Relentless

right.”
    She regarded me with suspicion.
    “No,” I said, “you are, you’re right. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go. We’ve been through a lot today, and it’s not over yet. We still have to deal with Waxx, and that’s enough. Dealing with Waxx is all by itself too much.”
    In the backseat, Lassie yawned loudly, and Milo said, “Dad, it’s just that if I tried to explain the science, it would sound like gobbledygook to you.”
    “I’ve let it go, Milo.”
    “If it makes you feel better, Dad, I can guarantee you the saltshaker won’t set your tongue on fire.”
    “That’s good to know, son.”
    “It won’t freshen your breath, either.”
    As we were entering the Los Angeles area, the day wanted to move on toward Japan, and I let it go.
    A short while later, the twilight wanted to follow the day, and I let it go.
    Letting go of things greatly relaxed me. I felt that at last I was making progress and that one day I would be the same Cubby that I had always been, would hold fast to my best qualities, but would have become a Cubby who could let things go.
    We were now drawing very close to the moment when one of the three of us would be shot dead, whereafter life would never be the same.

   The Shearman Waxx house looked exactly like it did on Google Earth: cream-colored walls, terra-cotta window surrounds, a handsome Spanish Mediterranean residence set behind forty-foot magnolias that canopied the front yard. At night, romantic landscape lighting made the place magical.
    Larger than expected, set on a markedly more expansive property than was customary in crowded Laguna Beach, the Waxx residence suggested an owner who possessed wealth and power. Neither Penny nor I had the stomach to torture information out of Waxx. Here, more than anywhere else, we might find files and other records regarding his mission and the group symbolized by the triskelion.
    At some point during the day, Waxx would surely have been missed and a search for him undertaken by his colleagues. But they would be expecting to find him somewhere in that northern county and would not imagine that he’d been kidnapped and taken home in a marathon twelve-hour drive.
    Nevertheless, we cruised by the house a few times, looking for the trouble that might be looking for us. All seemed calm.
    No lights shone at any of the windows.
    Using the fob on his key ring, I opened one of the doors at the pair of double garages, and Penny drove the Hummer inside. I put the door down.
    Having expected a security alarm to be triggered when we drove into the garage, I was ready to let myself quickly into the house with Waxx’s keys and enter the disarming code that we had found in his wallet. But no alarm sounded.
    The three of us, with dog, stood in the garage for a minute, very still, listening, waiting for someone to appear. No one came.
    Waxx remained unconscious in his chains, and we decided to leave him in the Hummer while we completed a tour of the house. Once we had found his files or evidence of a safe, we might need to scare a few answers out of him.
    I unlocked the door between garage and house. Penny and I, guns drawn, shepherded Milo along a hallway into a kitchen. We turned on lights as we went.
    Evidently designed for frequent use by caterers, the enormous kitchen was not just industrial but also off-putting. The appliances were all stainless steel, as were the counters and the backsplashes and the cabinets. The autopsy theater in a morgue was not as cold-looking as this kitchen.
    In room after room, the furniture was stark, the upholstery all in shades of black and silver, the carpets gray, and the artwork so modern that it appeared to have been painted by machines.
    We entered a large room that lacked furniture and art. The black-granite floor, gray walls, and indirect cove lighting most likely had been intended to convey a serene mood, but instead the decor made me feel empty. If you were disposed to despair, this place would induce it in but a minute.
    As if meditating or in communion with the darkness until we turned on the lights, the woman in Shearman Waxx’s wallet photos stood in the center of the room.
    She was older than in the latest photo, at least in her mid-seventies. She remained a handsome woman, although thinner than I had imagined, tall and storklike.
    Wearing a well-tailored suit—long black skirt, gray jacket, gray blouse—and a simple but stunning diamond necklace, she took pride in her appearance.
    If