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Page 172
won't find it until tomorrow. Not with all the to-do up the road." As if to emphasize Peters's remarks, a pair of black-and-white California Highway Patrol cars, lights flashing and sirens keening, raced north along the highway toward Devil's Slide. They were the fourth and fifth CHP units that had passed in the last hour.
"You sure as shit stirred things up," Ave said, grinning at Morgan. "There hasn't been this much excitement here since bootlegger days." To an inhabitant of this area, from Montara and Princeton-by-the-Sea on down the coast to Half Moon Bay, that meant the twenties, when the harbor at Half Moon Bay had been full of excitement, a favorite of rum runners and bootleggers. Storm and earthquake, intermittent in northern California, enhanced the golden memories of western San Mateo County as a haven for lawbreakers, and for those who could withstand hardship. Now its role in life was as the home of the annual Pumpkin Festival and a port of refuge for the local fishing fleets. The latter was very like the purpose it served for Anna Neville and himself, Morgan thought.
Devil's Slide seemed naturally situated in such a neighborhood. The long, steep fall to the sea had always appealed to the morbid and the curious. And it claimed a steady toll of lives, mostly of the despondent and the careless. It would have been better, Morgan thought, had I counterattacked on a less notorious stretch of road. But that couldn't be helped now.
"You can't leave now, anyhow," Ave observed. "The airport, this whole area, is swarming with local law enforcement with a description of the both of you. And if you have any idea of turning yourself over to the San Francisco cops," he said, "forget it. SFPD has more leaks than a Greek rowboat."
"I wasn't planning to rely on the local police to guard her," Morgan said dryly. "Kellner wouldn't like it." And SFPD is not the only leaky vessel, he thought angrily.
"That scar on her cheek," Ave said. "Where did she get it? In the Canadian crash? What the hell happened up there?"
"The floatplane broke up and went down in an ice field.

 
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