Gone (Michael Bennett)

to be the main level’s family room.
    She padded down the stairs and quietly around the corner of the kitchen. Just as she suspected, here they were. The things that go bump in the night, in the living flesh.
    In the family room, with their backs to her, Eddie and Ricky were splayed out on the couch, thumbs and fingers clicking madly as they played the NBA Street Homecourt PlayStation game that Leo had brought them that evening.
    “And one! Woop, woop! That’s right. I’m good,” Eddie said, raising his controller over his head as he did a little dance. “I’m gonna dunk on you like that all day long.”
    “Don’t you mean all night long, you little sneak thieves?” Mary Catherine said, and watched the kids jump.
    Eddie dropped his controller and lay facedown in front of the TV, pretending to sleep, as Ricky turned around, smiling bravely.
    “Mary Catherine. Hi. Um, you want to play winner?” he tried.
    “Don’t get cheeky with me. It’s almost two in the God-loving morning. Heads on your pillows this instant, or I’ll dunk the both of you in your rooms for a week. I’ve half a mind to talk to Mr. Cody and get you two night owls some milking work tomorrow. Maybe a week of watching the world go by from the underside of a cow will help you learn the meaning of a good night’s sleep.”
    “Cow punishment? No! You can’t! The horror!” Eddie yelled, jumping up and racing his brother out of the room, heading for the stairs.
    She’d turned off the set and was going back through the kitchen when she saw the full coffeepot. Leo, on duty now out on the porch, must have just made himself some. She primped in the mirror of the powder room and put her barn jacket over her pj’s before she poured a cup.
    She was going to kiss him, she decided with a smile as she went down the front hall with the mug. She’d been waiting for the right time for them to get closer, and tonight was the night.
    “Hark, I go here,” Mary Catherine said, smiling as she pushed through the screen door.
    It took several long seconds for Mary Catherine to piece together what the lump down on the opposite side of the porch was. Then she suddenly understood. The coffee cup fell from her shaking hand and exploded between her feet.
    Leo was down on the ground, on his back beside the toppled camp chair. Above him and above the porch’s hand railing, there was a large, ink blot–like splatter on the clapboards. Mary Catherine covered her mouth as she scanned Leo’s face. There was a hole over Leo’s open left eye and a dark pool beneath his head!
    Mary Catherine felt a shiver of cold shoot up her back as her breath left her. Leo was shot?! He was dead! No! How? What?
    The first thought that came to her racing mind was that it was an accident. Had he dropped his gun?
    But then she heard something. It came from somewhere off to the right, in the darkness by the main road. It was a whistle, the low double whistle of someone getting someone else’s attention. It was followed after a moment by the distinct and brief, jagged crackle of a radio.
    Mary Catherine stood there in the darkness and silence, not moving, not breathing, the spilled coffee staining her slippers.
    They found us , she thought as she felt a sudden presence in the hallway behind her. As she turned toward it, she was grabbed in a bear hug and violently yanked back into the house, a callused hand pressing hard over her mouth before she could scream.

PART FOUR
    FACE TIME
     

CHAPTER 81
     
    THE NSA’S INTELLIGENCE PACKAGE on Tomás Neves and the members of his MS-13 set came in around eleven that night.
    It was extensive. At the top were all ingoing and outgoing calls and texts to and from everyone’s home and cell phones. Next came e-mails and Google searches. There were tax returns from the IRS, license plate numbers from the DMV.
    “Big Brother’s been working overtime, I see,” Detective Diaz said, licking his thumb as he went through one of the stacks.
    Diaz was right. There was almost too much info, if that were possible. Emily and Diaz and I ran out of desk space and had to actually lay out all the papers on the floor to try to get a handle on it.
    Since our breakthrough the day before, three more people had been added to our team to give us a hand. There was a hulking, fresh-out-of-the-academy FBI agent from Brooklyn named Ed Kelly and a couple of veteran LA-office Immigration and Customs Enforcement people, Agents Joe Irizarry and Steve Talerico.
    The ICE