Free Hooked by Matt Richtel Page A

all she said, as if the ability to express more complex emotions had left the building.
    “Bad news, worse news,” I said.
    “What?”
    “All of this—the explosion. Andy, Simon. The fire. It’s all somehow connected to Sunshine Café,” I said. “The café is . . . at the center of all this violence.”
    That was a revelation, at least to me. Up until then, I had no pattern I could discern.
    She touched her palm to the side of my face. “What happened?” she finally said.
    I told her what the woman said. Maybe someone had sabotaged the Andersons’ electrical system.
    The electrical system.
    I jerked forward.
    “Andy’s place,” I said.
    Erin sniffled. “What about Andy?”
    “Outside his apartment. Someone was working on the lights. A worker, or an electrician. They’re going to try to burn it down.”
    I turned the keys in the ignition.
    “We have to go,” I said. “Now!”

15
    E rin dialed 911 and I flew down Laguna Honda, a secret passage to Cole Valley—and Andy’s apartment.
    I pulled around a Windstar minivan, eliciting an orchestra of honks.
    “I’d like to report a possible fire,” Erin said.
    I heard her end of the conversation.
    “No. No flames. No smoke.”
    The operator slowed her down, and asked her a couple of questions. She gave Andy’s address. I gave the accelerator a punch. The tires squealed. The odometer hit 50.
    “Please, his place may be . . . a target.”
    Erin closed the phone and said they were sending an officer by.
    I sped into the Haight-Ashbury, then screeched the brakes. Half a block ahead was a logjam. Or, rather, a peace jam—about a dozen twenty-somethings imitating peaceniks had gathered on the corner and were slapping tambourines and hoisting signs. They were for something. Or against something. You live in San Francisco long enough, you quit reading the placards. All I knew was they were standing between us and the next block.
    I pressed palm onto horn. Big mistake. There’s no better way to antagonize a group of informal protesters. They had the look of people who had gotten stoned, watched Fox News, become angry, made signs, and headed down for the corner between pizza slices. They needed a common enemy, and they’d found me.
    A couple paused in crossing the street to approach my window. The woman wore a flowing white skirt from the 1960s and a trendy windbreaker from North Face. “You’re polluting the earth with your death machine,” she said.
    I rolled down the window. “You know the trouble with these big SUVs,” I said. “You barely feel it when you run over someone’s foot.”
    I turned the wheel sharply and drove onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing the back of a Saturn and evading the protesters.
    “What are you doing?” Erin cried.
    In my new worldview, there were no longer stop signs, or anything close to speed limits.
    “Nat! Look out!”
    A teeny-bopper on a foot-fueled scooter appeared from outside my vision and laid rightful claim to the crosswalk. I slammed on the brakes. Erin and I lurched forward.
    “Nat,” Erin said, when she sat back up. “Look.”
    We were just around the corner from Andy’s house. I didn’t see anything unusual. I said so.
    “That’s what I mean,” she said.
    She was right. There was a complete absence of everything. No fire trucks, emergency vehicles, or smoke. No chaos.
    We dropped into a moment of silence.
    “What are we doing, Erin?”
    She didn’t immediately offer an answer. There probably wasn’t one.
    Or, rather, there were probably too many possible interpretations of the question. We had just flown across San Francisco in six thousand pounds of seething gas guzzler. Why? Was I overreacting? Was there any real danger? What about our own safety?
    “You’re a little high-strung,” Erin said.
    Should we leave this all to the police?
    Perhaps this last question was born of subliminal observation. Pulled up behind us was a member of the San Francisco Police Department.
    This was not going to