Chapter One

Megan Garrity couldn’t push back the premonition this would end badly. How could she feel otherwise? She sat in a blow-up boat in the near complete darkness of San Francisco Bay, flying at 30 mph through 50-degree water. If this big toy went under, she might last 30 minutes, maybe more, but it wouldn’t matter. No one knew they were there. No one would look for them. 

She sat in silence as the whisper-quiet electric engine pushed the 19-foot zodiac past Alcatraz, a monument to mistakes similar to the one she was in the process of making. It was zero dark thirty and eight of the ten black-clothed occupants, four a side, sat hunched inward. Each, except her son Nick, wearing ski masks. Nick refused to cover his face, but everyone else understood the importance of anonymity. 

They leaned in seeking refuge from the frigid water robbed of color by the reflecting dark of the evening sky. A spray of chilled ocean filled the air each time the bow dropped.  The night was quiet, the wind so light, Megan and Nick didn’t so much get hit by the mist as run into it while it hung suspended waiting for the speedy zodiac.

Megan fixated on Alcatraz. Not that she would be sentenced to the “Rock”, just some facility like it might become her home if this didn’t turn out well. And worst of all, she would lose Nick. She would lose everything. She’d entrusted their safety to the Yellow Brick Road human smugglers. All she could do now was sit quietly, her arm firmly looped around the shivering Nick and pretend this was a game.  Her 13-year-old son had no clue, he just knew he wasn’t happy.

Nick was surprised and angry when they injected the counterfeit Norcal R Chip into his arm. He had no idea what they were doing but didn’t much like being touched. Or talked to. Or being crowded in the small boat. Nick was the reason they were on the zodiac. To find a place where he would be comfortable and get the attention he needed and deserved. Nick wasn’t what you’d call perceptive, but it didn’t take much to pick up on the fear of the six other passengers.  Only the crew of two mercenary types seemed at ease. Nick sensed they were breaking rules and he didn’t like that.   

But Megan Garrity wasn’t a criminal.  Not even prone in that direction. However, there was an excellent reason for her early morning cruise. Being a mother, Megan came to believe there were two sets of rules. One governed most everything, most every day. The other required you to do whatever you must for your child, which was why she was about to break into Norcal, a place of infinite opportunity.