Gone

by James Patterson

  She was going to kiss him, she decided with a smile as she went down the front hall with the mug. She’d been waiting for the right time for them to get closer, and tonight was the night.

  “Hark, I go here,” Mary Catherine said, smiling as she pushed through the screen door.

  It took several long seconds for Mary Catherine to piece together what the lump down on the opposite side of the porch was. Then she suddenly understood. The coffee cup fell from her shaking hand and exploded between her feet.

  Leo was down on the ground, on his back beside the toppled camp chair. Above him and above the porch’s hand railing, there was a large, ink blot–like splatter on the clapboards. Mary Catherine covered her mouth as she scanned Leo’s face. There was a hole over Leo’s open left eye and a dark pool beneath his head!

  Mary Catherine felt a shiver of cold shoot up her back as her breath left her. Leo was shot?! He was dead! No! How? What?

  The first thought that came to her racing mind was that it was an accident. Had he dropped his gun?

  But then she heard something. It came from somewhere off to the right, in the darkness by the main road. It was a whistle, the low double whistle of someone getting someone else’s attention. It was followed after a moment by the distinct and brief, jagged crackle of a radio.

  Mary Catherine stood there in the darkness and silence, not moving, not breathing, the spilled coffee staining her slippers.

  They found us, she thought as she felt a sudden presence in the hallway behind her. As she turned toward it, she was grabbed in a bear hug and violently yanked back into the house, a callused hand pressing hard over her mouth before she could scream.

  PART FOUR

  FACE TIME

  CHAPTER 81

  THE NSA’S INTELLIGENCE PACKAGE on Tomás Neves and the members of his MS-13 set came in around eleven that night.

  It was extensive. At the top were all ingoing and outgoing calls and texts to and from everyone’s home and cell phones. Next came e-mails and Google searches. There were tax returns from the IRS, license plate numbers from the DMV.

  “Big Brother’s been working overtime, I see,” Detective Diaz said, licking his thumb as he went through one of the stacks.

  Diaz was right. There was almost too much info, if that were possible. Emily and Diaz and I ran out of desk space and had to actually lay out all the papers on the floor to try to get a handle on it.

  Since our breakthrough the day before, three more people had been added to our team to give us a hand. There was a hulking, fresh-out-of-the-academy FBI agent from Brooklyn named Ed Kelly and a couple of veteran LA-office Immigration and Customs Enforcement people, Agents Joe Irizarry and Steve Talerico.

  The ICE agents were born-and-bred Angelenos and were especially helpful on logistics. Bonding over some Chinese takeout, we pored over street and Google maps of Neves’s place in Reseda, trying to work out the angles, where best to place our vehicles for surveillance.

  With our players picked out and our surveillance plan finalized, we geared up with night-vision and video cameras around two a.m. We’d only made it as far as the Olympic Station’s garage when Emily’s phone rang.

  “OK,” she said into it, then slammed the door of the G-car she’d just opened.

  “That was the LA SAIC John Downey,” she said as she pointed toward the elevator. “We need to go back up. Apparently something from Perrine just came in upstairs.”

  Rushing back up into the third-floor office space, I thought I was going to see the big smart screen pulled down again, with a crowd of agents and cops standing around it. There were a lot of cops standing around, but this time, the screen was still up and everyone seemed to be looking at me.

  “In here, Mike,” Downey said, waving to me from the door of the space’s only private office. There were three techs in there with him, two of them tapping rapidly on laptops.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “It’s Perrine. The maniac’s just contacted the LAPD website. He says he wants a sit-down, to communicate with you face-to-face on Skype.”

  “Talk to me?” I said, squinting. “But I’m supposed to be in hiding. How does he even know I’m here in LA?”

  Downey shrugged.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s an encrypted signal and we have NSA trying to trace it.”

  I have to admit, I got spooked then. Though I’d been at a few crime scenes, I’d kept a pretty low profile. Were the rumors right? Did Perrine really have a source in the task force? And what did it mean?

