They apparently didn’t break down any doors, but entered his house silently, using some quick-acting lock-defeating technology. He had an alarm system, and it was set; but evidently they defeated it with a radio-wave jammer or some other device, because no siren announced an intruder. Light bloomed in every window simultaneously.
The sudden invasion of the bungalow was conducted so furtively that no neighbors farther along Shadow Canyon Lane seemed to have been awakened. Their lights remained off, their houses quiet.
Jeffy hesitated to disturb Amity. There might be no need to wake her. Falkirk and his strike force would likely believe that father and daughter had fled not only their home but also from Suavidad Beach, because immediately after dinner he had moved his Explorer into the Bonners’ garage.
He hadn’t wanted to leave in the SUV if it wasn’t necessary. In the event that his concern proved to be overblown. Besides, a vehicle registered to him would be quickly found if indeed Falkirk wanted to get his hands on them; they couldn’t drive to any lasting safety, not with their meager resources, not
when using credit cards would leave a trail that deep-state agents, with their technology, could follow as easily as rats following the Pied Piper’s music out of Hamelin.
The Bonner house was a just-in-case place, where they could wait and watch and, if necessary, use the key to everything to effectuate the only escape that would foil Falkirk.
44
In Coltrane’s home workshop, where restored Bakelite radios were displayed on shelves, where a Deco poster for a travel agency depicted a streamlined train racing out of a tunnel in the Alps, John Falkirk stripped off his mask and slid his hood back. He warned himself to keep his cool, to remain calm and give no indication that the emptiness of the house concerned him; he couldn’t tolerate his inferiors seeing him frustrated and perhaps being amused by his pique.
The house swarmed with spectral figures, like spirits that had manifested in other than their usual white ectoplasm, haunting every room in search of a clue as to the Coltranes’ current whereabouts. One by one they came to him with nothing to report, nothing but the presence of a mouse frantically spinning its exercise wheel in a cage—and the absence of a vehicle in the garage.
Falkirk was certain that Coltrane had the key to everything and that if only he had been able to assemble his team and move faster, the transport device would now be in his possession.
He went onto the front porch and stood looking at the pair of rocking chairs. One of the vagrants tenting in the wilds farther up the canyon, whom they had arrested and interrogated earlier in the day, reported seeing Harkenbach in one of these rocking chairs, Coltrane in the other, on two or three occasions. Falkirk hadn’t acted on that testimony at once because the same vagrant claimed to have seen four-foot-tall gray-skinned extraterrestrials from another galaxy and, on another occasion, Jesus walking down the sky on a golden staircase. He should have remembered that, like a broken watch, even a drug-addled hobo could be right twice a day.
As his men waited for instructions, Falkirk’s attention was drawn to the shadow of a moth, swelling and shrinking across the floor, and then to the moth itself, which abruptly abandoned its adoration of a porch light and winged out into the night. His gaze took flight with the moth just long enough for him to see the Bonner house on the far side of the street and recall that its owners were on vacation.
45
Dimly backlighted by the luminous windows of the bungalow, the home invader who came off the porch and onto the steps remained a moving darkness within the dark of night. Jeffy couldn’t be certain that it was Falkirk, but something about the way the man moved—with a practiced grace that suggested arrogance—was reminiscent of the NSA agent or whatever he might really be.
He faced the street, but whether he was focused on the Bonner residence or on the neighborhood in general couldn’t be discerned. Three others of the black-clad legion came out onto the porch, and two appeared in the driveway, such fearsome death figures that it seemed their masks might cover not faces but instead fleshless skulls. They waited in place, as though in anticipation of orders, and no doubt their uniforms were equipped with earpiece receivers and button mics.
Reluctant to step entirely away from his view of the scene, Jeffy said, “Amity. Wake up.” When she slept on, he spoke louder, though in a stage whisper, as if the men in the street might hear.
She sat up in the dark. “What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing. Probably nothing. But put your shoes on.”
Getting off the bed, she said, “I slept with them on.”
“Get the tote bag.”
“I’ve already got it.”
The tote contained what cash he had, Ed Harkenbach’s book, and a few other essential items.
In the darkness, Amity came to his side and saw why he had called her from sleep. “Holy sugar, they’re here.”
He said, “They searched the house.” That much was true. What he said next was no more than a desperate hope. “They probably think we split town.”
The three men on the porch, the one on the steps, the two in the driveway were as motionless as if a paralyzing spell had been cast on them.
Amity whispered. “What are they doing?”
“Maybe conferencing electronically, deciding what to do next.”
“You wondered if they were really government,” she said, “so now you know for sure they are.”
“How do I know for sure?”
“Only the government would send six big dudes to search a little bungalow, when two could’ve done the job.”