Yoder paused.
“I mean it, Ms. Yoder,” Emma said.
She lowered the weapon.
Emma kept her own weapon aimed at the woman as she sidled back to the cabin’s entrance. “It’s okay, come on in,” she called out the door. To Yoder, she said, “Drop the weapon and shove it across the floor.”
Yoder slowly lowered the gun, placed the gun on the hardwood floor and slid it toward Emma. It hit the area rug and stopped.
“Are you the one they’re calling the mountain man?” Emma asked.
Yoder nodded. “I’ve been hiding up here for a few months now.”
Leon and Carrie stepped into the room. Leon squinted at Yoder. “That you, Sam?” he said. “I heard you were in Vegas.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “What would I be doing there?”
Leon grinned. “Folks said you were dancing. The kind of dancing that requires a pole, if you know what I mean.”
Yoder looked annoyed. “They would say that.” Her face cleared and she smiled at Carrie. “That you, Caribou?”
Carrie burst into tears and catapulted herself at Sam.
Emma lowered her gun, reached around Leon and closed the door.
“Sam grew up in Sunrise,” Leon said. “Left over a year ago, or so we thought. She was Brink’s girlfriend before he was cast off. Disappeared when she was ordered to be Shaw’s third wife.”
“Fourth,” Sam corrected him. She had an arm around Carrie’s shoulders.
Emma checked the cabin’s yard before holstering her gun.
“I’m sorry for your trouble, Sam,” she said. “And you’re welcome to eat anything you’d like.” She looked at Leon, told him, “I’m going to make a call to the FBI on a satellite phone that I brought, get some more ammunition and head back out.” Then she said to Carrie, “Will you tell them what they were going to do?”
Leon stepped in front of the girl.
“First, where are you heading to?” he asked. “They’re going to send a posse out after you.” He looked at Sam. “They were dragging Carrie to a cleansing. Ms. Caldridge here stopped them, but you know they’ll be coming for her.”
Sam nodded. “You’d best get out of town while you can,” she said to Emma.
Emma shook her head. “Not without Ryan. They’re holding my friend hostage and I don’t leave until he does. You all should stay here until the FBI comes. With Carrie’s testimony, they’ll be able to arrest the men at Shaw’s compound.”
Sam shook her head. “She can’t testify.”
That brought Emma up short. “What do you mean, can’t?”
“They’ll cast her out and take her sister in her place.”
“She’s only eleven,” Carrie said.
“The FBI will protect her,” Emma said.
Leon sighed. “Not likely. We’ve had lots of agents coming here, with their badges and threats of indictment, and after a week of questions they just leave. No one ever hears from them again. I suspect Shaw either pays them off or the governor calls them off. Lots of sympathizers with the cause at the capital.”
“That won’t work this time,” Emma said, “because I saw what happened and I won’t rest until they get to the bottom of it.”
The others looked at her with skepticism in their eyes, and in truth, she couldn’t blame them. If in the past they’d been disappointed in the power of the government to protect them, there was no reason now for them to think that she could do any differently.
“For now just lay low here,” Emma said. “I’ll let the FBI know your position. I’m headed back out.”
“To where?” Leon repeated.
“To the compound. They have Ryan and I’m getting him out.”
Sam and Leon both gaped at her. “You’re going back to the compound?” Leon said.
“Yes, I am,” Emma replied.
“Why don’t you wait for the FBI?” Sam said. “If what you say is true and they’ll come.”
Emma shook her head. “That will take too much time. Tarnell knows I’m here to get Ryan. If they call him, he’ll tell them about me and they’ll relocate Ryan. I need to hit them now, before they put it together and realize that I was the one who saved Carrie.”
“You’re really brave,” Carrie said.
“Not brave, crazy,” Leon said.
So be it, Emma thought.
It’s not over for Emma and Ryan.
Keep an eye out for the final installment of their adventure
coming in February 2013.
And if you enjoyed Gone, keep reading for a peek at
Dead Asleep
Jamie Freveletti’s latest thriller featuring Emma Caldridge.
Available Now
1
EMMA CALDRIDGE FOUND the bloody offering on her credenza just before midnight. She had been working late preparing samples and organizing slides in the makeshift lab set up in the rented villa’s spacious garage, and returned to the main house for another cup of coffee.
A small votive candle flickered next to the pile of feathers and hacked-off rooster foot, all arranged in a triangle on top of a pentagram drawn in a red substance that looked like blood. Emma’s lab, Pure Chemistry, was located in Miami, and she had seen Santeria altars before, with their animal sacrifice and elaborate rituals, but this was nothing like that. This was voodoo.
She stayed still and listened for any sound that might indicate that someone was still in the house. The room was dark, the world asleep. She heard the rush of waves in the distance, the sound of a breeze moving through the trees outside, but nothing that indicated intruders. Her heart thudded in her chest, but she remained motionless, silent. If the intruders were in the house and expected to hear her scream or otherwise react, they would be disappointed.
Emma was used to facing danger. While she hadn’t been tested in quite a while, her instincts had come back quickly when needed. Now, she remained quiet. The dark arts were a frightening thing, but she knew that the danger in the message wasn’t from the mass of feathers, the dead animal, or the pentagram. In her experience, the danger came from the humans who created the mess and would be part of the corporeal world.
That she remained still came from a more practical consideration as well. She knew that if the intruders weren’t in the house, it was entirely possible they were outside waiting for her to burst out of the front door and run to her car. Again, they would be disappointed. She rarely acted out of panic.