  I passed a hand through my hair.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure about this.”

  “I wouldn’t even ask you, Mike, but he has a hostage. He says he’s going to kill him in another five minutes if we don’t get you.”

  “Of course he does,” I said. “OK. I guess.”

  Downey took me over to the desk and sat me in front of a computer monitor. I took a deep breath when I saw the minimized Skype tab. I still didn’t like this. I had a sick feeling that there was something seriously wrong. Something we’d overlooked.

  A tech hit a button, and then Perrine was there. He was sitting in a beanbag chair next to a small, wide-eyed Mexican man who had tape over his wrists and ankles and mouth.

  There was some kind of metal wall behind them. They were in a van, I realized. Perrine lifted a tennis ball and bounced it off the floor and wall of the van beside the camera and then caught it again.

  When the hostage looked up, I saw his Roman collar. He was a priest! Perrine was holding a young priest hostage!

  “Detective!” Perrine bellowed as he glanced at the screen. “Detective, there you are, at long last. I was wondering if you’d ever show up. You’re looking tired. Having trouble sleeping, are we? Seriously, how have you been? How are the kids?”

  I wanted to tell the arrogant scumbag to go screw himself, but I couldn’t stop looking at the priest. The terror and pleading in his eyes. He was slight, in his early thirties. My heart went out to him. I needed to save this man’s life.

  “I’m here, Manuel,” I said. “So you can let that poor man go now, OK?”

  “Let him go? Good idea, Detective,” Perrine said, standing.

  The drug lord stepped offscreen. There was a sliding sound as the metal wall behind the priest moved sideways to reveal a blurring guardrail, the shoulder of a road, passing trees.

  “No!” I yelled as Perrine, coming back into the frame, reared up his heel and booted the priest in the chest.

  The man flew backward immediately out the van door, into the darkness. Without a cry. Without a sound. The man was just gone.

  CHAPTER 82

  DEAR GOD, I THOUGHT, feeling dizzy in the cramped, suddenly too-hot office. Dear God.

  I watched as Perrine slid the door shut with a bang. He dusted off his hands as he plopped himself back down in the beanbag chair. He lifted the tennis ball and bounced it off the floor and wall of the van again.

  “Now, where were we?” he said, catching the ball. “Oh, yes. Your kids. How is the law-enforcement version of the Duggar familia?”

  “You bastard,” I said.

  “Mike, Mike. Please,” Perrine said. “Do not mourn. That priest is in a better place now. He has gone to his God. You know, like your friend. What was his name? Hughie?”

  He was taunting me now. Trying to get to me. He was. I wanted to smash the screen with my fist, but I couldn’t. I took a breath and refused to give him what he wanted.

  “That’s true,” I said calmly. “Good point, Manuel. Hughie’s gone to God.”

  I paused as I leaned in closer to the computer’s camera.

  “Just like your wife, Manuel. No, wait. I made a mistake. How could she be with God? I sent that bitch directly to hell.”

  Perrine hurled the ball against the wall and didn’t bother catching it this time. He stood up and walked over to the camera until his face filled the screen.

  “I have one more thing to sho
w you, Bennett. My men are sending it to you right now. If you have any popcorn available, I advise you to get it popping and pull up a seat. You’re going to like this, Mike. I know I will. We can talk after. Maybe when it’s over, we’ll trade notes. But if you don’t feel like talking, that’s OK, too. I’ll understand. You probably won’t be in the mood. Au revoir.”

  The screen went blank.

  “Wait,” I said to Agent Downey. “What in the hell is he talking about? He’s sending something else? What is it? Where is it?”

  “Something’s coming in now. It’s another Skype request,” a tech said, clicking a button.

  The first thing I noticed about the footage on the screen that opened up was that it was from a night-vision camera. It was showing an empty field. The grainy image reminded me of a black-and-white TV image, only with dark green instead of black, and light green instead of white.

  And it wasn’t footage, I realized suddenly. Since this was Skype, it meant what I was looking at was something that was being filmed in real time.

