The Coil Read Online Free PDF Page B

as she ended her stretches, she speed-walked toward the university’s Marine Science Institute, feeling light and powerful, as if she were about to begin a match. Her other sport was karate-d, one of the few leftovers from her previous life in intelligence. She gazed around, passing the usual sports cars with their tops down, the trash cans topped off with foam cups from the Mesa Coffee, and the students in their eye patch–size swimsuits, sitting out on dormitory patios, enthusiastically risking melanoma. Few palm trees decorated the campus. Instead, sycamores, magnolias, and exotic eucalypti stood here and there, country-club elegant.
    When she spotted the squat marine lab building, she broke into a trot, running downhill past it onto a spit of sand that edged the university’s big lagoon. She saw no one on the rocky cliff that towered ahead, which was just the way she liked it. Beginning to sweat, she loped up a sandy ridge to the dirt path that cut along the cliff’s narrow top. The breeze whispered through her hair. Her quad muscles rippled.
    Savoring the clean salty air, she looked right, where wild grasses and scrub trees and bushes welded the soil to the rolling slope that spread down to a blue lagoon so protected from the elements that hardly a wave showed. On the far side lay the campus, where a few students were visible. They disappeared into buildings, late for classes. Abruptly, the university was deserted—a perfect still life of simple modern buildings and manicured trees from some architectural photographer’s prized album.
    As she settled into her usual slow, steady gait, she gazed left at the ocean, which extended in a blaze of turquoise out to the Channel Islands some twenty miles away. Here on the ocean side, the vegetation was far different, not thick and upright and hardy as it was on the lagoon’s slope, but sparse and gnarled from fighting to grow out of rock crevices where it was exposed to harsh sea winds. She could hear the roar of the surf far below—at least fifty feet—but she could not see it from the trail.
    The cliff continued along the campus for miles. Every year, a handful of people died from falling off it during drunken parties or while bicycling, hiking, or running. The media would cover the tragedy, and people would be careful for a while. But as time passed, the sense of danger faded. They resumed old habits. Became careless. Until someone else was killed.
    She tried to shake off a sudden feeling of uneasiness. There were still occasional moments when she felt as if her past were catching up with her, and she was overcome with despair. But that seldom happened out here, where the peaceful lagoon spread on one side and the timeless ocean on the other. Where the clear sky and the warm sun and the joyful calls of seagulls reminded her how good life was. She usually ran this high trail between the two bodies of water as if she were invincible.
    But not today. She was nervy, wary. She did not understand it. Ahead, the path was empty, but she heard people behind. She glanced back, mindful of the rutted trail. There was another runner, tall and muscular, dressed in sunglasses, a baseball cap, and jogging clothes. Ordinary-looking. Behind him was a bicyclist, crouching low over his handlebars as he sped toward them, adjusting gears.
    She listened to the rhythm of her feet, felt the measured beat of her heart, tested all her senses while she reminded herself to stay composed.
    Soon the bicyclist whizzed past on her right, through the wild grasses on the lagoon side, off-trail. Relieved, she slowed to avoid breathing the billows of dust from his tires as he hurtled back onto the dirt track and roared onward. Next, she felt the movement of air that told her the runner was about to pass, too. She moved politely left to give him room. He did not move to the right.
    Instead, he stayed directly behind, his speed increasing, his footsteps closing in. A chill shot up