Gone

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Also by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge

  Title Page

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Two

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part Three

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Part Four

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Epilogue

  Chapter 104

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Forced into hiding from a mass murderer seeking vengeance, Detective Michael Bennett must decide whether to stay and protect his family, or hunt down the man who is hunting them.

  When Bennett arrested Manuel Perrine, he thought he had brought an end to the drug cartel boss’s reign of terror and would get justice for the murder of his best friend. But then, during the trial, Perrine escaped.

  In a bloody shoot-out, Bennett killed Perrine’s wife. Now he wants nothing more than to make Bennett suffer, to make him pay.

  The whole family are moved to a safe-house in California. But as Perrine’s attacks on US soil become more vicious and more daring, it’s clear there is a war coming.

  No one, anywhere, is safe.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Detective Michael Bennett novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.

  James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books specifically for young readers. James is a founding partner of Booktrust’s Children’s Reading Fund in the UK. In 2010, he was voted Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards in New York.

  MICHAEL LEDWIDGE is the author of ten novels, including seven New York Times bestsellers co-authored with James Patterson. He lives with his wife and three children in Connecticut.

  ALSO BY JAMES PATTERSON

  DETECTIVE MICHAEL BENNETT SERIES

  Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)

  I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)

  ALEX CROSS NOVELS

  Along Came a Spider

  Kiss the Girls

  Jack and Jill

  Cat and Mouse

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Roses are Red

  Violets are Blue

  Four Blind Mice

  The Big Bad Wolf

  London Bridges

  Mary, Mary

  Cross

  Double Cross

  Cross Country

  Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)

  I, Alex Cross

  Cross Fire

  Kill Alex Cross

  Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

  Alex Cross, Run

  Cross My Heart (to be published November 2013)

  THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB SERIES

  1st to Die

  2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)

  3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)

  4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)

  The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)

  7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)

  8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)

  9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)

  10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)

  11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)

  12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)

  PRIVATE NOVELS

  Private (with Maxine Paetro)

  Private London (with Mark Pearson)

  Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)

  Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)

  Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)

  Private Down Under (with Michael White)

  Private LA (with Mark Sullivan, to be published January 2014)

  STAND-ALONE THRILLERS

  Sail (with Howard Roughan)

  Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)

  Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)

  Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)

  Toys (with Neil McMahon)

  Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)

  Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)

  Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)

  NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)

  Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)

  Mistress (with David Ellis)

  NON-FICTION

  Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)

  The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)

  ROMANCE

  Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)

  The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)

  FAMILY OF PA
GE-TURNERS

  MAXIMUM RIDE SERIES

  The Angel Experiment

  School’s Out Forever

  Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

  The Final Warning

  Max

  Fang

  Angel

  Nevermore

  DANIEL X SERIES

  The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)

  Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)

  Game Over (with Ned Rust)

  Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)

  WITCH & WIZARD SERIES

  Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)

  The Gift (with Ned Rust)

  The Fire (with Jill Dembowski)

  The Kiss (with Jill Dembowski)

  MIDDLE SCHOOL NOVELS

  Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou)

  Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts)

  I FUNNY

  I Funny (with Chris Grabenstein)

  I Even Funnier (with Chris Grabenstein, to be published December 2013)

  TREASURE HUNTERS

  Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein)

  CONFESSIONS SERIES

  Confessions of a Murder Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)

  Confessions: The Private School Murders (with Maxine Paetro, to be published October 2013)

  GRAPHIC NOVELS

  Daniel X: Alien Hunter (with Leopoldo Gout)

  Maximum Ride: Manga Vol. 1–7 (with NaRae Lee)

  For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit www.jamespatterson.co.uk

  Or become a fan on Facebook

  PROLOGUE

  FATHER AND SON

  ONE

  IT WAS THREE A.M. on the button when the unmarked white box truck turned onto the steep slope of Sweetwater Mesa Road and began to climb up into the exclusive Serra Retreat neighborhood of Malibu, California.

  Majestic mountain peaks rising to the left, thought Vida Gomez as she looked out from the truck’s passenger seat. Nothing but moonlit ocean to the right. No wonder so many movie stars lived here.

  As if the sights matter, Vida thought, tearing her eyes off the million-dollar view and putting them back on the screen of the iPhone in her lap. What was up with her? She never got distracted on a job. She took a calming breath. She seriously needed to buckle down. Taking her eye off the ball here would not be prudent. Not tonight.

  She was in the midst of typing a text when out of the corner of her eye she noticed the driver trying to look down her shirt again. No wonder she was a little off her game, she thought with a muffled sigh. The new, pudgy driver that the cartel had sent at the last minute was incompetence walking on two legs. That was just like them to send her some fat-assed chump for “training” at the last minute. All he had to do was drive, and apparently, he couldn’t get even that done.

  The next time the oaf let his eyes wander, Vida made a command leadership decision. She calmly lifted the MGP-84 machine pistol in her lap and placed the long, suppressed barrel to one of his stubbled chins.

  “Do you think we’re on a hot date here tonight? On the way to the prom, maybe? By all means, give me your best line, Romeo. If it’s good enough, maybe we’ll skip first and go straight to second base,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” the suddenly sweating driver said after a long, tense beat. “I made a mistake.”

  “No, that was your parents,” Vida said, digging the gun in hard under his fleshy chin. “Now, here’s the deal. You can either (a) keep your eyes on the road, or (b) I can splatter what little brains you possess all over it instead. Which do you prefer?”

