Gone (Michael Bennett) by James Patterson Read Free Book Online

up quite straight when she entered a room.
    Actually, she was more attractive than I remembered, I thought, as the light caught the copper in her hair. Had she lost weight? No, I realized. She had actually put on a little. Wow. It really suited her. I realized now that she had been too thin when we’d worked together, sort of bony. She was curvier now, more voluptuous.
    She was also more chic than I recalled. Her looser, fuller hair was salon cut, her cream-colored blouse made of silk. My breath caught a little when I got a whiff of her perfume. Oranges? Flowers? It smelled expensive. Delightful indeed.
    “This has to be about Perrine,” I said quickly as she straightened up and placed a laptop on the table. “Something bad, or why would you come in person? Let me guess. He killed someone I know. One of my neighbors. The super of my building?”
    She shook her head.
    “No, Mike. It’s almost worse than that,” Parker said, slipping on a slim pair of red-rimmed reading glasses. “We’re getting crushed. The massive federal and local task force put together to capture Perrine is in shambles after all these Mob murders. Each strike was carried out by highly trained professional mercenaries with an almost surgical precision. We have no forensics and absolutely no leads. That’s why the assistant director himself sent me out here to talk to you. My mission is to, quote, ‘pick your brain.’ ”
    “Pick my brain?” I said. “At least this won’t take too long. How long have you been on the task force?”
    “Oh, about two days. There I was, happily reading in my Behavioral Science cubicle at Quantico. Then somebody told the director that you and I had worked closely together on some other cases, and now here I am.”
    I stared at her.
    “The FBI director told you to talk to me?”
    “I guess they didn’t know if you would want to cooperate. Apparently, you were dismissed pretty harshly by the bureau after Perrine broke out of the courthouse. I guess I’m what you would call an official Department of Justice I’m Sorry card.”
    “Well, I must say, the director has good taste in stationery, but ‘pick my brain’? That’s the new plan? That does sound pretty desperate.”
    Parker moved her glasses down to the end of her pert, upturned nose.
    “Is it? You’re the most tenacious investigator I’ve ever worked with, period. You’re also the only one who’s ever actually caught Perrine, Mike.”
    “Sure, I caught Perrine, but then I lost him,” I said.
    Something flashed in Parker’s intelligent blue eyes.
    “Bite your tongue. You did not lose him, Mike. He wasn’t in your custody when he escaped. You and I both know that he bought off a whole bunch of people in order to get out of that courthouse. You weren’t the one who was paid to drop the ball.”
    “If you say so.”
    “I say so,” Emily said. “Anyway, since I’m here, do you think you could take a look at what we have?”
    I squinted up at the ceiling, a fist under my chin.
    “Sorry, can’t do it. Impossible,” I finally said, shaking my head vehemently.
    I waited until her jaw finished dropping.
    “Only kidding,” I said. “Just a little tenacious-investigator humor. Let’s see what you’ve got, Agent Parker.”

CHAPTER 11
     
    SHE HIT SOME BUTTONS that brought up a screen and then clicked on a video. It was black-and-white footage. Maybe military. It was an aerial shot of cars and trucks moving along an abandoned desert road.
    “This footage is from exactly one week ago. It was taken from a high-altitude drone above Creel, Mexico, a tiny resort town near the Copper Canyon section of Chihuahua,” she said.
    “The FBI flies high-altitude drones now?” I said. “In foreign countries?”
    “No, but the air force does,” Emily said. “Is it that much of a shock that the military is involved in this, Mike? This is Homeland Security priority one. Just about everybody is involved.”
    I absorbed that with a nod.
    “Who’s in