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  Mary Catherine winced, waiting for Chrissy to start screaming or crying, but was surprised when nothing came out.

  “Actually,” Chrissy said calmly, “it’s not cool. It’s just really gross, like you.”

  Yes! Mary Catherine thought. Chrissy was learning to defend herself. One good thing about being a member of a family this big was developing the ability to use the occasional sharp elbow. Excellent job, young lass, Mary Catherine thought. Offense was always the best defense.

  “Mary Catherine!” Trent yelled down the cellar stairs a second later. “Chrissy called me stupid!”

  “Stupid?” Mary Catherine said, winking at Chrissy as she made it back into the kitchen. “I believe the term I heard your sister use, young man, was gross.”

  CHAPTER 56

  The coffee machine’s beeper went off as half the sleepy Bennett clan fed on flapjacks. Mary Catherine took a porcelain cup out of the cabinet over the sink and filled it, carefully pouring in some half-and-half before she took it out the front door, onto the porch.

  She always loved going out in the morning, right before sunrise. The creak of the old screen door. The cold of the wind coming down from the mountains, the feel of old porch floorboards under her bare feet.

  The deputy US marshal on watch, Leo Piccini, stood abruptly from the camp chair he was sitting in and placed a copy of James Dickey’s To the White Sea on the railing of the porch, beside a Toughbook field laptop.

  The other men brought smartphones to while away the hours on watch, but Leo always had a book with him. Mary Catherine wondered how he read in the dark until one time she peeked out the window and saw him wearing night-vision goggles.

  After Mike had left, the marshals had come and beefed up security even more than usual. In addition to the now round-the-clock watch, yesterday they had come and put in high-tech motion detectors along the property’s perimeter, as well as night-vision video cameras. She didn’t know what would be next. Trip wires, maybe, and mines.

  She glanced at his weapon, an M4 automatic rifle, lying on the floor of the porch in its open case, with a towel covering it. It was scary to have to receive military-grade protection now. But Mike had called the day before and told her about the raid. About how they thought Perrine was in the US now. There really was no choice but to put up with it.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” Leo said as Mary Catherine handed him the coffee.

  Oh, yes, I did, Mary Catherine thought.

  In addition to being polite to a fault and seemingly intelligent, Leo was six one, lean, and really quite cute. From their brief conversations, she’d learned he was from Baltimore and about her age. She had already noticed that he didn’t wear a wedding ring.

  And why shouldn’t I notice such things? she thought. Ever since she and Mike had taken a sabbatical on their on-again, off-again relationship, she’d been pretty darn lonely up here on the prairie with the kids. She could bring Mr. Strong, Sensitive, and Silent his coffee, couldn’t she? She thought so. All day long, in fact.

  They stood, staring at each other.

  “So, how goes it? All quiet out here on the western front?” Mary Catherine said.

  “So far, so good,” Leo said, showing deep dimples as he smiled. “Though on one of the cameras, around three a.m., I did see a couple of owls duke it out with one another. I’m surprised it didn’t wake you up. It sounded like people screaming.”

  “Two males fighting. Over a lady owl, too, no doubt,” Mary Catherine said, shaking her head. “Isn’t that the way? Just like men. Maybe owls aren’t as wise as they say.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Leo said thoughtfully after a sip of the coffee. He smiled again, his twinkly eyes twinkling.

  “Sometimes the lady in question is worth a fight,” he said.

  Mary Catherine felt heat rise in her neck as the young marshal looked at her again for an extended beat with his light-brown eyes. Then he turned away, blowing on the coffee as he scanned the crooked line of the distant mountains.

  “If you say so, Marshal,” Mary Catherine managed to sputter as she turned back toward the porch door, hiding the blush rising into her face.

  “Carry on,” she said.

  CHAPTER 57

  There were a bunch of lessons to go over in pretty much each of the children’s curricula, but Mary Catherine, after hearing the warm-weather forecast, decided to make a command decision. As principal of the Exiled Bennett Western Academy, she was officially calling a day off.

