In the distance, a faint siren began to wail.
Maybe someone calling in to report gunshots. They’d been fired unsuppressed, and even the worst parts of San Francisco weren’t so bad that a shootout would go ignored. This was no Chicago.
King drove in silence for a couple of minutes. He had no particular destination, his only aim to get as far away from the scene as possible. He drove west toward Fairmont then merged onto Skyline Boulevard, the dark and straight road overshadowed by hills leading up to Mussel Rock Park. The Pacific churned beyond the park, out of sight, its vastness only implied.
Cloaked in the anonymity of the coastal boulevard at night, Choi must’ve felt comfortable voicing his turmoil. ‘That was…oh my God…’
King said, ‘You ever seen someone killed before?’
‘No,’ Choi stammered. ‘No, God, no. God…there’s still blood on your hands.’
King wiped his hands on his jacket. He returned them to the wheel. ‘I get it. It’s not going to mean much that we just saved your life. Your brain won’t be able to put that together for a while. You’ll see us as murderers.’
Choi’s throat spasmed like he might throw up. ‘Can you pull over? Can I get out?’
‘No,’ King said. ‘Not yet. We need to talk.’
‘That’s…that’s what the other guy said.’
‘He didn’t mean it. What he meant was that he wanted to beat you to death and take photos of your body.’
Choi lapsed into a long pause, then said, ‘Oh, God.’
‘You know something about that?’
‘I was meeting him to get his comment on a story I’ve been working on. He promised to be an anonymous source. He told me he worked for a company I’m investigating and he wanted to do the right thing.’
‘You’re a journalist?’
Choi nodded. ‘I’m with the Examiner. I…’ He stopped talking, had to stare out the window for a few breaths to regain his composure. King didn’t interrupt him. He deserved all the time he needed.
‘Sorry,’ he finally continued. ‘Hard to talk right now. I was tipped off about a situation with a start-up. Vitality+. Heard of it?’
King nodded slowly.
Choi said, ‘One of their employees in the chemistry department forwarded me a realistic update of where the science was at and made me promise I wouldn’t use his name.’
‘“His”?’
Choi hesitated. ‘Yeah. “His.”’
‘It wasn’t Mary Böhm from R&D?’
‘No. Haven’t heard of her. You know her?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ So multiple Vitality+ employees were independently beginning to sound the alarm. King grimaced at that knowledge. Things were unravelling for Heidi Waters faster than they’d first thought.
The weird line of questioning gave Choi time to take a step back, think of questions unasked and unanswered. ‘Wait. Who the fuck are you? You were with those guys. You and your buddy. You came out of the van…’
‘We’re not with them. We were faking it. We’re here to help.’
‘You’re undercover cops?’
‘No.’
Choi shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Best we leave that ambiguous,’ King said, then got his line of questioning back on track. ‘So Carter told you he was another employee of Vitality+? How’d you find him?’
A pause. ‘Who’s Carter?’
King glanced over, one hand on the wheel. ‘The blond guy.’
‘Oh. He said his name was Finn.’
‘How’d you find him?’
‘I put out the feelers online, but kept a low profile. He got back to me almost straight away. Said he was browsing the unofficial channels just looking for an opportunity to tell someone in the media what he knew about the inner workings of the company. Said he had the scoop of the century. Fraud of the highest magnitude.’
‘Did you vet him?’
Choi bowed his head. ‘Not as well as I should have, obviously.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. He had the resources to fake almost anything he wanted. A limitless budget.’
‘Who is he?’ Then Choi shivered and corrected himself. ‘Who was he?’
‘Carter? Just a thug, same as his boss. But they’re working for Heidi Waters.’
Choi froze at the mention of the woman, then shook his head. ‘No, no. She’s a famous CEO. She’s got a reputation to uphold. This…this is underground shit. Organised crime.’
‘Big business, organised crime. What’s the difference? And it’s precisely because she has a reputation to uphold that she’s doing this. You’re a goddamn journalist, Choi. You should see through the cracks in reality, see through to its rotten core. You should know what desperate people are capable of.’
‘I guess I should.’
They drove for another couple of minutes.
Choi said, ‘What are you going to do with me?’
‘Let you out somewhere discreet. You’re going to fall off the radar for a couple of days. You’re going to make it seem like you’re dead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we have a cover story to maintain. Not for much longer. Just until we know there’s no more stragglers, and then we can squash this.’
‘Squash what? What the hell is this?’
‘This is narcissism, Choi. This is psychopathy. This is what happens when it’s left unchecked.’
‘So then…you and your partner…what are you?’
King met Choi’s eyes as asphalt disappeared under the van’s hood. ‘We’re the checks and balances for people like Heidi Waters.’
46
King spent the next fifteen minutes going over specifics with Choi.
Told him exactly how to lay low, what he could and couldn’t do, which places he could and couldn’t visit. Anything that mirrored his old routine was off-limits for the next couple days. King told him to hole up in a hotel somewhere, order room service, distract himself with mindless entertainment. Then, when the coast was clear, he could resume normal life. He’d have to come up with an excuse for his mysterious absence, but he was an independent journalist. His superiors at the Examiner would understand. His girlfriend would tolerate it if he explained himself beforehand.
It was sure better than being a brutalised corpse, photographed and wielded as a blackmail and intimidation tactic.
King let Choi out at the tip of Sea Cliff, against the dark and churning backdrop of South Bay and, beyond it, the Golden Gate Bridge. Hot wind blew his thin hair around as he stooped in the doorframe, looking
