Whatever Derek said to him had worked. Max wasn’t exactly calm, but he was willing to wait for Derek and Gabriel to join him in the fight.
Gazing across the room at Derek, who’d been scowling ever since he arrived at the house, I said, “You’d think we all had tracking devices planted on us with the way they find us so fast.”
“It does seem that way, love,” Derek said. “But I’ve checked my car each time. It’s clean.”
It was a very good sign that he called me love, because I knew he had to be furious with me for going into the canyon. But I couldn’t let Max go down there alone. Not that I had been much help to him. My hand still smarted from the stickers I’d collected from that prickly bush. I’d slathered it in antiseptic cream as soon as I got back to the house.
It was also good to know that Derek had actually been checking for tracking devices regularly. I never would have thought of that, but we’d already established beyond a doubt that his mind worked differently from mine.
“Hey, maybe they planted a device in the book,” I said, then shook my head. “No, that’s just stupid.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “At this point, nothing is out of the question. Bring me the book and I’ll check it.”
I had to bring it to him in pieces. He sat at the dining room table and went through every inch of every page, explaining that there were now tracking devices on the market that were as small and thin as a piece of tape.
“The book is clean,” he said finally.
“So these guys are just good trackers,” I said.
“Seems to be the case,” Derek said, still scowling. It had to be irritating as hell to know he was being bested by a group of local yokels. I was right there with him, and couldn’t wait to nail whoever had been dogging us all over northern California.
I gathered up the pieces of the book and carried them back to the desk in our bedroom. I took a minute to arrange them neatly on the desk, then pulled out my cell phone and took a photograph of the display. Under normal circumstances in my bookbinding studio at home, I would’ve been documenting every step of my work on Beauty, so it was time to play catch-up.
By the time I came back into the living room, Gabriel had arrived. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and I had to say, he looked almost as good as Derek did.
The four of us regrouped around the dining table as we had so many times before, regardless of whose house we were in. This gathering was different, though. Tonight we would finally take action. We made a plan.
The search would center around the Hollow. Gabriel had already copied a Google Earth map showing every home and outbuilding in the area. Then he and Derek divided the map into ten approximately equal-sized sections. Gabriel brought out his notebook computer and coordinated directions into the individual areas.
Derek called my father and put him on speakerphone, then asked him to round up ten or fifteen commune members who were good with guns and tracking. I knew Austin would be the first one on his list.
“I’ll get on the phone and call some others,” Dad said, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. He didn’t talk about it much, but he’d apparently been involved in a few dangerous operations in his past.
“And, Jim,” Derek continued, “can you recommend a discreet meeting place for all of us, around seven o’clock this evening?”
There was a pause; then Dad said, “Savannah’s restaurant has a private dining room. It’s Monday, so the place is closed. There’s a parking lot and entrance in the back. Nobody will be seen from the street.”
“Excellent suggestion,” Derek said, then noticed my eyes widen, and thought fast. “Would you mind approaching Savannah with that request, Jim?”
I grinned. Derek was getting to know my family so well. As bristly as Savannah could get, we both knew she would never say no to our father.
After we hung up from talking to Dad, it was time for me to bring up a thorny subject.
Dharma didn’t have its own police force, but a number of the commune members were proficient at tracking and shooting. Guru Bob handled most smaller skirmishes within the confines of the commune, but if things got out of hand, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department could be called in. We’d rarely had a need to call them in before, but this was a whole different ballgame.
“We should call Jaglom and Lee,” I said, “and probably the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department.”
“No cops,” Max said immediately.
“But we’ll need them to arrest the bad guys when we find Emily.” I touched Max’s shoulder and felt him tense up, but I went ahead and said, “Look, she might need an ambulance, Max. I’m sorry, but we’ll need the authorities on hand at some point.”
“Emily will be fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “Solomon’s just using her to get to me.”
I prayed he was right.
Derek squeezed my hand. “I’m afraid I agree with Max, darling. I’m hesitant to bring in law enforcement too early.”
“Me, too,” Gabriel said. “Sorry, babe, but they could try to pull the plug on the whole operation. Let’s just say my confidence level in them finding Emily is low to zero.”
I understood their feelings. We’d done all the groundwork and knew the players. We’d been the ones keeping Max safe, scoping out the survivalists, running searches on them, tracing recent weapon sales they’d made, along with keeping tabs on Solomon. None of us wanted to be told at the eleventh hour that it was time to step aside and let law enforcement take over. We wanted to be the ones to close the deal on Solomon.
I understood all that. And I felt for Max, too. The police had never helped him before. Why would they start now?
And how strange was it that I, not Derek, was the one who was insisting on a police presence? Times had certainly changed. Or maybe I’d just grown tired of running on pure adrenaline and terror every day. I wanted this nightmare to end. Tonight.
“I can see you’re struggling with this, love, so I propose a compromise. We’ll call the police after we begin the search.”
I thought about it for half a second. “Okay. I’ll make the calls.”
The others agreed. The key would be in the timing of the phone calls. Our San Francisco detectives would need at least an hour to get up here, so I would alert them sooner. The sheriff was close enough to get here quickly, so I would make the call to him later.
With any luck, they would all descend on Dharma at precisely the right time to arrest and drag off to jail the vicious creeps who’d snatched Emily.
“Are you ready?” Derek asked as the sun set over the canyon ridge. He pulled his gun from the holster beneath his arm, slid the magazine back to double-check that it was fully loaded, then slipped the gun back into its holster.
Abject fear began to dance a jig on my nerve endings as I watched him. But I was just going to have to get over that.
“I’m ready,” I said, breathing deeply as I zipped up my Windbreaker.
“Hell, yeah.” Max nodded brusquely and raised his rifle to prove he was all set.
I grabbed a few handfuls of Hershey’s Kisses and shoved them into both of my pockets.
Gabriel grinned. “Ready to roll.”
“Let’s go.”
It was dusk as we drove into the parking lot behind Savannah’s restaurant. The place was closed, but she was in there, as always, working in the kitchen, preparing stocks and sauces for the week.
After a brief but emotional reunion between Max and my brother Austin, who, thank goodness, didn’t slug his old friend in the stomach, we all got down to business. There were twenty of us gathered in Savannah’s private dining room. It was odd to be sitting at this table, discussing what was essentially a covert operation, with my father and brother in the same room. I figured it had to be even stranger for them than it was for me.