The Nightmare Thief. Meg Gardiner

“Maybe you need to stay sharp. But this is how the narcotraficantes do it down in Juarez.”

      Grinning, he shook the bottle and popped the cork. It ricocheted off the driver’s headrest.

      Lark ducked. “Careful.”

      The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Watch it, bucko.”

      Dustin laughed. “I don’t own this ride. It wrecks, Edge Adventures pays.”

      He tilted the gushing bottle to his lips. Champagne poured across his chin. He wiped it off and made a face at the label: VEUVE CLICQUOT.

      “Not half as good as the stuff my dad serves on his boat. But Edge didn’t stock Colt Forty-five”—he raised his voice at the driver—“so it’ll have to do.”

      He held out the bottle to his housemate. Noah Holloway put up his hands.

      “I work for the G. No drinking on duty.”

      Noah had a sunny smile and laid-back manner. From across the limo, Lark admired his bed-head hair and uncomplicated surfer’s calm. She seemed unaware that everybody could see her cheeks flush.

      Peyton Mackie grabbed the bottle. “I’ll drink on duty. Under-cover agents have to practice holding their booze.” She keeled back on the seat and coughed down a huge swallow.

      Laughing, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “And speaking of law enforcement . . .” She raised her hand like a gun, two fingers for the barrel, thumb cocked. “Got you in my sights, Reiniger.”

      “Screw you, Fed,” Autumn said.

      Peyton’s blond hair slid over her shoulder. She was wearing raspberry velour Juicy Couture track bottoms and a pink cami. She made a ridiculous federal agent.

      Autumn snapped her fingers. “Sobieski. Take down Agent Pretty-in-Pink.”

      Lark sighted at Peyton down the length of her arm, as if it were a sniper rifle. “Pow. You’ve got no head, Fed.”

      Peyton wilted, eyes crossed, tongue hanging out. Lark blew on her fingers.

      Autumn ran her hands across the crushed red velvet of the bench seat. The limo had been a surprise, a definite five-star stunner. When her doorbell rang, she’d found a man in sunglasses and a black Edge Adventures baseball cap on the porch.

      “I’m the game runner. The clock is now ticking on your scenario,” he said.

      She paused, bemused. “We still have an hour to drive to the rendezvous point.”

      “Not anymore. Your father sent me.”

      Now her stomach fluttered. Her dad had told Edge to pick her up because he didn’t trust her to arrive at the crime spree on time. The game runner, Kyle, was at the wheel of the limo, eyeing her and her friends in the mirror from behind his shades.

      Peyton grabbed the champagne bottle and crawled along the bench seat to Cody Grier. She curled herself around him. “Share.”

      Grier’s eyes widened in surprise. “The bottle? You trying to bribe me to turn against the syndicate?”

      In honor of playing Autumn’s consigliere, Grier had come dressed like a member of the Rat Pack. He adjusted his straw trilby and pulled Peyton against his side.

      Lark continued to gaze at Noah, until she sensed Autumn watching. She turned to the window.

      “Keeping an eye on the opposition,” she said, and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

      “Good. Tell me if anybody follows us.” Outside, beyond the traffic, Autumn saw weeds and run-down wooden houses slumped against one another by the freeway. Her stomach tightened. “I’m serious about that.”

      Lark gave her a funny look. “What’s wrong?”

      Autumn gestured at rusting trash cans and busted cars parked on a crumbling hillside. “This is not five-star.”

      Get me to the Mandarin Oriental, she thought. Edge had reserved a cluster of rooms at the end of a hall, to emulate a summit being held by a crime syndicate. And all at once she didn’t want to be stuck at the end of a hall. Cornered.

      “Autumn?” Lark said.

      “Over the past couple of weeks, have you had the feeling some-body’s watching you?” she said.

      “Like who?”

      “Like somebody who moves away when I look out the window. Or steps behind trees on campus when I pass by.” She waited for Lark to agree, but her friend stared with skepticism. “Never mind.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “Maybe it’s Edge, doing reconnaissance. They do, you know— they research all their clients.”

      “They spy on you?”

      “They generate dossiers.” She nodded at the driver, Kyle, and lowered her voice. “He probably knows all about us. Don’t you get that feeling? That he’s . . . seen us?”

      Lark watched as Kyle changed lanes. “He looks like he’s trying to get us there smack on the dot.”

      “Right.”

      Lark’s mouth turned down. “Autumn, are you okay?”

      “Never mind. Forget it.”

      Autumn folded her arms across her chest. Dustin and Peyton were swapping turns with the champagne bottle. Grier was texting—God, let it not be his dope dealer. They didn’t need that complication this weekend. Noah was glancing at Lark from the corner of his eye.

      Her father didn’t believe any of them could drive across town on schedule. So he had rounded them up like sheep. The pellet in her gut grew hotter.

      What, she wondered, had her father told Edge Adventures about her?

      At the Emery Cove Marina, Terry Coates scanned the checklist. His brother and two other game runners were prepping the speedboat. Fuel. Life jackets. First-aid kit. Check. Phone call to the SFPD, alerting them that a scenario was about to run: Check.

      “Looking good,” Coates said.

      The wind was stiff, the sun dazzling on the water. Across the bay, San Francisco spilled across the hills, white as chalk in the autumn light. Coates savored the view.

      Running Edge Adventures was a sweet gig. It was Disneyland for the rich and adrenaline deprived. It was Self-Discovery a la carte and Phobias, Inc. rolled into one. And it was a whole lot more fun than driving a patrol car in downtown Oakland.

      With his graying hair and the Edge Adventures polo shirt tucked into his jeans, Coates thought he looked exactly like a former cop. But he had a halfback’s build, and people sometimes took him for a retired ballplayer. Didn’t you used to play for the Raiders?

      Maybe in another life he would have played pro ball. But in this life, he had found a niche—a profitable niche—helping others live out their sometimes-twisted fantasies. He had just one hard rule: In an Edge Adventures game, crime would never pay.

      Anybody but him, that is.

      He never let clients play a game in which criminals got away with murder. Scenarios designed around a sting were cool. An outlaw-with-a-code-of-honor thing was okay with him. Robin Hood. Butch and Sundance. But no scenarios where serial killers took victims or street gangs gunned down the cops. He wanted his games to end with exhilaration, and edification—thus endeth the lesson—that sent clients back to their boardrooms with some speck of insight into living a wholehearted life.

      But today, he suspected, he would be playing ringmaster to a sorority food fight. Autumn Reiniger, according to her father, needed some severe excitement to wake her up to the realities of adulthood.

      This scenario had a lot of unknowns. His research into the six kids who were going on the weekend