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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.
I like rebels.
We turn off the Embarcadero, heading down the side of the least-rehabbed warehouse. It extends out over the water, a shambling, corrugated tin-walled bit of history. There’s a small door at the end. Its padlock is crusted with spiderwebs and rust.
Eve stops. With a tentative finger, she touches the lock.
“I might be able to find something to break the lock,” I say.
Eve doesn’t answer. She takes a deep breath, goes to the railing over the water, and kneels, fumbling until she finds a length of rotting, seaweed-tangled rope. She pulls it up.
