The Memory Collector Part 23

"No."

"He's not a disgruntled employee? Or a thief?"

Shepard moved like a lumbering buffalo. His breath whistled from his lungs. "For G.o.d's sake, no."

Her phone rang. Sick sad little world... She put it to her ear. "Gabe?"

"Cops are on their way. I'm getting the FourRunner. Keep heading west and watch out for Kanan."

"Alec Shepard's with me. He's-"

Behind her, tires crunched on broken gla.s.s. She looked over her shoulder.

The red Navigator was turning into the alley.

Her pulse rang like an alarm bell. "Run."

Shepard glanced back, doubt in his eyes. She dug her nails into his arm.

"Now."

The Navigator revved and accelerated at them down the alley. In its wake, trash and old newspapers swirled into the air. Jo broke into a sprint.

A second later, as though he still didn't grasp that he was in a situation where split seconds mattered, Shepard did too.

"Gabe-"

"I'm two blocks from my truck. Keep running."

"Am."

Jo's Doc Martens felt like cement on her feet. Her satchel swung from her shoulder like a paving stone. Behind them the groan of the engine grew louder. Metal clanged as the Navigator ran into trash cans and kept going with the mindless inertia of a bowling ball. The end of the alley, where it emptied onto Albion, was a hundred yards straight ahead.

Straight ahead wasn't going to work.

Past a cl.u.s.ter of overflowing trash cans, Jo saw an open door. "This way."

She heard Shepard breathing hard behind her and the heels of his expensive oxfords scuffing on the concrete. And the engine rising in pitch.

She jammed through the doorway. Found herself in the back hall of a clothing store. Kept running and heard the Navigator screech to a stop. Then she heard the door of the store slam. She looked back. Shepard had shut it and was fighting with a dead bolt lock.

He looked at her. "Keep going."

Outside, the Navigator revved. Its tires screeched as it pulled away. Shepard threw the dead bolt and lumbered toward her. She put out her hands.

"No. He expects us to bolt out the front door and dash for your car. He's coming around the block. We need to go out the back."

Shepard skidded to a stop on the slick tile floor. "You're guessing."

"We have to guess. Mine is that he'll think we're too panicked to double back."

"What if he's stopped ten yards up the alley, waiting for us?" He glanced at the back door and then out the front windows. "We could stay here. Sit tight."

"Plate gla.s.s? We'd be sitting ducks. He's armed. We have to lose him."

She ran to the back exit and put her ear near the door. Heard no engine.

She thought, AmIagood gambler? If this were a dime edge of rock, two hundred feet above a valley floor, and she had to decide whether to throw herself sideways for the next hold or retreat down the pitch, what would she do? Her heart was ringing, cymbals, timer bells, cuckoo clock.

Just breathe. She shut her eyes, held still, and listened. She heard customers in the store, and a cash register, but no big-block engine.

"Let's go."

She threw the lock, opened the door, and leaned out. The alley was empty.

She ran out the door. Across the alley, past a flattened trash can that had spewed its contents like a gutted fish, the back door to another business was propped open with a brick.

"This way." She put her phone to her ear. "Gabe-you there?"

"I'm nearly at the FourRunner," he said, breathing hard.

"We're heading into a store that's on Fifteenth Street. I'm listening for sirens."

Shepard put an arm out. "No police."

She turned her head sharply. "What?"

"Call them off."

Fear and anger whipped a stripe across her back. "No way."

She ran through the propped-open door and along a dim hallway. Shepard pounded behind her, each breath echoing off the walls.

"Call off the police," Shepard said. "You don't understand."

"Don't understand what? Kanan is dangerous, he's armed, and he's after us."

She emerged from the hallway into the back of a dry cleaner's. Clothes hung in plastic bags on a mechanized track on the ceiling. The eye-watering pong of cleaning chemicals filled the air. On the far side of a part.i.tion, a bored clerk sat on a stool, reading a magazine.

The plate-gla.s.s window out front was covered with red lettering. The street was quiet, a few parked cars, motorcycles lined up perpendicular to the curb across the road.

She lowered her voice. "Kanan's after you, but I'm after him. We need to get him back in custody, and I'm d.a.m.ned well leaving that to the police."

Shepard was wheezing. Sweat glistened on his forehead and splotched the fabric of his shirt. His gray eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with pain and confusion that she couldn't decipher.

"Is it true that in five minutes he'll forget he ever saw us?" he said.

"Yes. But that hardly means he'll give up tracking you. He may circle the block for hours. He may hide the SUV and lie in wait. Don't expect him to wander away. He won't," she said. "He's on a mission. A mission that will never end for him, even if he's successful."

Shepard didn't actually shiver, but he looked as though an invisible hand had just slapped him hard across the face.