  After breakfast, she left the older guys with Seamus and packed lunches, along with most of the younger kids, into the station wagon and headed to Cody’s farm. Everyone cheered as they pulled up in front of the horse barn.

  Though the kids complained about so many things, every last one of them loved riding Cody’s three horses, Spike, Marlowe, and Double Down. Not as much as she did, maybe. But almost.

  As Mr. Cody came out of the barn with Double Down already saddled, he put a startled look on his wrinkled face.

  “Why, what is this?” he said in mock surprise. “Where’d all you kids come from? Aren’t you supposed to be doing your lessons? Let me guess. The gang’s had it with everything, is that it? Y’all picking up stakes and hightailing it out of here for greener pastures?”

  The kids stared at the old farmer silently, their wide eyes on the saddled black horse. They wanted to ask if they could ride, of course, but Mary Catherine had forbidden them ever to ask for anything from their long-suffering host. If he offered, they could accept, but they could never do something so rude as to ask. In the silence, Chrissy and Shawna stared up at Double Down like they were going to explode.

  “Cat’s got all you guys’ tongues this morning, I see,” Cody said, peering at them. “Well, before you leave, could you do an old man one last favor? These horses of mine need to be rode, and I can’t find a cowboy or even an Indian anywhere to give them some exercise. I know it’s last-minute and all, and I do hate to impose, but do you think you crew could ride ’em for me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Cody,” Mary Catherine said as the kids bounced up and down by the horse-yard gate. “These kids do love the horses, but there is their schoolwork to consider. Maybe we should just head back to the house and get our lessons out of the way.”

  “No!!!” they all squealed, unable to contain themselves another moment.

  “Horse. Need to ride horse,” Trent chanted like the goofball he was as he pretended to pass out.

  “OK, OK,” Mary Catherine said, finally relenting. “Form a line, children. Excellent. There you go.”

  She turned as a car came into Mr. Cody’s side yard. It was Leo, in his government-issued Crown Vic. What now? Mary Catherine thought as she rushed over.

  “What is it, Leo? Is something wrong?” she said as she got to the passenger window.

  “No, no. Everything is fine, Mary Catherine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought I’d see if you guys were OK one more time and say good-bye.”

  Mary Catherine blinked at him rapidly.

  “What do you mean? You’re leaving? You’re not going to be working here anymore?”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” Leo said, smiling. “I just meant that my shift is over.”

  “Oh, oh, of course, Leo,” she said, fingering a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “You didn’t have to go to all the trouble of coming out here.”

  “No trouble. I wanted to,” Leo said softly, smiling as he stared into her eyes. “By the way, Juliana and Jane were saying that you guys haven’t had pizza in about a month, and I was wondering if it would be OK to pick up some for you guys for lunch today and bring it back.”

  “Oh, sure. That would be nice, Leo. Really nice. The kids would love you.”

  Maybe not just the kids, thought Mary Catherine.

  “I’ll see you later, then, Mary Catherine,” Leo finally said.

  “Later, then,” Mary Catherine whispered to herself as she watched him drive away.
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  CHAPTER 58

  Two days of sifting through the disaster in Newport Coast had yet to uncover hide or hair of Manuel Perrine. Even after we went back to Brentwood and tossed the rest of the dead smuggler Scanlon’s house and went through his phone records, we didn’t come up with one lead.

  The only high point, if you could call it that, was a fresh palm print in one of the upstairs bathrooms that matched the one we had in Perrine’s file. That proved, at least, that he had been in the house and was probably still in the country.

  There was some grumbling in both the bureau and the LAPD that someone in our task force might have tipped off Perrine, but I wasn’t buying it. It wasn’t so much that there couldn’t be a mouse in the house as it was that I knew Perrine was an extremely paranoid individual. There were a hundred different ways he could have learned about our siege on the house in enough time to sneak out via what Parker had come to refer to as the mansion’s “crazy man cave.” I preferred to call it the California billionaire sex chamber escape hatch myself, but I guess that was like the man we were searching for: neither here nor there.

  For all my griping about the LAPD, the entire task force had come together after the botched raid and redoubled its efforts. They were all, even Bassman, extremely dedicated, extremely professional cops. It wasn’t their fault that Perrine was such a slippery fish.