  “A,” the driver said, nodding rapidly after a moment. “I choose a. Please, señorita.”

  “Excellent,” Vida said, finally lowering the chunky black metal pistol. “I’m so glad we had this little talk.”

  The truck killed its lights before they pulled into the darkened driveway of 223 Sweetwater Mesa Road ten minutes later. She was about to retext the alarm company tech they’d bribed when he finally texted back. It was a one-word message, but it was enough.

  Disabled, it said.

  She wheeled around and slid open the small window that separated the rear of the truck from the cab. The eight cartel soldiers crouched there were wearing black balaclavas over their faces, black fatigues, black combat boots.

  “Ándele,” she barked rabidly at them. “It’s time. What are you waiting for?”

  The truck’s rear double doors opened silently, and the black-clad men issued forth onto the shadowed driveway and began gearing up. They strapped themselves into military-grade personal protective equipment, black nuclear-biological-chemical suits. Each suit had a self-contained breathing apparatus and was made of rubber over reinforced nylon and charcoal-impregnated felt.

  Vida joined her men, slowly and carefully fitting the positive-pressure mask over her face before meticulously checking the suit’s material for any slits or gaps, as per her extensive training. When she was done, she bit her lip as she stared up at the seven-thousand-square-foot mission-style house behind the wrought iron gate. She let out a tense breath and closed her eyes, wondering if she was going to throw up the flock of butterflies swirling in her stomach.

  She felt stage fright every time right before a job, but this was ridiculous. It was the uncertainty of what they were about to try. What they were about to do was … something new, something so volatile, so incredibly dangerous.

  I really don’t want to do this, Vida thought for the hundredth time.

  Who was she kidding? As if she had a choice after accepting her latest promotion. The path before her was excessively simple. Either go through with what the cartel had ordered or blow her own brains out right here and now.

  She stared at the machine pistol in her heavy rubber-gloved hand, weighing her options. Then, after another moment, she did what she always did. She pulled herself the hell together and nodded to her right-hand man, Estefan. Two muffled coughing sounds ripped the warm quiet as he blew off the hinge bolts of the iron walkway gate beside the driveway with a suppressed shotgun.

  “Remember, now. No guns unless completely necessary,” Vida said through the face mask’s built-in microphone as one of the men handed her a small video camera. “You all know why we are here. We are here to leave a message.”

  One by one, the men nodded. The only sound now was that of their breathing from the interior speakers, an amplified metallic, metronomic hiss. Vida turned on the camera and pointed it at the men as they poured through the open gate and converged on the darkened house.

  TWO

  THREE THOUSAND MILES EAST of balmy Serra Retreat, it was cold and raining along the still-dark shore of south-western Connecticut. Downstairs, in his basement workout room, Michael Licata, recently appointed don of the Bonanno crime family, was covered in sweat and grunting like a Eurotrash tennis pro as he did his Tuesday kettle-bell workout.

  As he felt the burn, Licata thought it was sort of ironic that out of all the rooms in his new, $8.8 million mansion on the water in moneyed Westport, Connecticut, he liked this unfinished basement the best. The exposed studs, the sweat stains on the cement, his weights and beat-up heavy bag. Pushing himself to the limit every morning in this unheated, raw room was his way of never forgetting who he was and always would be: the hardest, most ruthless son of a bitch who had ever clawed his way up from the gutter of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

  The short and stocky fifty-year-old dropped the forty-pound kettle bell to the concrete floor with a loud crack as he heard the intercom buzz on the basement phone. It was his wife, he knew from bitter experience. Not even six-thirty a.m. and already she was on his case, wanting some bullshit or other, probably for him to pick up their perpetually lat
e housekeeper, Rita, from the train station again.

  And he’d imagined that by working from home instead of from his Arthur Avenue social club in the Bronx, he could get more done. Screw her, he thought, lifting the bell back up. The man of the house wasn’t taking calls at the moment. He was freaking busy.

  He was stretched out on the floor, about to do an ass-cracking exercise called the Turkish get-up, when he looked up and saw his wife. She wasn’t alone. Standing there in the doorway with her was his capo and personal bodyguard, Ray “The Psycho” Siconolfi.

  Licata literally couldn’t believe his eyes. Because how could it be possible that his stupid wife would bring Ray here, into his sanctuary, to see him shirtless and sweating like a hairy pig in just his bicycle shorts?

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Licata said, red-faced, glaring at his wife as he stood.

  “It’s my fault?!” Karen shrieked back at him, like his very own silk-pajama-clad witch. “You don’t answer the frigging phone!”

  That was it. Licata turned like a shot-putter and slung the kettle bell at her. Before she could move, the forty-pound hunk of iron sailed an inch past her ear and went right through the Sheetrock, into the finished part of the basement, popping a stud out of the frame on the way. She moved then, boy. Like a scalded squirrel.

  “This better —” Licata said, staring death up into his six-foot five-inch bodyguard’s eyes, “and, Ray, I mean better—be fucking good.”

  Ray, ever expressionless, held up a legal-sized yellow envelope.

  “Somebody just left this on the gatehouse doorstep,” Ray said, handing it to him. “I heard a truck or something, but when I came out, it was gone.”

  “What the—? Is it ticking?” Licata said, shaking his head at him.