Bourne parked off the shoulder of Highway 1 and came up the winter-green hillside toward Abbey’s Malibu rental house on foot. He had his Glock ready. He moved slowly and soundlessly through the tall weeds, climbing higher. Above him, he could see the sprawling mansion terraced into the slope, leaning on high stilts. The signal from Abbey’s phone told him that she was still inside the house, exactly where she should be, but he didn’t trust what the signal told him.
He’d tried calling her phone over and over. There was no answer.
Where are you?
His fears for Abbey threatened to crowd out his concentration, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He needed to focus. But he kept seeing her face, and he kept beating himself up for missing the secret that had been in front of him the whole time. Abbey wasn’t in the middle of this by accident. She’d been set up. Fooled. Seduced. As soon as news hit the media that novelist Abbey Laurent was writing a book about the La Sienta Ranch fire, she’d become a threat. If she dug into the conspiracies behind the fire, then she might find her way to the truth about Vix. And the Files.
That was something Garrett Parker couldn’t allow.
Garrett Parker. AI engineer. Treadstone source. Murderer.
Focus! Channel your anger!
Bourne forced his rage into a box and locked it away. Through the trees, he saw the driveway that curved up the slope toward the house. When he listened, he heard the distant thunder of the ocean and the buzz of bees in the California poppies. And something else.
Somewhere near the house, a sharp metallic click cut through the morning silence.
A car door.
He broke from the trees onto the strip of blacktop pavement. The garage and the front door—the area where he’d fought Rod Holtzman—were barely fifty yards away around the next curve in the road. He ran until he could see the driveway widen outside the house. A red Tesla Model 3 was parked there, its driver’s door and trunk both open, next to Garrett’s Lexus convertible.
But he didn’t see Abbey’s Audi.
Behind the Tesla, the front door of the house stood ajar.
Bourne ran to the far side of the driveway, where the wall of the garage gave him cover. He waited. Not even five minutes later, a woman emerged from the house, her face obscured by the two banker’s boxes she carried. She brought the boxes to the trunk of the Tesla and squeezed them into the interior. From behind, Bourne recognized the woman’s lush honey-colored hair and her shapely curves.
Lana Moreno.
Garrett’s assistant.
Silently, he came up behind her. She didn’t hear him; she was too busy arranging boxes in the trunk. When she finally shut the trunk and turned around, she screamed as she found herself staring into the barrel of his Glock six inches from her face. Her eyes widened as she recognized Bourne behind the gun.
“You!”
“Hello, Lana. Going somewhere?”
“Oh my God! Get that out of my face!”
“Then tell me where Garrett is. And Abbey.”
Her eyes darted evasively. She tried to sound casual, but the arrogant confidence she’d shown during their first meeting had evaporated. Lana was scared. Someone or something had pushed her over the edge.
“Abbey’s in the house.”
Bourne glanced at the house, then waited a beat before saying anything more. “Then why isn’t she answering her phone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s got it muted or something.”
“Where’s her car?”
“Garrett took her car.”
“Took it where?”
“He had a meeting in the city.”
“Why not take his?”
“The brakes are rattling. It’s not safe.”
Bourne gestured at the Tesla. “What’s with the boxes?”
“Garrett asked me to put some things in storage.”
He pushed the Glock against Lana’s forehead until it was denting her skin. “You know what I thought when I first met you, Lana? I thought you were nobody’s fool. But it looks like I was wrong. Garrett’s got you in deep. You better start looking out for yourself if you don’t want to go down with him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped.
“Then take me to Abbey. Because she’s inside, right?”
Lana hesitated. “Right.”
He jabbed the barrel of the Glock in the direction of the front door. Lana walked a couple of steps in front of him, and he waited for her to make her move. Because he knew she would. Her head kept bobbing toward the open fields, gauging when to run. Near the front door, she suddenly broke free, but he leaped like a cat, grabbed her by the belt, and threw her down to the blacktop of the driveway. His knee leaned into her chest, making her choke, and as she gasped for air, he shoved the Glock into her open mouth.
“Where. Is. Abbey?”
He yanked away the gun.
“Garrett took her,” Lana gasped, spitting blood onto her lip.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Bourne moved the gun back between her teeth, and Lana rushed on.
