Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

But nothing happened that time either.

The Hummer roared to life, speeded forward, raced to the end of the building. The bald guy wrenched himself free of me and jumped into the other vehicle. The goateed guy vaulted into the car as well, and it took off in pursuit of Roger.

One of the garage-door openers still lay on the ground, abandoned by the bald guy.

I picked up the Ruger and took off on foot, but both Hummers were gone. I could hear them squealing around a corner, then I heard the screech of brakes.

Shouted voices.

I kept running. They must have headed him off. Trapped him.

I ran.

About five seconds later the explosion came, deafeningly loud, a blast as loud as anything I’d ever heard in wartime, echoing off the buildings. And I knew what had happened. They’d set off the C-4.

But I kept running.

I reached the end of the building, looped around, saw nothing.

I ran until there was a stitch in my side so painful it almost brought me to a halt, but I ran through it.

A yellow-orange blaze illuminated the sky on the far side of the next building over.

As I raced, I did something I’d never done before: I prayed.

Then I reached the second building and saw the conflagration. A bonfire twenty feet high. The wreck of a Hummer, its carcass barely visible behind the veil of flame.

“No!” I shouted.

Only one car. The other was gone.

I got to within twenty feet of the fiery wreck before the wall of heat hit me. I stopped, tried to get closer. The Hummer’s windows had blown out. Shattered glass was strewn for dozens of feet.

I shouted, moved in closer, saw the shape inside.

A hand clutching the pillar between where the driver’s window had been and the window behind it. A human hand, yes, but blackened. Burned almost to a husk.

Roger’s wedding ring on one of its fingers.

On its charred wrist was my father’s Patek Philippe.

Afterward, I wandered the streets of West Baltimore for a long while. I don’t know how long. I lost track of time. I felt my cell phone vibrate several times but ignored it.

Eventually I answered the phone and heard Garvin’s voice.

He came by in a Maryland cab and took me to the Union Station parking garage. A long, silent ride. Expensive, too. My jeans and sweatshirt were ripped and soiled and reeked of smoke, and pretty soon the entire cab smelled of it, too.

I retrieved the Defender, drove over to Lauren’s house, and let myself in.

I’D FACED all sorts of danger back in the day, in Bosnia and Iraq. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Lauren what had just happened. I couldn’t bear to tell her – and Gabe – that I’d failed them after all.

I’d made a promise to Gabe, and I’d broken it.

As devastating as my brother’s death had been, the thought of telling Lauren and Gabe about it was worse.

I needed to make things right before I could face them. So I quickly and quietly gathered up some of my things from the guest room, intending to slip out of the house while they both slept and head over to my apartment.

Gabe was in the hallway when I emerged.

“What are you doing awake?” I whispered.

“You smell like smoke.”

“Yeah,” I said, my hand on the doorknob. “It’s late. You should be asleep.”

I had to get away from him because I was afraid I couldn’t hold things in anymore. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about his father. That was his mother’s responsibility.

“Something wrong?” he said.

I pulled him into me and gave him a hug, long and hard.

When he let go, he said, “What was that for?”

“I need to leave,” I said. “I just wanted to say good-bye, and I wanted you to know I love you. And that I’ll always be there for you. No matter what happens. Okay? You can’t get rid of me so easy.”

Gabe looked even more confused at my words. “Did something happen?”

I ignored the question. “Oh, and you know how you’re always asking me to teach you how to use a gun?”

“You serious?” he said, excited.

“No, nothing like that. Next best thing. I left you a Taser. It’s in the TV room.”

“Awesome,” he said.

“It’s not a toy.”

“Dude, I know that.”

“It’s only for emergencies.”

“Sure. Of course. Cool!”

“You’ll figure it out. You don’t need me for that.”

“Okay, Uncle Nick.”

“But Gabe? Read the manual, okay?”

“Okay.” He paused. “Uncle Nick, where are you going?”

“I just have another job to do,” I said.

When I got back to my loft, I fell fast asleep on the couch, still wearing my ripped and filthy jeans and sweatshirt and boots. At around eight in the morning my cell phone woke me up. My head was pounding, and my clothes gave off the stench of an ashtray, and for a moment I forgot where I was and what had happened.

And then I remembered.

“Nick.” It was Dorothy Duval. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

“Sorry about that. But you left me a voice mail last night?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“You okay? You sound lousy.”

I told her about how the swap had gone bad, and we talked for a while. I’d never heard her sound so gentle. “You know, I did get into your brother’s e-mail after all. And I found that woman’s cell phone number.”

“Woman?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“She called herself Candi Dupont, but her real name is Margaret Desmond. But I guess this is a little late, huh? I’m sorry, Nick.”

I SPENT a fair amount of time examining the Defender for any tracking devices until I was satisfied there weren’t any. Then I left my cell phone and BlackBerry in my loft, just to make sure the GPS locator chips inside them couldn’t be used against me, and I gave Garvin and Dorothy the number of one of the disposable cell phones I’d bought.

I was about to make a long drive, and I didn’t want Paladin knowing where I was or where I was heading.

At least, not until I got there.

THE DRIVE took me twelve hours, but I didn’t mind it. I finally got to spend some quality time in the Defender. Alone behind the wheel, in my own head. Listening to music. Burning tank after tank of petroleum. Thinking about my brother, mostly. I still didn’t know what to believe about him, what had happened to him. Whether he’d been taken hostage or had arranged an intricate disappearance, abandoning his wife and son. Why Lauren had been attacked. How much of her husband’s plan she’d known about – or had even been involved in planning.

There were so many questions, and there was one person, I was convinced, who’d have the answers. At least, if my analysis of the network traffic was correct.

Though I knew he wouldn’t exactly volunteer them.

Most of the drive was straight down 95, through Virginia and North Carolina, through South Carolina and finally into Georgia. The Defender is a great vehicle, but it’s really meant for desert maneuvers, not the interstate. It doesn’t like to go much faster than seventy miles an hour.

While I drove, I played a lot of Johnny Cash CDs – I was down South, after all. I listened to “All I Do Is Drive” a bunch of times, and when my mood turned darker, I put on his cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt.” That one could always wrench the heart out of me. Johnny – or is it Trent Reznor? – sings about how everyone he knows goes away in the end. How “I will let you down” and “I will make you hurt.”

Outside of Savannah, I stopped at a hunting outfitter and a hardware store. When I got back on 95, I took the exit for Waycross. Route 187 meandered south and then west for a while until it hit 129, at which point I drove south, on a road so straight it must have been drawn with a ruler.