  The camera swung shakily to the left. A kneeling figure appeared. It was a soldier of some kind, wearing a dark hazmat suit with a full gas mask.

  The fentanyl, I thought. Perrine was ordering another fentanyl attack and making me watch. Two more hazmat-suited soldiers appeared beside the first, and the camera started moving, shaking a little as the group moved across a field.

  There was some kind of fence at the far end, which they climbed, and then they were standing in a dirt road. The soldiers started moving up the slightly curving, uphill road, covering each other. Then they went around a bend, and suddenly, there was a house.

  Realizing what it was hit me not like an electric shock but like a sudden shot of anesthesia. I felt numb. Like I wasn’t there anymore. Like I wasn’t anywhere. Like the bottom of the world had just dropped out from underneath me.

  “It’s his safe house!” Emily yelled from somewhere behind me as the soldiers on the screen arrived at the porch.

  “In Susanville! My God, his family!” Emily yelled as she burst into the office. “Contact the marshals! Where are the marshals? Perrine is attacking the Bennett family in Susanville as we speak!”

  CHAPTER 83

  THE SKYPE IMAGE WAS showing a dead marshal on the porch when I stood and walked out of Downey’s office. I walked over to the corner desk Emily and I were sharing and just sat there rigidly, with my feet on a plastic file box, gazing steadily forward at a blank spot on the wall.

  Emily rushed over to me.

  “The image cut off, Mike. They kicked in the door of the house, and the image went blank. We’re sending everybody there. Everybody.”

  I didn’t reply, didn’t look at her. I kept staring at the wall. I needed to be there for my family, and yet it was impossible for me to be there. This did not emotionally compute for me, apparently. It was like being tied to a chair and having to watch your two-year-old climb out and off the ledge of an open window. I felt beyond confused, beyond disoriented. I felt disintegrated inside.

  I don’t remember much about the next twenty minutes that went by. I vaguely remember a lot of activity around me, Emily making a lot of heated phone calls and Downey coming over to me a few times in order to assure me that every available unit was on its way to my family.

  And what will they find when they get there? I kept thinking.

  The next thing I knew, I was being guided by Emily up onto my feet. I followed along obediently as she took me out into the stairwell. But instead of heading downstairs, she led me up.

  “What’s going on?” I mumbled.

  “They’re bringing you up there to Susanville, Mike. A chopper is going to take you to a plane waiting for you back at the SoCal Logistics Airport. I’m going to be right beside you the whole time, OK?”

  I suddenly stopped on one of the landings.

  “What have you heard?” I said, breaking her hold on my elbow.

  “Nothing yet.”

  “But it’s been a while. Someone should have gotten there already,” I said, grabbing her wrist. “They’re all dead. Just say it now. Don’t lie to me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Mike. I’m not sure why no one has responded. All we know is that the US marshal on scene is not answering the radio or his phone, and neither is your family. I swear to you, the second I hear anything, I’ll tell you, Mike. Let’s just get up there and see what’s going on, OK? You need to be up there,” Emily said as we went out onto the roof.

  Five minutes later, an MH-60 Black Hawk swooped down out of the night, and a burly young soldier guided me aboard and strapped me in. I would have said it felt unreal as we lifted off, out over the lights of Wilshire Boulevard, with the wind rushing in through the chopper’s nonexistent doors, but it already felt unreal. I’d felt like I was outside my body ever since Perrine had shown me the video of my family’s not-so-safe safe house.

  At the airport, an air force jet was already gassed and waiting. A couple more unbelievably gracious and young, competent soldiers strapped me into this new aircraft, and we took off. Emily didn’t tell me to sleep or calm down or talk to her or anything. After a while, I turned away from the window and found her hand in mine.

  We touched down less than an hour later at Susanville Municipal Airport. When they dropped the jet door, I could see marked town-police and state-trooper cars parked alongside the tarmac, their lights wheeling. A trooper car rushed us to the state road where Cody’s farm was. There was another clog of official vehicles just in front of the driveway turnoff. There had to be twenty cars, but why weren’t they up at the house? My mind felt like it was exploding. Why were they just sitting there!?

