The boat is two feet away from the pier and gathering speed. The man misses, smacking his face against the side of the boat as he falls.
The other three men skid to a stop.
Solo grabs an orange life jacket and tosses it toward the churning water where the man has gone under. “Hey! Get your man or he’s going to drown!” he yells.
The engine roars and we zoom away into the night.
“They’ll lose a couple of minutes getting him out of the water, but they’ll be after us soon,” Solo says.
“Which boat is faster?” I ask.
“Excellent question,” he allows. “I don’t know.”
Once again the fog—a regular feature of the bay—scuds across the moon. The milky light dies. We could run into a brick wall out here and not see it coming.
“What now?” Aislin asks, panting.
Solo’s at the wheel. It’s too low for him so he has to sort of squat. It’s not a noble or attractive stance. His hair flutters in the breeze, except where some of it is matted with blood.
We are a sad, motley-looking crew. Aislin still sports a black eye and Solo … well, now that I look, his battered face is already looking better. But the boy needs a shower.
I glance over my shoulder at the towering mass of the Spiker building. Some offices are lit, some are dark. It’s by far the brightest thing in view, and I’m strangely drawn back to it. It’s dark everywhere else. Back there is dry and safe and well-stocked with food. Out here? Out here we don’t even know what direction to steer.
“We can pull into Angel Island,” Solo says loudly, trying to be heard over the noise of the motor. “There’s no one there but some campers and a small caretaker staff. But we don’t have sleeping bags or tents. Otherwise, we keep going to the city.”
There are numerous cities in the Bay Area. But “the” city can only mean San Francisco. My hometown. I look for it, but it’s completely hidden behind a wall of fog. Not a light showing.
I see flashlights all the way back on the pier.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Do we have a flashlight?”
“Look in that locker,” Solo says.
I rummage through fishing tackle, water bottles, and life vests until I find a flashlight. I test it within the concealment of the locker. It works. And it’s a good, waterproof light.
I grab one of the life vests and wind a strap around the light. I make it as secure as I can.
Then I switch on the light and place the life vest over the side. It bobs away in our wake, then is caught by the current as the tide rushes out toward the Golden Gate.
“Smart,” Solo comments.
“They’ll see the light, figure it’s us,” I say. Then I add, “People will always go toward the light, won’t they?”
No one answers. We all know it’s not true: Sometimes people head straight for darkness.
“I don’t like camping,” I say. “Head for the city.”
– 29 –
SOLO
“So,” Aislin says after we’ve tied off the boat at Fisherman’s Wharf. “Now what?”
“My plan never really went any further than this,” I admit.
The wharf’s asleep, but in a few hours the boats will start to come in. Then the early bird tourists will show up, looking for a latte and a croissant.
For now, it’s a fog-wreathed ghost town of seafood restaurants and closed knickknack shops. The tour boats and ferries rock and creak at the piers. The stainless steel tables, which will soon be piled with crabs and fish on beds of crushed ice, are covered with canvas tarps.
A lone homeless guy pushes a heavy-laden Safeway cart, pauses to look into a trash can, and ignores us. A police car drives by and the fog swirls around the car. The cop ignores us, too.
Eve and Aislin look at me. I shrug. “Guys, I never planned to have two girls with me.”
“Well, that’s typical,” Aislin drawls. “Men always want two girls, but do they take the time to plan? No.”
“We need to get the data safely uploaded somehow,” I say. “Once it’s all over YouTube and Imgur.com, with links at Reddit, we’ll be safe.”
“Then what happens?” Eve asks.
I clear my throat, force myself to look her in the eyes. “Then the FBI and the FDA and a bunch of other agencies find out about it and move in.”
“Move in.” It’s not a question, just a statement.
“We can go to my house,” Aislin says doubtfully.
Eve shakes her head. “First place my mother will look.”
“Where’s the last place she’ll look?” I ask.
Eve considers the question carefully. I see that she’s thought of something. The idea makes her frown. She’s not sure.
“I know a place,” she says finally. “Follow me.”
It’s a bit of a walk along the Embarcadero, the boulevard that follows the waterfront around the northeastern tip of the peninsula. On our left are the massive pier warehouses. Many have been turned into tourist destinations. Some are more rough and ready. On our right are the streetcar tracks, and beyond them, almost wholly swallowed up by the fog, lie the hills and the tall buildings of San Francisco.
I can just make out the top third of Coit Tower, a concrete art deco structure, poking out of the fog. It was built with money left by a woman named Lillie Coit, a gambling, cigar-smoking, fire department groupie who shaved her head to pass as a man back in the twenties when that kind of thing would get you in trouble—even in San Francisco. I’ve always liked her story.