Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

“Yes, I do,” I said, standing and stepping toward the house.

“Mike,” said the agent, holding up his palm. “I don’t know what this means, but there’s no one here.”

“What do you mean?” I said, staring over his shoulder, into the foyer. “You mean they’re dead? They’re all dead?”

“No, Mike,” the agent said. “There are no bodies. There’s no anything. Your family isn’t here, Detective. The house is completely empty. Everyone is gone.”

CHAPTER 85

THE TEST FOR THE fentanyl powder actually turned up negative. I quickly shucked off the suffocating mask and frantically searched the house.

It was true. Everyone was gone. I looked through the rooms. The beds were unmade. Everyone’s clothes seemed to be all there, including their sneakers. I even found Mary Catherine’s cell phone charging on the bookshelf beside her bed. It was hard to say if there was any kind of struggle, but it was obvious that they had all left quickly and suddenly, in the middle of the night.

I stared out Mary Catherine’s window at the dark mountains, going crazy. Perrine had my family. He’d taken them away.

Roadblocks were set up in the entire area. Troopers and local police came with bloodhounds. The dogs kept running around in circles in the farmyard, indicating that it was unlikely that anyone in my family had left on foot.

I peeled off the hazmat suit in the kitchen and just sat there at the table, rubbing a hand through my hair over and over again as I stared at the worn pine floor, trying to think. Why would Perrine come to kill my family and just take them instead? The implications of it wouldn’t stop coming, the possibilities of what he could do.

It was worse than finding them dead, I decided. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. How could I?

I looked up to see Emily take a seat next to me. She began to cry.

“I caused this,” she said. “You didn’t even want to go to LA, and I came up like a good little soldier and put on the con job and the pressure. You didn’t want to leave for exactly this reason. I caused this. I’m responsible.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but I was in no shape to comfort anyone. The lead jacket of what was happening was too heavy. I was surprised I had the strength to breathe.

That was when the dog came in through the open back door. It was Cody’s border collie. She rubbed against my shins, and I reached out and patted the sad-looking pooch on the head.

As I was doing it, I remembered what Cody had told me about border collies. How brave and smart they were. How they always kept moving, kept circling. How they never quit.

I suddenly stood and took out my phone.

“Emily, listen to me. Stop crying. There’s still a shred of hope,” I said quickly, thumbing through my contacts.

“There is?” Emily said.

I nodded.

“That my guys are not here, all dead, means that Perrine is going to want to use them somehow, right? We need to find Perrine before that happens. We still have one shot.”

I finally found the LAPD detective John Diaz and pressed Dial.

“Emily, call the airport and tell them to get that plane ready to go,” I said to her as Diaz’s phone rang. “We need to get back to LA and pay Tomás Neves another visit, and he’s going to tell me where Perrine is or he’s going to die.”

CHAPTER 86

THE PLAN I SKETCHED out with Diaz over the phone was hazy at first. But as Emily and I raced back to the airfield and the waiting air force jet, refinements were made and remade.

When we touched back down at Southern Cal Logistics Airport, Diaz texted to let me know that our course of action was irretrievably under way, for good or for ill. I no longer had the time or energy to care.

Following Diaz’s directions, Emily and I drove thirty miles southwest, straight from the base to Wrightwood, California, a pine-covered valley north of LA in the San Gabriel Mountains. About a mile north of a ski resort shuttered for the summer, we pulled onto a narrow, winding road called Lone Pine Canyon Road. We followed it to its end and then turned onto a long and steep, thickly wooded driveway.

It was about ten in the morning as we pulled the car into the pine-needle-covered front yard of an old, faded forest-green cabin. Diaz’s Mustang was already there, under a corrugated carport, along with a blue Jeep.

I rolled down the Crown Vic’s window to a low hum of chittering crickets. You could see some hogbacked hills in the distance behind the cabin, but there wasn’t another house to be seen. There weren’t even any power lines. It was like we’d driven back in time.

For a few moments, I stared at the faded cabin, mulling things over. I wondered what I would find once I went in there. Nothing good in the slightest, I knew. But we were past that. Way past that.