Gone

CHAPTER 65

Silver droplets exploded violently in the morning sunlight as Lillian Mara pulled the immense black Ford Expedition up almost against the fence. On the other side of the chain-link, the water in the Olympic-sized public pool churned as the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks under-twelve swim team did their laps.

As usual, the other swim moms and dads gave Lillian dirty looks from their poolside camp chairs. She knew what they were thinking. There she was again, the evil, blond new lady in the business suit and big, idling, earth-warming SUV who didn’t even have the decency to get out of her car to watch her kid swim.

Sometimes she felt like getting out and explaining to them that the truck was actually her mobile office. As the newly transferred assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s LA office, she had to be available 24-7 to juggle case meetings with DAs and surveillance teams and undercover agents, and a secure, private communication link was a priority.

As if that matters to them, Lillian thought with a sigh. Everybody had an excuse, didn’t they? Oh, well. She guessed she would just have to live with all the mommy-war scorn.

Lillian sat up and held her breath as a sopping, thin-shouldered ten-year-old blond boy dragged himself out of the opposite side of the pool and headed for the starting blocks.

“C’mon, kiddo, you can do this,” Lillian whispered, cheering on her son Ian as he got into position. “Bend over more, just a little more. Chin against your chest. You have this, kid.”

She let out a groan as Ian jumped weakly and, as usual, landed flat with a loud, belly-flopping slap in the water. Then she laughed to herself.

“Won’t be the first time you fall on your face, little buddy,” she told her baby boy as she watched him thrash intently across the pool. “Take it from personal experience.”

Her phone, charging on the dashboard shelf in front of the speedometer, began buzzing. She snatched it up when she saw it was her husband, and pressed the FaceTime option.

She smiled as her goofily handsome husband, Mitch, appeared. He was the head of mechanical engineering at Northrop Grumman and was on a business trip to Brazil.

She turned up the volume on the phone as a couple of landscapers beside the pool’s parking lot fired up their air rakes.

“Hey, good-looking!” Lillian yelled. “Wearing your wedding ring still? Well, that’s a relief.”

“Just got the last of the carnival gals out of the room,” Mitch said, nodding.

They both laughed.

As if. Mitch, a hulking former combat marine, had proposed to her the day they both graduated from Irvine. He once told her that he truly liked only three things in this world. Her, running, and beer. They had six kids now, two of them in college, and were still going strong. They were lucky people.

“How’s Aquaman?” Mitch asked.

“I’m sorry to say I still don’t see too many Olympic diving team invitations in Ian’s near future,” she said with a wince.

Mitch said something, but she couldn’t hear him at all as one of the landscapers came directly behind the SUV, the air rake screaming in the painful decibel range now, like a 747 taking off.

“Hold on a second, Mitch. I can’t hear you,” Lillian said. The side window suddenly smashed inward.

Staggered by the abrupt explosion, glass still spraying around her, Lillian turned to see the hard face of the Hispanic landscaper in the blown-open window, already half in the car. Her glance went to his hand. There was something black in it rising toward her face.

She was pulling the.40 caliber in the pancake holster on her right side when the pepper spray hit. Gagging on chemical fire, her face burning, her eyes blinded, Lillian still managed to draw her service automatic as the air rake shrieked in her ears.

Then the landscaper smashed her in the jaw with his huge fist, hard enough to make her teeth click. The last things Lillian heard were the thump of her gun dropping to the foot well and the sound of the truck door opening. The seat belt loosened then, and she was sliding and falling, tumbling into a wave of black that seemed to rise up to meet her halfway.