Gone

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.

He pointed to the juniper-covered hill beside them, toward a stand of trees.

“The nanny and Bennett’s kids are less than a mile up there somewhere,” he said.

Vida got on the radio, and after a minute, another 4x4, an FJ Cruiser, rolled down the steep incline of the mining road from the opposite direction.

“You have a hit?” Estefan said from behind the FJ’s wheel.

“We just heard Bennett and the nanny,” Vida said excitedly. “The software is saying we are within a mile, that they’re up in those trees.”

“Good,” Estefan said. “About two hundred feet back up the road, I saw a tire track going that way.”

Vida smiled. She knew that the play after finding the Bennett safe house empty was to come up here to Northern California and conduct the search herself. Their contacts in town had put them onto an old, half-mad hippie doper who lived somewhere around here. His name was McMurphy, and not only had he given the cartel trouble in the past, but he’d actually been seen talking to the Bennetts at church.

She had tried to contact Perrine several times for running orders, but he wasn’t answering. It was his party, she knew. She could picture him in his tux, presiding over the events.

She felt a tug of envy at not being invited. No matter. In the back of the Rover were twelve air-shipment boxes with dry ice. Twelve little boxes that would be packed with twelve Bennett heads and would be on their way to Real del Monte by morning. Manuel would know soon enough her devotion to him.

Around Vida’s neck, on a gold chain, was the emerald ring Perrine had given her after she’d finally broken him down and they’d made love the last day of his stay. They didn’t use protection, and it was the middle of her cycle. She hadn’t taken a test, but she knew she was pregnant with his baby. It would be a boy, as handsome as his father.

Everyone had said what a charming man he was, but he was far better than just that. In their time together, he had been so kind to her, asked about her daughters, her life. He was like a father to her, or at least what she thought a father might be like, having never actually had one.

She sighed as a full-body tingle glowed all around her. Her, Vida. A simple farm girl. She’d always known she was special. That things would change for the better. And they would be getting better beyond her wildest dreams. For now, inside her, growing, was the Sun Prince.

“Vida!” said Estefan.

“Yes?” she said, shaking off the daydream.

“Shall we drive a little farther in or leave the cars here and walk?”

Vida grabbed her machine pistol and opened the door.

“Let’s walk, but quickly,” she said. “I want out of this shithole before the sun comes up.”