Cold Springs(16)

“We don't have to accept the girl,” Hunter had told him. “If it bothers you—”

“It doesn't bother me,” Chadwick answered. And the two of them had let the lie hang between them like a piñata, waiting for a stick.

Wednesday, Chadwick and Olsen dropped Soo-yun at the Bowl Ranch facility in Utah, which was equipped to deal with eating disorders, then flew west, arriving in the Bay Area after midnight.

It wasn't the first time Chadwick had been home. He'd made dozens of Bay Area pickups for Asa Hunter since he started escort work in '94, but each time Chadwick returned, he feared the familiarity of the hills, the eucalyptus smell in the air, the shadows in the canyons between downtown skyscrapers and the mist shrouding Sutro Hill. He feared the sadness that seeped into his limbs like anesthesia whenever he saw anything that reminded him of Katherine.

He and Olsen spent Thursday tracking Mallory Zedman, scouting all the locations her friends said she might be, looking for a boy she liked to hang out with, a young dealer by the name of Race Montrose. The boy's last name bothered Chadwick. He was bothered even more when one of Mallory's friends told him Race was a student at Laurel Heights. Ann hadn't mentioned either piece of information on the phone, and Chadwick tried very hard to believe he'd heard the last name wrong, or that it was simply a coincidence.

“You okay?” Olsen asked him.

He realized his hand was clenched in a fist.

“Yeah. Just praying for no more papayas.”

“You know this family, right?”

“A long time ago.”

“And?”

Chadwick folded his paperwork. He slipped a recent photo of Mallory Zedman out of his briefcase. “Take Shattuck south. There're three or four more places.”

They spotted Mallory at a sidewalk café on College and Ocean View, just south of the Berkeley city limits. She was sitting across from a tall African-American boy in a camouflage jacket.

Chadwick parked across the avenue. He and Olsen watched for twenty minutes until the boy in the camouflage got up to take his empty espresso cup into the café, leaving Mallory alone at the table.

Chadwick said, “Now.”

Olsen stuck her pepper spray canister into her denim jacket. Her hands were trembling.

“You'll do fine,” Chadwick told her.

“This is the one who attacked her mother with a hammer, right?”

Olsen was a big Swedish girl, a former college basketball player with a drill sergeant's haircut and a master's degree in child psych, but at the moment she didn't look much older or tougher than the girl they were picking up.

Chadwick said, “Don't worry.”

“Don't worry. Yeah. Okay. Her friend is a dealer. You think he'll be armed?”

“That's why we've waited. We don't want to have to hurt anyone.”

“You're kidding.”

Chadwick opened his car door, looked at her expectantly.

“You're not kidding,” she decided.

They got out of their rental car, stepped into the crosswalk.

The evening fog was snapping down over the East Bay like a Tupperware lid, muting the sound of the BART trains at Rockridge station, the hum of traffic on Highway 24. The air smelled of roasting coffee and fresh-cut freesia.

Chadwick was glad for the commuters on College—the moms with strollers, the black-clad students on their way to the bookstore or the burrito shop. When you're six-foot-eight you welcome all the help you can get covering your approach.

At the café table, Mallory Zedman was studying a chessboard, her middle finger resting on the head of a white pawn.

She was fifteen now. Her blond hair had been dyed a combination of orange and black, thin braided strands of it looping above her ears like racing stripes. Her face had filled in, making her look more like her mother, but she still had the sharp nose and intense eyes of her father—eyes that could go from humor to anger in a millisecond. Her biker jacket was too big for her, her tattered jeans rolled up several times at the ankles. The skin under her eyes was pneumonia blue, and the way she shivered, Chadwick figured she was hungry for her next fix.

He tried to imagine her as a small bundle of energy in an oversized T-shirt, shouting with glee as she flew onto Katherine's bed. But that little girl was gone.

“Mallory,” he said.

She looked up.

No recognition—just fear. She glanced inside the café window, saw her friend Race with his back turned, talking to the guy at the espresso machine.

“That's not my name,” Mallory said.

Then she looked at him more closely, and her wariness eroded into bewilderment. “Chadwick?”

“Long time, sweetheart. This is my colleague, Ms. Olsen.”

“What are you—” The color drained from her face. “Don't hurt Race. He didn't do anything. My father's lying to you.”

“Easy, sweetheart.”

Mallory started to get up.

Olsen made the mistake of coming around the table, taking Mallory's arm. Mallory yanked away, overturning the plastic chair.

“We're not going to hurt anybody,” Chadwick assured her. “Your mother hired us. We're escorting you to a boarding school—Cold Springs Academy.”

“A boarding . . . you're f**king crazy. You're shitting me.”