Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

She wondered idly where she was, but something told her not to worry so much. She kept her eyes closed as she listened to the deep, warm tones of the cello playing melody, then harmony, then melody again.

Lillian opened her eyes when she realized someone was humming along to the music. A cute, perky-looking young Hispanic woman was standing alongside her.

A nurse? Lillian thought. But no. It couldn’t be. The woman was wearing a shiny green- white- and- red Mexican-soccer shirt over yoga pants, with bright-pink-and-white Nikes. Her highlighted brown hair was pulled back in a tight, all-business ponytail.

Lillian blinked, quickly trying to wipe the last of the cobwebs from her foggy mind, assessing her situation.

She was in a dark, paneled room, some kind of office with wood blinds pulled down. There were bookshelves on one wall with no books in them. She was sitting, almost fully reclined, in a large leather office chair, her arms and legs strapped securely to the chair with thick, gray duct tape.

She remembered. Ian. The pool. The window crashing in.

Jesus, God, no, she thought as she began to shake hysterically, trying to break free. No, no, no. Just no.

“Relax,” the athletic young woman said, stroking the back of the FBI agent’s arm. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to hurt yourself. My name is Vida. I am going to help you, if you let me, Agent Mara. Or shall I call you Lillian?”

“What do you want?” Lillian sobbed. “Let me go. Why are you doing this to me?”

“There are many reasons. But for now, we’ll concentrate on one,” Vida said, lifting a stern finger. “Our o

rganization is looking for a man who is in hiding. We believe that he may be in California. His name is Michael Bennett. Do you know him?”

“No,” Lillian said, staring at the woman. “You have the wrong person. I am an FBI agent, but I run the white-collar division. I don’t know anything.”

“That truly is a shame,” Vida said, turning on the heel of one of her pink-and-white Nikes and lifting something from the corner of the dark room. Lillian wheezed. It was a large, yellow-handled, heavy tool with an ax on one side and a sledgehammer on the other, known as a splitting maul.

The young woman hefted it neatly.

“No!” Lillian screamed as the young woman brought the sledgehammer side of the maul back and up and then down with authority onto Lillian’s left elbow, pulverizing it into splinters.

Vida turned up the music as Lillian shook and screamed and howled in pain. When the white noise of Lillian’s excruciation notched slightly back, Haydn was still playing merrily.

Vida lifted the sledge again.

“We’re going to try this one more time. With the ax part this time. Where is Bennett?” she said.

“In Northern California … near Susanville,” Lillian found herself saying between the sobs and the throbbing, center-of-the-sun agony that had become her left elbow. “I’m not … sure exactly where … I’d tell you his address if I could … but they wouldn’t tell me … in a million years.”

“How do you know this?” Vida said.

“An agent from the LA office,” Lillian continued in her pain-induced, haiku-like rhythm, “was sent up there … to pick his brain … about capturing Perrine … I do the books for the office … I saw the destination on the manifest.”

“An agent from the task force?”

“Yes.”

“What was the agent’s name?”

“Parker. Emily Parker,” Lillian said without hesitation. She hated herself. She knew she was putting others in jeopardy. But she was in so much pain. And afraid. God, was she afraid.

Vida dropped the splitting maul and consulted a binder in the corner of the room. She flipped a page, then flipped it back. Then she lifted a phone.

“Bring the van around,” she said into it.

Vida stepped back around to the rear of the office chair and pulled the gun from the waistband of her yoga pants.

“Just one more thing, Agent, and we’ll get you right out of here,” Vida said, raising the suppressed black-steel Smith & Wesson .22.

CHAPTER 67