Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

“Mike? Mike? Is that you?” said a voice. It was an Irish voice, an Irish woman’s voice.

I took the phone off my ear and stared at it. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. I slid to the floor. I put the phone back to my ear.

“Mary Catherine?” I said. “Mary Catherine?”

“Mike!” Mary Catherine said. “Oh, thank God, Mike.”

“But how—? Where—?” I sputtered. “Are you OK? Are the kids OK?”

“We’re all fine, Mike. The children, Seamus, me, and Mr. Cody are fine.”

CHAPTER 98

“WHAT? HOW? WHERE?” CAME Mike’s voice from the old CB receiver in front of Mary Catherine. She pressed the red key with her thumb.

“Don’t worry, Mike. We’re hiding out in a place not too far from Mr. Cody’s, a safe place,” she said, and let the button off.

“But the cartel sent a video of them kicking in the front door in the middle of the night,” Mike said from the boxy unit’s speaker. “I thought you were kidnapped. I don’t understand.”

“For the last day, we’ve been hiding out at Mr. McMurphy’s house, up in the hills north of Mr. Cody’s,” Mary Catherine said. “We would have called y

ou sooner, but there’s no phone service up here. I’m actually talking to you over Mr. McMurphy’s CB that he uses when he needs to contact someone.”

“A CB?”

“Yes. Mr. McMurphy contacts his friend a few miles away on the radio band, and then his friend patches him through to a phone. But the friend was away for a few days and just got back. That’s why we haven’t been able to contact you.”

“Wait. McMurphy?” I said. “Who the hell is he?”

“A nice man from town. He said he met you at church a few weeks ago when Seamus filled in to say Mass.”

I shook my head in disbelief as I remembered the Nick Nolte-ish hippie with the gun.

“Him?” I said. “How did he get involved?”

“Up here in the hills, he’s got a, um, unique farm, Mike. He keeps a low profile because of the business he’s in. He also keeps his eyes and ears open. He heard through the grapevine in town about the cartel looking around for us. He was coming by to tell us that we were in danger right as the cartel was heading for the house.

“He came in the back door and woke us up and walked us down in the dark through one of the neighboring farms, to his truck. He drove us up to his place in the hills, and we’re still here.”

“So I’m not dreaming?” Mike said. “You’re all alive and well?”

“You’ll not get rid of us that easy,” Mary Catherine said. “I’d put the kids on the phone, but they’re exhausted, and I’d just as soon let them sleep. Now that the coast seems clear, Mr. McMurphy is going to drive us down to the Susanville PD in the morning. How does that sound?”

CHAPTER 99

ON AN OLD DIRT mining road in the rugged hills northeast of Susanville, in a place called the Tunnison Mountain Wilderness Study Area, a boxy Land Rover Defender with a whip antenna attached to its roof suddenly stopped as Vida Gomez put a hand to the driver’s chest.

She adjusted away the static on the radio monitor she held just in time to hear Bennett answer the nanny loud and clear in her earbud.

“That sounds good. I’m on my way back. I’ll meet you there.”

“My God! It’s him!” Vida said. “It’s Bennett himself. Tell me you’re getting this!”

In the seat behind her, Eduardo checked the frequency on her radio monitor, then rapidly clicked at a laptop that was attached to the antenna. The screen showing their present GPS location locked for a moment, and then a pin appeared, showing the estimated position of the transmission.

The pin began to pulse strongly as the nanny said good night to Bennett.

Eduardo checked the screen against his compass and the geological survey map spread out on the seat beside him. He had worked in the signal corps of the Colombian government catching narcoterrorists before he had met Perrine and switched sides. There was no one better in the cartel at radio tracking than he.