Falling(58)

The first street. That was it. The one he just passed.

Theo braked hard and torqued the handlebar. The rear tire left a black stain in the shape of a semicircle as the bike spun around. Revving the engine, Theo sped back up the street toward the correct turn, just as a car crested the hill in front of him.

Theo squinted into the oncoming headlights and banked right as the car braked and swerved the opposite direction, narrowly missing the motorcycle. Jumping the curb, the car plowed into a fire hydrant with an explosive bang. Theo brought his foot down in a desperate attempt to keep control as the bike tottered across the road. He looked over his shoulder at the geyser of water that shot into the air at the front of the wrecked car and the driver inside who wrestled with the airbag.

Theo kept going.

The bike tore past the multimillion dollar homes that lined the street. Theo knew the ocean lay just on the other side. Up ahead, sand had blown across the road near a light pole that displayed a reflective blue sign halfway up. BEACH, it read, with an arrow. Theo accelerated.

He was almost there. Once on the access road, it was a straight-away. He could reach the family in minutes.

If that’s where they were.

Doubt rushed through him as he thought of all that had happened since he’d left the FBI team. What if he was wrong? What if the family wasn’t there? Theo shook his head. No. They had to be there. They had to be.

The street approached. Theo accelerated into the turn but immediately slammed on the brakes. His body nearly went over the handlebar as the motorcycle came to a stop, almost ramming into the security barricade that blocked vehicle entry to the access road. Waist-high metal columns were spaced just close enough that the bike couldn’t fit through. It was a dead end.

“No!” Theo yelled, his voice smothered by the sound of the crashing waves out across the beach in front of him. He stood, straddling the bike, panting, ignoring the pain. A memory of the house exploding earlier in the day filled his mind, followed by the Hoffman family picture.

Theo sat down on the bike, twisted the handlebar straight, and kicked off.

Scanning the area as he drove through the neighborhood, Theo searched for a backup plan. Dockweiler was still too far to go on foot. He needed to get the bike around the line of houses to the access road.

Up ahead, an earth mover was parked in front of a dumpster at a construction site. Spurred by hope, Theo sped up. He narrowed his eyes as he approached the lot to get the lay of the land and found wood and steel supports rising up out of a concrete foundation. But more important was what he saw through and beyond all that: the beach and the access road.

Without thinking it through, Theo jumped the curb and rode the motorcycle up the plywood makeshift ramp that workers had laid against the foundation. He slowed as he drove carefully through the long, skinny house, steering left and right to avoid the metal pipes sticking up from the ground where the kitchen and bathrooms would soon be. At the back of the foundation, excess pipes laid atop metal scaffolding. Theo’s eyes widened as he judged the clearance.

Ducking down as far as he could, Theo rode under the pipes. He cleared it, barely, but in the distraction, his foot clipped the edge of the scaffolding frame. The bike spun violently to the side and Theo was thrown off, landing in the sand a short distance away. The scaffolding and pipes began to collapse in a terrifying chorus of uncontrolled metal crashing against itself as Theo scrambled back to the bike, dragging it upright and away from the lot.

Theo’s shoes dug into the sand as he pushed the motorcycle to the access road. “Don’t you dare,” Theo said as he heard the bike’s engine begin to sputter. As he straddled the machine, it seemed to groan in protest and Theo noticed a nail sticking out of the front tire. Theo gave it a little gas and the bike trudged on.

Holding on to the handlebar, he noticed both arms had begun to shake, and his left arm had gone completely numb. He put it all out of his mind. The damage to his body. The end of his career. The path of destruction he’d left in his wake. The image of the politician nodding at him, trusting him, just before the house exploded. Theo forced himself to shut it all out. He needed to focus on the family and what he could do to help them. That, and only that.

The front tire was now completely flat and the metal rim scraped on the concrete. A thin whisp of smoke trailed from the engine as it hiccupped, the bike lurching irregularly in response. With a sad puff, the motor seemed to extinguish itself, and the bike coasted forward on momentum alone.

Theo looked up, defeated, when not far ahead in the distance, he saw a building. It was a kind of municipal maintenance site or something of that sort—and he knew that just beyond that was Dockweiler Beach.

Theo dropped the motorcycle into the sand and started running, unholstering his gun as he went. The building took a more definitive shape the closer he got: solid wall to the ocean, but on the back side, open space for city maintenance vehicles and other equipment. The access road wound around the back side. Just beyond the building: the far edge of Dockweiler’s first parking lot.

Pulling up to the cover of the building, he drew his gun into a defensive position as he passed behind the building. It appeared vacant, save for a few trucks and a large tractor with a beach rake attached to the back. No lights on, no one around.

He slowed his stride, easing his way to the end of the building with his back pressed up against the wall. Cautiously peeking around the corner, he swept the area for a moving van but froze at what he saw. At the edge of the parking lot was a woman, bent over, hands on knees, and a man standing over her. Even from a distance, Theo could make out the explosive suicide vests they both wore.