The Nightmare Thief
In the California wilderness no one can hear you scream.San Francisco Forensic Psychiatrist Jo Beckett doesn’t dissect the body or the crime scene – she dissects a life and a mind, recreating the victim as a person, piecing together the story of their death to get to the truth. And then she goes after the killer.Autumn Reiniger wants something special for her twenty-first birthday. Daddy’s bought her the car and the apartment, but now she wants excitement. And what Autumn desires, she gets.Her father signs-up her and five friends for an ultimate urban reality game. ‘Edge Adventures’ alert the SF police that a ‘crime situation’ is underway, so the authorities will ignore any squealing tires or desperate cries for help.Then – when working on a case nearby – Jo Beckett encounters a group of men carting six sullen college kids to the woods for a wilderness adventure. Suspicious, she takes a closer look. And winds up with an invite to a birthday party she may never leave …
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The Nightmare Thief
Meg Gardiner
For Nancy Fraser
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Meg Gardiner
Copyright
About the Publisher
The young trader stumbled from the trees like a scarecrow running on legs of straw. Her suit was muddy, her blouse torn, her sleek Asian hair matted with pine needles. She ran into the street directly in front of Autumn Reiniger’s BMW.
Autumn braked. “Oh, man.”
The trader glanced at her but didn’t break stride. With one arm she clutched a battered lockbox. The other arm she cradled to her chest, protecting what looked to Autumn like a broken wrist.
This was the place. Fun city.
The trader ran across the street to the driveway of Peter Reiniger’s palatial home. She was the last to emerge from the eucalyptus grove at the edge of the Presidio. The others huddled on the driveway. Beside them, Reiniger sat on the tailgate of a Mercedes SUV.
Autumn got out of her car. She took a step, but Reiniger gestured for her to stay put.
The trader swayed to a stop. Nakamura, that was her name— Autumn recognized her from one of her father’s glossy corporate brochures. Chest heaving, the woman dropped to her knees.
She set down the lockbox. After long seconds she raised her gaze to Reiniger.
Her silence made Autumn’s skin tingle. Nakamura was controlling pain and raw emotion. And she was unintimidated—it was stirring. She knelt on the driveway, black hair falling across her face, and she held Peter Reiniger’s gaze. With her good arm she fumbled open the lockbox. Inside, hundreds of multicarat stones glittered like tears.
“I win,” she said.
A hush pressed upon the street. Birdsong, wind through the trees, traffic down the hill along the San Francisco waterfront, all ebbed. Reiniger climbed off the tailgate.
“And?” he said.
She dug her hand into the stones and clutched a fistful. “Ransom my team.”
The people huddled around the SUV cheered. Nakamura let the stones—cubic zirconia, playtime diamonds—cascade back into the box.
Reiniger pulled her to her feet. “You okay?”
She wobbled, but smiled. “You owe me a raise.”
A medic jogged up. “Let’s take a look at that arm.”
Her colleagues thronged her. Autumn grinned and applauded. The woman was tough. From the roof of the Mercedes SUV, a cameraman panned the scene, catching their glee.
And . . . cut. Cue the music from Chariots of Fire. Autumn strolled toward her dad, hands in the back pockets of her jeans.
The game runner got to Reiniger first. “We’ll edit the video and burn copies for everybody.”
Reiniger nodded. “We’ll stream it at our board meeting.”
The game runner, a black guy with the hard fitness of a running back, poured antiseptic on a gauze pad and handed it to Reiniger. “Clean up.”
Cleaning up was what Edge Adventures did. Absolutely. Reiniger pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Scrapes covered his elbow. This kidnap scenario looked to Autumn like it had been rowdier than most.
She took the gauze pad from him and dabbed at the scrapes. “Messy.”
“Realistic,” he said. “The screaming’s all part of the game.” Only at team-building weekends run for Reiniger Capital.
“It’s how I find out what my people are made of,” he said. Autumn had heard it from her dad before: Running a hedge fund could be risky and stressful, but Edge Adventures helped people find what was really inside. Toughness. Spirit. His staff now clustered around a cooler, beer bottles in hand, exhausted and proud. Two of them grabbed the lockbox and poured the fake diamonds over Nakamura’s head, as if dumping a bucket of ice on the winning coach at a football game.
Edge Adventures didn’t simply sell excitement. They showed clients the light.
Edge created urban reality games, role-playing scenarios that took clients into an imagined demimonde of crime and rescue. They threw people in the soup.
