Monster (Gone 7)

“Come on,” Shade said. “Cruz? I believe your power may come in handy.”

The three of them went to the white van, and Shade handed the unconscious driver’s lanyard to Cruz. “Can you pass as this guy?”

Cruz looped the lanyard over her neck and went to take a much closer look at the man, turning his head this way and that, adding it to what she had come to think of as her face file, the faces she had memorized well enough to mimic.

By the time she stood up, she was the unconscious driver, clothing and all.

“This good enough?” Cruz asked, a bit smug, knowing that of course it was perfect.

“Okay, listen, you have to drive, Cruz. Malik and I can hide in the back, but you have to drive.”

“But—”

“No alternative,” Malik chimed in. “It’s just, what, five hundred feet to the security gate? You can do it, Cruz, you got this.”

“Straight road,” Shade said, making a chopping gesture.

“Oh, my God,” the “driver” said, sounding entirely like Cruz. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

There began a hurried, impromptu driving lesson from Malik as Shade shielded her eyes from the glare and squinted to see the cutter and the Okeanos closing with the crane-burdened dock.

As it happened, Cruz was perfectly able to drive slowly, with Malik behind her giving her instructions. At the gate Cruz flashed her lanyard, and then the guard said, “See the game last night?”

Of course Cruz had not, but she read the guard’s doleful expression and said, “We were robbed.”

The guard snorted. “We were robbed when they traded away Vasquez.”

“Tell me about it,” Cruz answered in her best approximation of a gruff and masculine voice.

And then they were in through the gate. The prison—not a huge facility—was on their left. The dock was to their right. Cruz scooted into the back as Malik clambered into the driver’s seat, and they motored past low buildings to approach a parking lot with space for perhaps a hundred cars.

There was a whole new level of security in place in that parking lot: a dozen vehicles either marked LAPD or unmarked but clearly official. A big, black LAPD SWAT van the size of a UPS truck waited beside a small armored car with massive rubber wheels painted with the stencil. The vehicle was marked “RESCUE LAPD.” A Los Angeles Port Police motorboat cut figure eights into the gray-green water of the channel. A police helicopter hovered overhead.

Their way forward was blocked by Port Police on motorcycles, with men and women in dark suits and dark glasses nearby. These did not look like folks who would be tricked by a lanyard; they would search the vehicle and demand to see specific permissions to enter the area. So again Malik pulled over, beside an improbable baseball diamond. A basketball court occupied the space between the baseball diamond and the parking lot. He made a point of leaning out of the window and staring, like any curious dockworker might upon seeing a very unusual sight. Even a boat suspected of bringing in drugs did not merit this kind of reception.

“I can’t get any closer,” Malik said. “I doubt even Cruz could get through.”

Shade nodded. “Mmmm. I can. But I don’t want to until it’s necessary. The less time I spend with the Watchers, the better.”

The Okeanos touched the dock. But it did not remain quite still; it seemed to be drifting. Then a strange figure covered by a poncho with hood pulled up despite the stunning Southern California weather rushed to the stern to throw a cable to waiting hands ashore. That same cloaked figure then ran forward to throw the second line.

“What, have they only got one crewman?” Malik wondered aloud.

And that was when a car pulled up just ahead of the parked van. Malik tensed. Shade watched, ready to morph at the first sign of trouble. She could see two heads silhouetted in the car.

The driver got out. He was a middle-aged white man with sandy hair. He had a passenger with long, dirty blond or light brown hair. The passenger turned in his seat and looked right at Malik, who instinctively shrank back.

To the amazement of everyone in Shade’s group, the middle-aged man now began stripping off his clothing, carefully folding each item and laying them on the driver’s seat, until he was down to a pair of boxer shorts.

“Crazy?” Malik mused.

But then the pale, skinny, unimpressive, and mostly naked man began to change.

“Worse than crazy,” Shade said. “He’s a child of the rock.”

CHAPTER 21

Cooking Drake