“I don’t know! I swear I don’t know where he is. I’m supposed to pick him up later, but that’s all I know.”
“Pick him up where?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
He shook his head in exasperation. “You know everything he’s done. Right? You’ve obviously been his accessory from the beginning. Do you think he’s going to let you walk away? This is not just fraud and extortion, Lana. Don’t you get that? It’s murder. One hundred and three counts of murder. Everyone who died in that fire.”
“No! That was an accident! He swore to me!”
“He lied. He killed Vix to get the Files, and then he set the fire to cover it up. What did he tell you, that the two of you will run away together? He’ll sell the Files, and the two of you will live on an island somewhere? You really think that’s the plan? Lana, as soon as you pick him up, he’s going to kill you, too.”
“Garrett would never do that! He loves me!”
“He uses you. That’s what he does with women. Like he used Vix. Like he used Abbey. You do what he wants, and then he eliminates you.” Bourne pinched her face hard between his fingers. “What happened overnight? Tell me.”
Lana closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her stare had grown hard. “He called and said everyone was getting too close. The intelligence agencies. The Chinese. The Russians. He was sure the Russians were the ones who’d hired Rod Holtzman. He said if he didn’t move fast, it was all about to come crashing down on our heads. So he set up a meeting with Callie Faith. The idea was to get the money for the laptop, and then we’d disappear.”
“And Abbey?”
“He knew she’d never give up the book. Sooner or later, she’d figure out what he did. Plus, he—he needed her as leverage.”
“What does that mean? Leverage against who?”
Lana swallowed hard. “You. He thought you’d get in the way of the deal. If he had Abbey, then he had something to trade. You walk away or Abbey dies.”
Bourne’s eyes burned. “I’m going to ask you again. Where. Is. Abbey?”
“And I’m telling you the truth, I don’t know. Garrett drugged her. He tied her up and put her in the trunk of her car. He said he was going to drop her somewhere. He didn’t want her with him when he was doing the deal.”
“The deal fell apart,” Bourne said.
“I know. He called me. He was out of his head. He still had the laptop—he said he barely got it back—but the whole thing was a disaster. We needed to run. Now. Today. He told me to gather up all of his documents so we could burn them. Then we’d get out of the country. He’d sell the laptop somewhere else. He figured there would be buyers in the Mideast who would pay ten times the price.”
“What about Abbey?”
Lana blanched. “He had to deal with her first.”
Bourne took the Glock and put it under her chin, tilting it so her eyes stared upward at the blue sky. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Listen to me, Lana. I need to find them. I need to know where Garrett took her. Either you help me or I pull the trigger. Right now, I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t care what I do to you or anyone else. Do you understand me? Look in my eyes and tell me you understand.”
“I do! I do!”
“Then how do I find Garrett?”
“There may be a way!” she told him, words spilling out one after another. “I don’t know, but if Garrett forgot, there may be a way. He was so rattled he may not have remembered to get rid of it.”
“Get rid of what?”
“A tracker. He hid a GPS tracker in Abbey’s car a while back. He always wanted to know where she was. In case she—in case she turned on him.”
“How do we find it?”
“I can probably call it up on his computer.”
Bourne got to his feet and yanked Lana up with him. He pushed her ahead of him, and she led them inside the hillside mansion. It was quiet, and it smelled of Abbey’s perfume in the hallway. But she wasn’t here. He didn’t even know if she was still alive. He felt urgency building in his chest, and he gave Lana another hard shove.
“Move. Fast.”
She practically ran into the room that Garrett used as his office, facing east toward the Malibu hills. Bourne followed, and he spotted the glinting shards of a heavy vase sprinkled across the plush carpet. He could guess what that meant. Abbey had struggled. She’d fought back. But she’d lost.
Lana sat in front of Garrett’s computer, and Bourne put the gun barrel against the back of her head. “You have one minute. Then I shoot.”
He heard her crying. Her arms shook as she tried to type. The computer was slow to awaken, and she banged her fists on the desk in frustration.
“Thirty seconds.”
“I’m trying! I’m fucking trying!”
“Ten seconds.”
“Here!” she screamed at him. “Here’s the program! It’s still active! It’s still in her car!”
“Where is she?”
“La Sienta Ranch,” she gasped. “Garrett took her to the fire.”