California scroll by. Special Agent Heaney’s profile of Coyote hung in my mind, deeply unsettling.
Coyote, Heaney predicted, kept notes. A journal. Compulsively. It reminded me of Jax and Tim. In my safe-deposit box I had twenty years of their notes and diaries and memos. Detailing, sometimes excruciatingly, covert ops they had run. Wet work, in the jargon of the trade.
I dismissed the possibility that either of them was Coyote. But I didn’t dismiss the possibility that they were tasked with eliminating Coyote. Their masters at the CIA or NSA or Hits “R” Us may have assigned them to kill this killer. If so, they might be using me to flush Coyote out of hiding. By pressuring me to pressure the cops and the feds, they could scare Coyote into making a mistake, and they could catch him. Sweat broke out on my forehead.
Forty minutes later we banked past the green coastal mountains and snarled freeways of Silicon Valley and bumped down onto the runway at San Jose, thrust reversers roaring. I caught the Super Shuttle to Mom’s house, fifteen miles up the 101.
Arriving in Palo Alto, cruising along tree-lined Embarcadero Road, was like coming home. I went to law school at the sprawling campus up ahead, with its sandstone courtyards and red tile roofs. I’d loved it here, felt challenged by my classmates and professors, and coming back to this town made me feel sharper, prouder, and bigger, if not younger.
And to hear my dad, I’d gone and blown my grand ivory-tower legal education by kicking free from law practice after four years. For what—to turn myself into a legal journalist, brief doctor, and science-fiction novelist? Even now I heard him: Girl, you’re fixing to stay in debt your whole life .
But he knew why I did it. The black days when Jesse lay near death in the ICU taught me that you don’t waste second chances. The day he came off the critical list, I quit my job.
My mom lived in a quaint and beautiful Spanish-style house with oaks shivering overhead in the breeze. The shuttle dropped me off out front. The house was only four miles from where Mom grew up, though worth twenty times what my grandparents paid for their place. She bought it when she took the job in San Francisco. She had invested her modest divorce settlement in a stock portfolio that she cashed out at the right time, at the height of the boom. But then she was a stewardess. Her life revolved around knowing one truth: What goes up must come down. Angie Delaney was a wise woman. This was Palo Alto, and the house was now worth seven figures.
It was just after three p.m. and she was still at work, thirty miles up the freeway near the San Francisco airport. I let myself in and went out back to sit in the shade by the swimming pool. I sat down on a chaise longue to plan my ambush. It was simple.
Hug, laugh, eat, and hit her with hard questions about China Lake and Project South Star. Catching her off-balance was key. I couldn’t give her time to plan her cover story. I put my feet up, listening to birdsong.
“Ev, sweetheart.”
I blinked. My mother stood above me, arms wide, beaming.
“Mom.”
She laughed and pulled me to my feet. “My God, I don’t believe it.”
Shoot, how long had I been asleep? I glanced at my watch: ninety minutes. I embraced her, smelling the fresh scent of her perfume.
“You look awesome,” I said.
She smoothed my hair, smiling as if a pot of gold had just dropped into her backyard. “Flying up here to pull a commando raid on me, this is too much. What a hoot.”
She was fifty-seven and still a sprite, trim and tan. Her tailored gold suit stopped above her knees. Her heels were kicked off, dangling from one hand. Her hair was shorn to a spiky collage of silver mixed with Coca-Cola brown.
“What secrets were you going to squeeze out of me? Black projects? Secret weapons? What do you want to eat, a sandwich? Or I have soup.”
“South Star,” I said.
“I know, honey. Come inside.”
She gripped my
Coyote, Heaney predicted, kept notes. A journal. Compulsively. It reminded me of Jax and Tim. In my safe-deposit box I had twenty years of their notes and diaries and memos. Detailing, sometimes excruciatingly, covert ops they had run. Wet work, in the jargon of the trade.
I dismissed the possibility that either of them was Coyote. But I didn’t dismiss the possibility that they were tasked with eliminating Coyote. Their masters at the CIA or NSA or Hits “R” Us may have assigned them to kill this killer. If so, they might be using me to flush Coyote out of hiding. By pressuring me to pressure the cops and the feds, they could scare Coyote into making a mistake, and they could catch him. Sweat broke out on my forehead.
Forty minutes later we banked past the green coastal mountains and snarled freeways of Silicon Valley and bumped down onto the runway at San Jose, thrust reversers roaring. I caught the Super Shuttle to Mom’s house, fifteen miles up the 101.
Arriving in Palo Alto, cruising along tree-lined Embarcadero Road, was like coming home. I went to law school at the sprawling campus up ahead, with its sandstone courtyards and red tile roofs. I’d loved it here, felt challenged by my classmates and professors, and coming back to this town made me feel sharper, prouder, and bigger, if not younger.
And to hear my dad, I’d gone and blown my grand ivory-tower legal education by kicking free from law practice after four years. For what—to turn myself into a legal journalist, brief doctor, and science-fiction novelist? Even now I heard him: Girl, you’re fixing to stay in debt your whole life .
But he knew why I did it. The black days when Jesse lay near death in the ICU taught me that you don’t waste second chances. The day he came off the critical list, I quit my job.
My mom lived in a quaint and beautiful Spanish-style house with oaks shivering overhead in the breeze. The shuttle dropped me off out front. The house was only four miles from where Mom grew up, though worth twenty times what my grandparents paid for their place. She bought it when she took the job in San Francisco. She had invested her modest divorce settlement in a stock portfolio that she cashed out at the right time, at the height of the boom. But then she was a stewardess. Her life revolved around knowing one truth: What goes up must come down. Angie Delaney was a wise woman. This was Palo Alto, and the house was now worth seven figures.
It was just after three p.m. and she was still at work, thirty miles up the freeway near the San Francisco airport. I let myself in and went out back to sit in the shade by the swimming pool. I sat down on a chaise longue to plan my ambush. It was simple.
Hug, laugh, eat, and hit her with hard questions about China Lake and Project South Star. Catching her off-balance was key. I couldn’t give her time to plan her cover story. I put my feet up, listening to birdsong.
“Ev, sweetheart.”
I blinked. My mother stood above me, arms wide, beaming.
“Mom.”
She laughed and pulled me to my feet. “My God, I don’t believe it.”
Shoot, how long had I been asleep? I glanced at my watch: ninety minutes. I embraced her, smelling the fresh scent of her perfume.
“You look awesome,” I said.
She smoothed my hair, smiling as if a pot of gold had just dropped into her backyard. “Flying up here to pull a commando raid on me, this is too much. What a hoot.”
She was fifty-seven and still a sprite, trim and tan. Her tailored gold suit stopped above her knees. Her heels were kicked off, dangling from one hand. Her hair was shorn to a spiky collage of silver mixed with Coca-Cola brown.
“What secrets were you going to squeeze out of me? Black projects? Secret weapons? What do you want to eat, a sandwich? Or I have soup.”
“South Star,” I said.
“I know, honey. Come inside.”
She gripped my
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