Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(117)

“Her head man. He hit her in her fucking head, man.”

“Marty,” Luke says firmly. “Take a breath, OK? I get it. But take a breath. This is what was supposed to happen.”

Marty’s lips sputter, and he grips the handle next to his arm and nods.

“We’re good,” Luke says, starting the engine. “Everything’s good. We’re rolling, and we’ll have him soon.”

Luke pulls out of the parking spot. As the exit booth comes into view, he sees the Camry’s taillights swing out onto the service road.



“Something’s wrong.”

It’s Ed Baker who says it first, but they’re all feeling it. The entire crew sitting in front of the bank of computer screens. The warehouse is air-conditioned, thank God, otherwise their combined sweat would be stinking up the place. And if there’s anything Cole hates more than waiting, it’s body odor.

They were able to watch most of Charley’s walk through the terminals on hacked airport surveillance cams as well as through her TruGlass. But only once she made it to the parking lot did Cole stop pacing. It’s not just the suspense of watching. He’s never worked this closely with these team members before, and that makes Ed nervous. And Ed getting nervous makes him nervous. No compartmentalization means no plausible deniability if things go wrong, if certain hacks are discovered.

An airport, he kept thinking. Why did all of this have to focus on an airport? No way can he launch microdrones yards away from two major active runways.

Now they’re staring at the hazy black square offered up by Charlotte’s TruGlass.

“We sure it’s live?” Ed asks.

One of the computer techs says, “It shows as live, and I don’t see any interruption in the signal since she left the terminal.”

“The center of the screen’s lighter than everything around it,” Cole says. “She’s live—she’s just keeping her eyes closed for some reason.”

“Why?” Ed asks. “Why is she keeping her eyes closed? She’s in the fucking trunk. He can’t see her.”

“Maybe she’s opening them and there’s no light source?” another tech asks.

“Something’s wrong,” Ed growls.

Cole’s phone rings. He expects it to be another call from Dylan, another call he plans to ignore. But it’s not. It’s a call he should have prepared for, but he’s had a lot to prepare for over the last few days, so this particular possibility didn’t get a dress rehearsal.

Julia Crispin says, “Tell me you have teams in place.” No doubt she’s been sitting in front of her laptop in her mirrored basement office in Rancho Santa Fe, sipping her drink of choice while tending to paperwork and occasionally glancing over at Charlotte’s feed like it’s a nostalgic TV rerun.

From the tone of her voice, it sounds like she’s just realized this won’t be an episode of The Golden Girls.

“So you’ve been checking in on us?” Cole asks.

“It’s my technology. I’ll do whatever I want with it. Tell me you’ve prepared for this, Cole.”

“A lot has gone into this night, Julia, and it’s better if I don’t tell you about any of it. That way if something doesn’t go exactly as planned, then—”

“Cole.”

Her voice is frosty enough to silence him.

“If something happens to that woman, there will be consequences.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but something is happening to that woman, and it’s the result of a series of choices she’s made.”

“Choices forced on her by Dylan Cody, and now you. If you don’t have teams in place, get them in place now, Cole. Because if that woman doesn’t make it out of this, I will fucking ruin you and your family’s company and every last member of your family. Do you understand me?”

But it must be a rhetorical question because she hangs up before Cole can answer, and before he can point out the potential self-inflicted wounds inherent in such an endeavor.

When he turns back to the monitor bank, Ed’s studying him.

Cole waves his concern away.

“Do we have real-time traffic?” he asks.

The web tech says, “Yeah. They’re forty-five minutes out.”

“Good. My bird’s gassed up, right?”

Ed nods.

“Good,” Cole says, as if everything’s going to plan.



“Get closer,” Marty says for what must be the tenth time.

“Marty, we talked about this.” Luke’s trying to focus, even relax himself a bit. They’re traveling the reverse of the route Pemberton took on the night of the Camry stash, and that’s good. That means he’s behaving as expected, taking them to the Temecula house. This is the time to focus, get their breath. But Marty’s decided it’s time for a freak-out.

In the back seat, the boys are quiet, but in the rearview mirror, Luke catches glimpses of their eyes moving back and forth between him and Marty like dogs following a tennis ball.

“We can’t see her, for fuck’s sake,” Marty barks.

“We can see her right there,” Luke says, pointing to the GPS tablet. “Marty, I’ve been tailing him for days, if he recognizes the Jeep and panics when he’s got her in the trunk, we’re in uncharted territory. That’s what the tracker’s for.”