  On the third day after the fiasco, Parker was called off the hunt to do her FBI mandatory pistol qualification. With my partner out of commission for the day, I decided to take a much-needed break. I woke around seven and took a shower and got dressed and headed out on a self-guided day tour of LA.

  Our Santa Monica hotel was on Ocean Boulevard, right across the street from a park that had enormous palm trees. As I was standing there, staring out at the Pacific glistening between the palms, a Harley chopper pulled up at the light beside me. Riding it was a white-bearded, tuxedo-clad guy with a little white Benji-like dog panting happily in his lap. A moment later, a neon-teal lowrider with an elaborate Virgin Mary painted on the hood arrived behind it.

  How do you like that? I thought, watching the vehicles rumble off. One foot out the door, and I’d already spotted a random act of randomness under the sunny Cali sky.

  Following the recommendation of the guy at the hotel desk, I walked over a few blocks to the Third Street Promenade. It was a really neat pedestrian-only outdoor mall lined with shops and restaurants. After a block or two of window shopping, I stopped in this place called Barney’s Beanery.

  At first, I thought it was a coffee shop, until I spotted the large screens blaring a soccer game, license plates on the walls, and the line of car seats that were used as bar stools. It turned out the zany sports bar actually did have breakfast, though, so I sat and tore into a massive delicious Mexican breakfast of shredded beef and eggs and chili on flour tortillas.

  After breakfast, I walked back toward a Hertz I had spotted near the hotel and rented a car. Staying off the highways, I drove around aimlessly at first, then headed inland, east up Santa Monica Boulevard. When I got to Beverly Hills, I hooked a left and somehow found myself on a twisty road called Coldwater Canyon Drive. I took it north, marveling at all the cutting-edge architectural-glass houses up and down the slopes of the Hollywood Hills.

  I made a right after a while onto iconic Mulholland Drive, then another onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard. When I came to the intersection with Hollywood Boulevard, I found a garage and parked and walked around.

  I did the full tourist tour. I stopped at the TCL Chinese Theatre first and looked around, smiling down at Old Hollywood’s hand- and footprints. I found the Walk of Fame, and when I came to Elvis’s star, embedded in the cement, I laughed as I snapped a pic of it for Mary Catherine, who couldn’t get enough of the King. Then I bought some postcards for the kids and, for ten bucks, had my picture taken with a Jack Sparrow pirate look-alike who was walking around.

  I texted the pictures to Mary Catherine:

  Just me and Johnny on the set. We’re heading over to Tom’s later to do lunch and play some hoops. How’s your day going?

  She texted back:

  Not as good as yours, apparently, Mr. Movie Star. Don’t let all that fame go to your head. ☺

  I texted back, for some unknown reason,

  But you’ll always be my number-one fan, won’t you?

  Actually, I did know. I was missing home, as well as the great relationship Mary Catherine and I had had up until pretty recently.

  I knew I’d probably pushed it when she didn’t text back. Then my phone beeped as I was starting the car.

  ?

  was Mary Catherine’s reply.

  CHAPTER 59

  I decided to head back to Santa Monica and Barney’s Beanery for lunch. In the midst of washing down a slice of white pizza with a pint of Guinness, I received an e-mail from Emily. It was some good news, for a change. Sort of.

  The FBI lab had finally isolated and identified the poisonous white substance found at the two Los Angeles crime scenes. Apparently, it was some kind of weaponized fentanyl, an incredibly powerful narcotic over a hundred times more potent than morphine. The Russian special forces had used a similar offshoot of the extremely toxic drug to gas some Chechen terrorists in a Moscow theater takeover in 2002, and the fentanyl ended up killing 117 people.

  It was chilling to think Perrine had access to such an incredibly sick and deadly weapon, but at least now we had another lead to follow.

  After that not-so-cheery note, I ordered another Guinness and found a booth in the back and decided to call home to see how everyone was doing.

  “Hola,” I heard Seamus say in a bad Spanish accent after the second ring.