"I can't turn him in to the police," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Why not? Tell me why you don't want the cops involved."

Shepard's jaw and shoulders were taut. He looked as though all his energy was being drained by an invisible power cable.

"I can't turn him in. He's my brother."

* 18 *

Kanan drove south on Albion. He was gripping the wheel like he wanted to wring its neck. The turn-signal indicator was flashing. He reached the intersection with Sixteenth. Following the instructions of Alec's car, he turned left. The big SUV heaved around the corner.

His pulse was pinging. He was simply driving in midday traffic but was breathing rapidly. Something was up. Something big. He looked at the Post-it note on the dashboard.

Alec in Benz.

He scanned the road ahead as he cruised along in traffic on Sixteenth. The day seemed extraordinarily clear. Sunlight lit the clouds to prism brightness. The overhead electric wires looked so sharply defined that he felt if he really concentrated, he would be able to see the current flowing through them. He saw the traffic on the street and felt that he could count the cars, the trucks, the buses, figure the ratio among them, and work out the speed at which they were moving, just by watching how quickly they pa.s.sed between two telephone poles. The street scene seemed to glide by in slow motion compared to the speed at which his mind was racing.

He looked again at the dashboard. Next to the Post-it note about Alec was another one. Doctor-blue Tacoma. With a license number written below it. He didn't know what that was about, so he continued looking for Alec, who must be around here someplace-because he had no reason to come to the Mission District, except to find his brother.

He braked. There, parked at the curb, was the Benz. n.o.body was inside. He swept the street-no sign of Alec.

The car behind him honked. Kanan accelerated and drove to the corner. He would search for Alec in a radial pattern with the Benz as a center point. He slowed and turned left onto the cross street.

Jo stared at Alec Shepard. At once, the pain and confusion in Shepard's eyes looked comprehensible.

"Your brother," she said.

"Yes. And I refuse to submit him to arrest." He took her elbow. "Let's get out of here."

She pulled loose and retreated behind the hanging garden of dry-cleaned clothing. "Okay, big bro-what's he more likely to do? Drive in a straight line away from where he lost sight of us, or circle the block?"

"You said he'll forget he saw us here."

"He will. He can't form new permanent memories. But he can certainly rely on training, instinct, and the problem-solving skills he's honed over the course of his lifetime. He's gotten this far so he must have figured out a system of some kind. So tell me-what's he like, Mr. Shepard?"

She hit the last name sharply.

"I'll explain everything." Again he took her elbow.

Jo didn't want him controlling her. She pulled free from his grip. "Why didn't you disclose your relationship right away? Because unless you cough up a big dose of honesty, immediately, I'm not following you past the door of this store."

"I didn't know if I could trust you. And the fact that you didn't already know we were brothers disinclined me to confide in you."

And, d.a.m.n, Jo thought-why hadn't Misty Kanan told her? Why had she held that back?

"What's the deal? Half brother? Stepbrother? Foster child?" she said.

"We're full brothers. Our father died when Ian was a baby. Our mother remarried when he was six and I was a senior in high school. Her husband adopted Ian and gave him his name."

She peered around the forest of plastic-shrouded clothes at the front window. The street was quiet. "Best guess. Gut instinct. Brotherly mojo. Which way are we least likely to run into him?"

"He's unpredictable. That's his genius and his problem."

A hard nasal voice cut through the shop. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing back here?"

In the hallway stood the owner of the dry cleaner's. He was small, puffy, and wrinkled, like a beige comforter that had been squashed by the spin cycle of a washing machine.

"We're being chased by a car. We ducked in here until the police arrive," Jo said.

"Bulls.h.i.t. Get out."

Shepard put up a hand. "If you'll let me explain-"

The man reached behind him and pulled out a baseball bat.

Jo spread her hands placatingly and backed toward the counter. "Two minutes."

"Get out of my shop." He raised the bat like Mickey Mantle stepping to the plate. "And keep your hands where I can see them."

Jo ducked around the counter and cast a glance out the front window. Cruising up the street toward them was the red Navigator.

"Alec," she said.

The owner lunged toward Shepard and pulled back the bat, winding up to take a swing. "Out, I said."

Shepard backed away from him. "I'll give you fifty dollars to let us stay."

He chased Shepard around the counter. "Out, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

Shepard reached for his wallet. "A hundred dollars."

The red Navigator was approaching. Shepard thundered toward Jo. Close on his heels, the wrinkled little owner swung the bat. It swished the air. c.r.a.p. He swung again. Strike two missed Shepard's head by inches.

The owner wound up again, his eye on Jo's face like she had Rawlings printed on her forehead. She opened the door.

The store's bell rang. Without looking up from his copy of Guitar Player, the cashier said, "Have a good one."