices built onto a second-story catwalk running the perimeter of the building’s interior.

And in one of the offices, the light was on.

She stepped back from the door. It was small, painted white like the rest of the building, with orange rusted hinges. It looked doubtful it would even open, but she put her hand on the knob, turning clockwise. Surprisingly, it moved. The hinges groaned as Anna pushed, the sound echoing through the warehouse. She cringed, hoping whoever was in the office couldn’t hear from up there.

As soon as she had the door open enough to slip inside, she did, quickly closing it behind herself again. She took a minute to let her eyes adjust to the darkness inside, a sharp contrast from the bright sunlight magnified by fog outside. She listened for any signs of life on the main warehouse floor, but the only thing she heard was her own breath, coming hard in the silence. Once she trusted her eyesight again, she navigated the maze of boxes toward the far side of the warehouse where she’d seen the lights on.

Her steps were light, though every one seemed to echo off the concrete floor. Or maybe just through her own head, filled with hot breath and nerves. She felt sweat trickle down her back despite the cool temperature as she neared a pair of metal stairs leading up to the catwalk.

Anna took one tentative step, then another, bending low at the knees to distribute her weight evenly enough with each step so as not to cause the stairs to creak as she ascended. As she reached the top sweat fairly dripped down her back, dust tickling her nose, but she continued silently, slipping past two dark offices before nearing the one with a light emanating from the window.

Thin curtains covered the glass, but as Anna crouched below the sill, she could make out two figures inside the room.

The first was easy to identify, with her long chestnut wig. Shelli. She had her back to the window, talking to another person across the room. The other person was closer to the shadows, angled away from the window. Anna leaned forward, craning her neck to get a look at his face. It was a man, she could tell that much from his shape. He was dressed in slacks, a dress shirt, nothing unique or distinguishable that she could tell.

Shelli was speaking to him, her hands moving animatedly as she did. The windows were too thick and the walls too well soundproofed for Anna to hear what she was saying, but the man answered calmly, causing Shelli to gesture even more wildly. At least that part of Shelli’s personality hadn’t been affected.

Anna wondered suddenly how much was. She wasn’t used to being on this end of a professional. Most of the targets she had contact with had been exactly as they appeared to be. She had been the chameleon, the one who was not what she pretended to be to get close enough to them to strike. She preferred that position to the one she was in now, not knowing who was who or what she could trust to be real about them, if anything.

Shelli moved toward the door, and Anna tensed. Shelli’s companion moved backward toward the corner of a desk that Anna could barely see behind the curtains. He put a large brimmed hat on his head, obscuring any chance Anna might have had at ascertaining his identity. The two moved toward the door, and Anna quickly ducked down, diving to the right to hide behind the corner of the next office.

She watched as Shelli and the man exited the office, the man turning left, toward the stairs, and Shelli heading right, directly toward Anna’s position.

Anna crouched lower, then froze in the dark corner, willing Shelli to walk past her. She held her breath, trying to keep her raw emotions from ringing out as the woman walked by.

Shelli walked along the catwalk, passing within a foot of Anna’s hiding place. Anna watched her, eyes glued to Shelli’s back as she silently counted off seconds.

One, two, three …

Shelli didn’t turn around, and Anna let out a slow, evenly modulated breath as she watched Shelli follow the catwalk to the far left side of the building, exiting out into the sunshine through a second-story door to the outside.

Anna waited only long enough to see the door swing shut before springing up and running after her. Shelli was a pawn in all this, Anna knew. Anna wanted the person that was orchestrating her movements, the one that had put the target on Anna’s head for whatever unknown threat she posed to him. But she also knew the quickest route to that person was Shelli.