  A lanky, brown-haired FBI agent rushed out of the black Chevy Tahoe as we came to a skidding stop.

  “What the hell is going on?” I said before he could get a word out.

  “I know you’re upset, Detective,” the agent said. The young agent was handsome, square jawed. Instead of the MIB suit, he wore a tweed jacket and jeans, like a popular young college professor.

  “My family is up there!” I screamed as I grabbed his tweed lapels.

  He tried to shake me off. He wasn’t trying hard enough. I swung him around into the road. “Four boys, six girls, my grandfather and nanny. Why aren’t you helping them?”

  The fed was finally able to dislodge one of my hands by punching down on it. I retaliated by punching the agent in his mouth. I was about to do it again when the state trooper who had brought me there linked his big arms around mine from behind.

  “Is my family dead? Tell me!”

  “Jeez,” the young fed said, thumbing his lip. “We don’t know, OK? We don’t know yet. We can’t get up there because of the fentanyl. We have a hazmat team on its way.”

  I went really nuts then. I elbowed the trooper in his ribs and started running for the driveway. Then I was tackled by two more troopers and another agent.

  “Get off me now, or I swear to God, I will shoot all three of you!” I snarled as I writhed and fought them in the dirt alongside the driveway. I lost it then. Some wall inside me broke, and I was bawling. My face filled with tears and dust as I sobbed.

  “Get off me. Get off me, you fucking cowards,” I said as I wept.

  “It’s poison up there, Detective,” said one of the troopers, with a Barney Fife twang. “I know you want to get to your family, but if you go up there unprotected, you’re going to die.”

  “I know,” I cried. “I want the poison. Give me the poison. I just want to be with my kids.”

  CHAPTER 84

  I CALMED DOWN AFTER another few minutes of crying. Emily had taken me over to one of the fed SUVs and sat with me in the back. I’d melted down emotionally before, but never in front of so many people. And still I hadn’t faced it yet. Hadn’t faced the unfaceable.

  The FBI hazmat squad showed up in a fire truck–like vehicle, already wearing their white hooded jumpsuits. After Emily spoke to them, they allowed me to gear up as well and foll
ow them, as long as I stayed behind them and didn’t hit anyone else.

  Emily and I started up the road behind the eight-man contingent. The air filter of the full-face breathing mask had some sort of pine scent in it that made me want to throw up.

  The agents halted suddenly as something moved in the distance ahead. One of the SWAT guys raised his rifle.

  “Don’t shoot!” I said through the interior mike when I saw what it was.

  It was one of Cody’s sheepdogs. He stopped in the road and started barking at us. Good God. Aaron. I hadn’t even thought about him. Was he dead as well? For helping us? The dog barked some more and then ran back up the road from where it had come.

  We went around a slight curve in the dirt road and saw the house for the first time, up the slope. There was no light on in the windows. Not a sound. In the dull, grainy moonlight, it was like I was seeing it for the first time. Its fish-scale shingles on the gabled roof, its gingerbread trim. The Queen Anne–style Victorian looked like it should be in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, not out here in the middle of the high desert.

  I shook my head and stared at the dormer where Mary Catherine slept.

  Mary Catherine.

  I pictured her.

  Mary Catherine sewing a vintage lampshade she’d bought on eBay. Mary Catherine down on her knees in the hallway with the girls around a bucket of joint compound, teaching them how to spackle and sand. How to fix something. How to make a house, even a safe house, into a home.

  In my heart, I’d been planning on our being together someday, I realized as I stopped walking. Now, in a few minutes, I would be making a phone call and telling her family back in Ireland that she was dead. I squeezed my hands into fists when they started shaking.

  “You OK, Mike?” Emily said. “You want to go back?”

  I shook my head quickly. For a second I thought I was going to throw up, but then it passed.