Emma pulled a pencil out of a cup next to the phone and used the eraser to lift the mass of feathers. Underneath, she found the doll. Its body was fashioned of hastily stitched burlap that sported brown yarn for hair and two black felt dots for eyes. A toothpick jutted from the center of the doll’s forehead.
Emma snorted at the crude scare tactic. She was unafraid of ghosts or demons and things that went bump in the night. If it made noise, then a human, animal, or physical element created it. She heard the sound of breaking glass in the distance. The intruder was in the garage.
She dropped the pencil and ran through the darkened house, out the French doors at the back of the kitchen and onto the lawn. The garage held her work. Work that she needed to keep Pure Chemistry functioning as a going concern. Her heart thudded when she thought of someone destroying it. As she neared the garage she saw the shape of something that may have been a man, standing in front of her carefully prepared slides. He swept something across the table and she watched in disbelief as bottles, jars, and the containers holding a week’s worth of work went crashing to the cement floor. She ran toward him, barely noticing the sharp gravel of the drive on the soles of her bare feet.
The garage’s overhead light cast a yellow glow over the tables that Emma had set up to form the work space. The man upended the nearest table, sending another set of Petri dishes, test tubes, and even a microscope tumbling to the floor.
“Stop it!” Her voice was harsh. He froze. As she neared she could see the machete in his hand. It was what he’d used to sweep the bottle
s off the table. “That’s my work. You have no right to be here.” The man stayed still, saying nothing and keeping his face turned away. Emma heard the gravel crunch behind her.
“He responds only to me.”
A woman stood at the corner of the drive. The weak moonlight lit her dark skin. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head and a pareo was knotted at her hip. She smiled, and her teeth, straight and white, glowed in the night, giving her a feral appearance. Emma leveled a stare at her. The woman’s hard eyes were what bothered her most. They revealed a person without a soul, like the witch women in the Sudan who rode with marauding armies, wore black robes, and beat on drums while soldiers killed everyone in the village. The woman at the corner of the drive reeked of depravity. It was all Emma could do not to take a step back, away from the force of ill will that flowed from her in waves.
“He’s my slave,” the woman said. “A zombie.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma replied, her voice sharp. She knew better than to show fear or acquiesce to the woman’s bizarre claim, but found it difficult to maintain her ground. She hadn’t expected to meet with evil in the middle of the night on a beautiful Caribbean island. Yet she managed to remain in place. “He’s a trespasser. And so are you.” Her anger fizzed at the deliberate destruction of her work. The woman moved closer, walking in an exaggerated, swaying motion.
“You are the outsider on this island. We belong here. Leave. And take your bottles and experiments with you.”
Emma glanced at the man, but he remained still, not moving a muscle. His stillness was strange, and a frisson of a chill ran through her. She wished that she had thought to bring her cell phone. She was loath to leave these two even for the time it would take to retrieve it. If she did, she was afraid they would destroy even more.
“I saw the mess you made in the entrance hall,” she said. “I’m going to call Island Security about your breaking and entering.”
The woman chuckled, but the noise sounded wicked. “Island Security knows better than to interfere with a bokor priestess.”
Emma was glad that the man stayed frozen during this exchange. She didn’t want to grapple with both the woman and him. She took a step toward the woman.
“But I don’t know better, and I’m telling you one more time to leave. Now. And take your companion and absurd talk of zombies with you.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Ahh, the scientist in you doesn’t believe? Be warned. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. With one word from me he’ll cut you to ribbons. There’s no negotiating with him.”
“I don’t recall offering any negotiation. I said leave. Both of you.” Emma kept the man in her peripheral vision. With the machete in his hand, he didn’t need to be a zombie to hurt her. Flesh and blood human would be enough.
The woman flicked her hand. “Kill her,” she said.
The man burst into motion. He raised the machete and sprinted to her, closing the distance between them in seconds. His hair hung in thick Rasta braids down his back, and his face was contorted in a strange spasm. His eyes pointed straight to the sky even as he ran toward her, swinging the machete. It was as if he was not in control and that his body was responding to a force outside of his mind. His tongue whipped right and left, adding to the horrific sight. He started screaming in a high-pitched wail.
Emma spun and ran toward the villa. She heard the priestess’s harsh laugh and the man’s feet on the gravel driveway behind her. She had the fleeting thought that the man was insane and if he were to catch her would show no mercy.
She made it to the French doors and wrenched them open, tumbling through the entrance and slamming them behind her. She turned and flipped the dead bolt just as he crashed into the glass with his hands. The machete’s blade made a clanging sound on the pane.
He stood there, breathing heavily, his weirdly canted eyes still staring upward. She crossed to the phone on the kitchen counter, dialed the emergency number and glanced back.
He was gone.
Also by Jamie Freveletti
Emma Caldridge Series
Dead Asleep
The Ninth Day
Running Dark
Running from the Devil
Robert Ludlum’s Covert One Series
Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal
About the Author
JAMIE FREVELETTI is a former trial lawyer, martial artist, and runner. She is the author of four books in her own Emma Caldridge series as well as Robert Ludlum’s Covert One novel, The Janus Reprisal. She lives in Chicago.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Dead Asleep copyright © 2012 by Jamie Freveletti.
GONE. Copyright © 2012 by Jamie Freveletti. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JANUARY 2013: 9780062264749
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Gone: An Emma Caldridge Novella: Part Two of Three Page 4