  “Hola? You didn’t just say hola?” I said.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Seamus said. “Of course I said hola, Michael. It’s called tradecraft, ya know. The art of deception. Even an infirm old man like your grandfather needs to develop some when he’s running for his life. Hola is what you’ve reduced me to. Now, please tell me you’ve finally bagged the devil himself.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “How are you holding up? How are the kids?”

  “Oh, keeping me on my toes, as usual. They’re out there now, playing Wiffle ball with the new fella. What’s his name? Leo.”

  “Leo?” I said, baffled.

  “He’s the tall, nice-looking young fella. The marshal who works the night watch. He just showed up here about an hour ago with a Wiffle ball and a bat and some pizzas. Turns out he pitched in the Astros’ farm system, he did, until he tore something in his shoulder. He’s teaching the boys how to throw sliders. He’s a real wizard, like. I can see Mary Catherine laughing out there right now from the window. She’s having more fun than the kids, looks like.”

  I nodded. Aha. So that was what the question mark was all about.

  “That’s just grand,” I said.

  “’Tis,” Seamus agreed.

  “’Tisn’t, old man. I know your game,” I said. “You want me jealous so I hurry up and catch this guy already so we can all go home.”

  “Now that sounds like a plan, young Michael. Stick with that one,” Seamus said. “Gotta go now. They’re waving to me. It’s my turn to bat.”

  CHAPTER 60

  DODGER STADIUM

  DOWNTOWN LA

  Raymond Bowie, arms filled with beers, had to open the glass door of the luxury suite with his butt in order to get out onto the patio.

  “That’s OK, guys. Really. I got it,” he said sarcastically to the three folks completely ignoring him as they leaned and cheered along the field-side railing.

  “Here, let me help you lighten the load, bro,” his best friend, Kenny Cargill, said, winking as he grabbed a brew for himself and his wife, Annie.

  “Hey, you’re welcome, jackass. Really, anytime,” Ray said, laughing.

  It had been a whopping twelve grand for Ray to rent out the Dodger Stadium luxury suite for opening day, but Kenny was leaving at the end of the month for a finan
ce job on the East Coast. Kenny, Ray’s oldest and best friend, had introduced him to Denise, had helped him to turn his life around. It was the very least he could do.

  Ray’s wife, Denise, was sipping her Coke when they heard the crack. Down on the field. Dodger second baseman Mark Ellis took off as the frozen rope of a line drive he’d just hit skidded off the grass in right and headed for the corner. Ellis made the turn at first, then laid on the speed as the Giants’ right fielder scooped it.

  Oh, no! Ray thought. The right fielder couldn’t hit for shit, but he had a gun for an arm. It was as if the entire stadium, the entire City of Angels, was holding its breath as the ball lasered toward second.

  Ellis’s headfirst sprawl and the ball arrived simultaneously. Ray groaned as the second baseman’s tag swept toward Ellis’s outstretched left hand. But no! At the last instant, Ellis pulled his hand in. He sailed past the bag and, at the final moment, hooked it with the toe of his spike. The umpire spread his arms wide. Safe! No outs, game tied, 3–3 in the seventh, and now they had a runner in scoring position!

  The whooshing freight-train roar of the crowd rose and then rose again as the Giants manager walked out of the dugout, toward the mound. Lincecum, the Giants’ freak of an ace pitcher, was being taken out!

  Ray’s breath caught as the air crackled with the hair-raising energy of fifty thousand people going nuts all at once. Annie pulled the Dodger-blue bandanna she was wearing off her head and started whipping it around as the stadium DJ busted out the “Ya’ll ready for this?” anthem.

  “Yeah! Wooohahoooo!” Kenny screamed as he pounded Ray on the back.

  Ray, smiling and getting beer spilled on him, soaked it all in. The churning sea of Dodger blue and white, the checkerboard pattern in the outfield grass, his best friend on one side, his wife on the other.

  As the crowd continued to roar, Ray dried a palm on the leg of his shorts and reached under Denise’s vintage Piazza jersey and cupped her belly, where their child was growing inside her.