The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(100)

They walked along, Margarita’s hoofs clop-clopping pleasingly in the stillness. As pretty a road as it was, it seemed not much favored by pedestrians—maybe because it was the middle of the week, maybe because the road didn’t really lead anywhere. A few of the houses she passed had gardening crews at work, and there were two construction sites. Beyond that and some birdsong in the trees overhead, everything was quiet.

Close to the end of the road, thirty yards ahead, there was a small bridge that passed over a dry culvert. A man in a baseball cap and shades was sitting on it, eating a sandwich held in a brown paper bag. He looked up without evident interest as she passed and then went back to his sandwich.

He could have been no one—a construction worker or a gardener taking a break, a birdwatcher, someone waiting on a friend for a planned bucolic stroll. But she didn’t think so. There were plenty of horses in the area—she had passed enough stables and droppings to know that—but still, his lack of interest as she went by struck her as more studied than real. The cap and shades felt like light disguise. And though outdoor work was a good way to stay in shape—Marvin was proof of that—even under the sweatshirt, this guy looked like he spent a lot of time pumping iron.

She made a right on Sand Hill Road and continued until Sand Hill became Portola, then turned onto Old La Honda until she came to the parking area for the Thornewood Preserve, the terminus to another series of horse trails. Marvin, Dash, and Rain were waiting outside the truck, and she could see the relief on Marvin’s face as she came into view. She stopped and dismounted.

Dash immediately signed, Did you see anyone?

She nodded. “I think someone is there,” she said to Rain. She held out the reins to him so she could sign. “Here, can you hold these?”

Rain started to say something, then stopped as though he couldn’t figure out what. He took the reins. Margarita looked at Evie, seemingly displeased at the handoff.

“Thanks,” Evie said, and then started simultaneously signing for Marvin and Dash. “Yes, I think someone is there. Right at the entrance to Manzanita, where you thought they would be.”

Rain glanced at the road behind her. “You’re confident you weren’t followed?”

She smiled. “I didn’t even see a car on Old La Honda. The only way someone could have tailed me is on a horse of their own.”

Rain looked up at the canopy of leaves above them, and she knew what he was thinking: Drones?

“If they’re using drones,” she said, “they couldn’t be anything man-portable or I would have heard it. Or seen it. And regardless, I doubt someone out horseback-riding would be the kind of thing they’d be looking for.”

Rain nodded. She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was impressed with her analysis or doubtful, so she added, “At NSA, among other things, I was in charge of tying together distributed video feeds and facial recognition. I wasn’t a field operative, but I’m not a stranger to surveillance.”

Rain nodded again, though no less unreadably.

The side door of the trailer opened and Kanezaki got out. “All good?” he said.

She nodded. “Let’s get Margarita in the trailer, and I’ll brief you.”

Kanezaki opened the back, took the reins from Rain, who seemed relieved to no longer be holding them, and helped lead Margarita inside. They all went in and closed the door behind them. Frodo, lying in a corner, watched, apparently too bemused by Margarita and all the strangers to react. Rain had wanted to leave the dog at the office park, but Maya had persuaded him by asking, “What if we can’t make it back? He’s chipped, he can be traced to me.”

Rain had nodded reluctantly at that. And Evie had suppressed a smile. Maya wasn’t just computer smart. She knew how to persuade, too, primarily by understanding what mattered to the person she was persuading. Evie recognized the skill because Dash wore her down with it all the time.

Evie told them what she had seen. Marvin looked at Rain and nodded as though to signal his concurrence that the sandwich man was not a civilian. Rain nodded back.

“Let’s see how long he’s been there,” Kanezaki said. He worked the screen of a Stingray cellphone tracker for a minute. Dash watched, his mouth slightly open in the way he looked when he was utterly fascinated.

Kanezaki said, “Entrance of Manzanita at Sand Hill?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe fifty feet in, on the side of the road. You’re not seeing a phone there?”

He played with the controls. “That’s right.”

“Then he doesn’t have one,” she said. “Or it’s turned off.”

No one had to say what that meant. It was unusual for someone not to be carrying a powered-up cellphone. Combined with the other factors—the location, the appearance—it made it more likely the man was indeed surveillance.

She took off the riding helmet and field boots and pulled on her shoes. She’d change out of the jodhpurs later. She had to give Kanezaki credit—he’d wanted her to look the part, and she had.

“So what do we do?” she said.

Rain said, “Let’s have Maya make a pass on the bicycle. If the guy’s still there, that’ll settle it.”

The fascination on Dash’s face changed to disappointment. He had badly wanted to be part of the bicycle countersurveillance. Intellectually, Evie doubted there was much if any danger—he would have just been biking in the area, as she had been riding Margarita. And of course Dash had made that case. But intellectually didn’t matter—Evie absolutely refused. Delilah had cushioned the blow, saying to Dash, “Hey, I thought we were going to go take the Porsche for a ride.” Dash had smiled in a way that made Evie wonder whether he had developed a rapid-onset crush. She couldn’t blame him—the woman was certainly stunning. But it seemed that, compared to actually being involved in countersurveillance, Delilah and the Porsche were still a consolation prize. Or, more likely, Dash was wondering why he couldn’t just have both.