him. To Gus’ surprise, he read that Savage actually was the guy’s family name, although his first name was not Doc but Kirk. His resume was brief and to the point: Yale Law, followed by ten years at a New York firm, then another ten at Rushton, Morelock, as its lead tax attorney. He’d donated a lot of time to various environmental concerns and had chaired a benefit to clean up the bay.
Captain Hook was born Reginald Balowsky and he specialized in labor law, although from what Gus could glean from the resume, he was never actually on the side of labor. He’d won awards from manufacturers groups and various chambers of commerce, all of which hailed him as a “champion of business.” He didn’t seem to have any outside affiliations or interests-or at least none that would fit comfortably on a lawyer’s CV.
Turning the page, Gus was surprised to discover that Tinkerbell, born Jade Greenway, was also a litigator. He had seen the killer instinct in Gwendolyn; he could have seen it from the helicopter if she’d stayed on the ground. But Jade seemed so much softer and less secure than her colleague. Her outside interests confirmed this suspicion. She did a lot of work with pet rescue organizations, she volunteered at a local food bank, and she’d founded something called the Society for the Preservation of English Folk Songs. If Gus had had to guess, he would have said she was a researcher, and that if she ever did set foot in a courtroom it was to handle pro bono cases arbitrating conflicts between puppies and unicorns. From her CV, though, it looked like she had taken on several multinational corporations, and won. At least that explained why Gwendolyn seemed to despise her so intensely; these two would be competing for dominance in the same field, and Gus was pretty certain that Rushton did nothing to discourage that sort of rivalry.
Finally Gus turned to the page that interested him the most: Morton Mathis, the man Shawn had identified as the killer of both Ellen Svaco and Archie Kane. His CV confirmed what Gus already knew about the man: He was a recent transfer from Detroit, where he’d been a rising star in the District Attorney’s Office. There was no indication of what had made him decide to leave the public sector or to move out to California, and his outside interests didn’t provide a clue-he had been involved in a capital campaign for the Detroit Opera and had chaired a fund-raiser to produce a performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting as his legal specialty at the firm. He focused almost entirely on issues of technology-not surprising, considering his undergraduate degree in computer engineering.
Shawn was right. He had to be. Morton Mathis was the only lawyer in the firm who had substantial involvement in the high-tech field. He’d have an understanding of the kind of work they were doing at JPL, and he’d know who was in the market to buy it once it was stolen. There was only one problem with the theory that Gus could see: Mathis had joined the firm six months ago. Before that he’d never worked or lived in the state. How had he made the contacts at JPL and set up his smuggling scheme so quickly?
Those were questions that could best be answered over poolside mai tais, Gus reasoned. Now that they were certain who their target was, they could take their time reeling him in, delivering him to Rushton just when the helicopter came to take them home.
Gus stashed the files away in the pocket on the side of his seat and looked out the window as the helicopter soared above Santa Barbara and then over the mountains to the east of the city. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen his hometown from the air-he’d flown out of the local airport more than once-but this view was nothing like the brief glimpses you could get out of the window of a jet. They were flying level and low, and he could see everything spread out below him as if they were floating in a hot-air balloon.
Gus wanted to pull Shawn aside and whisper what he’d discovered about Mathis. But the cabin was small, and there really was no “aside” in it. And Shawn was busy doing his own research, anyway. What Gus had learned from files, Shawn seemed determined to learn firsthand: in this case, that Gwendolyn was not someone they wanted to tangle with.
“Have you been on one of these retreats before?” Shawn asked her.
Her icy blue eyes barely flicked up at him from her iPhone. “Yes.”
Shawn waited for her to fill in the details, but the only filling she did was in an e-mail. “What was it like?”
This time she didn’t look up at all. “I survived.”
“I can see how that might be a challenge,” Shawn said. “I once ate so many shrimp I had to be rushed to the emergency room.”
If she appreciated his humor, she didn’t show it. But she did teach Gus a little more about the luxurious appointments in the cabin. Until she swiveled her chair so that its back faced Shawn, Gus had no idea the chairs weren’t fixed facing forward. He found the unlocking button below the armrest and turned his seat to get a better look out the window.
Hundreds of feet below, the ground rushed by in a blur of brown. They seemed to be flying over the Central Valley. Gus tried to calculate where they might be going. If they’d been flying with the ocean on their right, he knew they’d be heading south to L.A. or San Diego or even Baja. With the ocean on their left, he’d have guessed San Francisco or the Napa Valley. Maybe even the northern coast. Plenty of resorts in either direction. But they were clearly heading east, and the only luxury destination Gus could think of in that direction was Las Vegas. That route would take them over desert, though, and while the ground below them was dry, it was clearly farmland.
Gus was trying to re-create the map of California in his mind when he heard a voice behind him.
“I know why you’re here,” the voice said.
Gus swiveled his chair to see the man he had named Doc Savage leaning down into Shawn’s face.
“I’m glad someone does,” Shawn said. “Because I thought I was supposed to be collecting all the World Rings, but now I discover that whoever gathers them all has to be sacrificed to harvest their power, and even as a hedgehog, I can tell that’s a bad deal.”
Gus glanced up at the flat panel in the front of the cabin and confirmed that Shawn had turned on a Wii console and fired up a video game.
“Rushton’s done this kind of thing before.” If Savage noticed that Shawn was staring over his shoulder at the flat-screen, he didn’t let that slow him down.
“Trapped Erazor in his lamp?” Shawn said. “Can you tell me how? Because I’m having trouble, even after turning into Darkspine Sonic.”
“Setting a spy in our midst,” Savage said. “That’s the real reason he kept Archie Kane around all those years. It wasn’t because Archie was actually good at anything, or that he ever performed a single task. He was there to make sure we knew Rushton was watching us at all times. Now he’s cooked up this ridiculous story about Archie being dead, and here you are. It’s this perfect little watertight story line, and we all have to pretend we believe it.”
“You know what isn’t watertight?” Shawn said. “The interior of a Town Car. Oh, and I guess you could add Archie Kane’s nose and mouth, too.”
Savage looked troubled. “You mean that story about Archie is real?”
“I don’t know why you’d believe it from me if you wouldn’t take it from your boss,” Shawn said. “But his corpse looked pretty real to me.”
Savage glanced over at Gus as if for confirmation. “Dead,” Gus said.
“Then Rushton really has gone insane,” Savage said after a long silence.
Gus tried to figure out what the Man of Bronze was talking about. “Are you saying you think Mr. Rushton is responsible for Archie Kane’s murder?”
“I’m not saying anything,” Savage said. “But know this: We are all Rushton’s pawns, even you. You may think you’re above his game, but I guarantee you’re not. So whatever happens in the next eight days, I will think of you two not as my enemies but as my brothers and do whatever I can to protect you.”
“Will you remind me to put on sunscreen if I start to get red?” Shawn said. “Because I burn really easily.”
“I will do whatever I can to keep you safe,” Savage said. “And I hope, no matter what your instructions, you will do the same for me. Rushton may think this is a good time for games, but I don’t.”
He held Shawn’s gaze for a full five seconds, then turned and gave Gus the same treatment. Then he broke off his gaze and went back to his seat across the cabin, pulled out his BlackBerry, and started thumbing.
“These guys take their retreats pretty seriously,” Shawn said. “Or did the other drug reps talk like this at the Four Seasons?”
“I think one of them offered me a pina colada once,” Gus said. “Then he realized I wasn’t in management
