Dryden looked around, painfully aware of how little cover the forest would offer against an airborne attack. Someone looking straight down from a hundred feet up would see through any of the ground cover, and even through most of the tree boughs.
“I bet you instructed Marnie and Claire to stay away from here,” Eversman said. “Didn’t you. I also bet they’re going to ignore that. In fact, I know it.”
Dryden looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“My people and I did use the system to see how this would turn out. We checked this morning. You know what we found? Headlines about you and Marnie Calvert disappearing. You were last seen alive in Los Angeles two days ago. She was last seen Saturday morning in Santa Monica. The two of you end up linked forever, because apparently she was tailing you at the time you both vanished. We found true-crime write-ups about you two, published as much as five years from now. You’re one of those oddball little stories that sticks in the public consciousness. Claire Dunham ends up missing, too—no one connects her disappearance to yours, but either way, she vanishes. So there you go. If no one ever sees you three again, what else could it mean? We’re going to bury you. All of you.”
The clatter of the rotors was much closer now, just over the summit of the tree-covered hill.
Dryden stopped looking around and leveled his gaze on Eversman.
“You didn’t check for headlines about anything strange happening in Monterey today,” Dryden said. “Did you?”
“Why would I? You three weren’t going to disappear from Monterey. There wasn’t going to be any record you’d been here at all. What headlines around here would I have looked for?”
“That’s why you didn’t know I was going to kill your guys,” Dryden said. “Because you never checked. You saw the stories about us missing, and you figured that told you everything.”
“It told me we’ll accomplish the part that matters. It told me enough.”
“What else didn’t you check for?” Dryden said. “Did you search for headlines about your own death?”
Eversman’s confidence remained intact. He held Dryden’s stare.
“You three disappear because we kill you,” Eversman said. “I take that to mean I win. That I live.”
On the last word, the sound of the incoming helicopter suddenly intensified. Dryden looked up and saw it through the pines, just passing over the hilltop, flying no more than twenty feet above the trees. It wasn’t the same chopper that had broken up the meeting last night in the Mojave, but it was similar enough. The setup was the same. Open bay door in back. A gunner strapped in place and leaning out with a big rifle. Probably another .50 caliber.
In the half second Dryden was distracted by the aircraft, Eversman moved—far more quickly than Dryden would have guessed. The guy lunged forward, bending at the waist for a headbutt. Dryden dodged it by spare inches, throwing his own head sideways and taking the impact as a graze against his cheekbone. He pivoted and shoved Eversman hard, meaning to send him sprawling, but the guy caught his balance and came on again, all adrenaline and desperation.
Dryden swung the Beretta toward him and fired. Three shots, a tight group centered in Eversman’s chest. Three little rips in his shirt fabric, instantly soaked with blood.
Eversman stopped as if he’d hit an unseen wall. For another second he stayed on his feet, his eyes wide and staring at Dryden. His mouth worked soundlessly; he looked like he was trying to say How?
Then he fell where he stood, probably dead before he hit, and Dryden forgot all about him. He spun toward the oncoming chopper—it was making straight for him, though he couldn’t possibly have been visible to the pilot yet. Dryden looked down at Eversman’s body and understood: The guy’s phone must have been relaying its GPS coordinates to the chopper, calling it in like a beacon. It would have been the easiest way for Eversman to guide it here from San Jose in the first place. Dryden turned east, toward the nearest edge of the forest, and ran.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
He knew already that escaping in the other Suburban wasn’t an option. Even if he could reach it unseen, it would be suicide to get into it and try driving away.
He ran toward it anyway, east through the forest, simply to move away from both Eversman’s body and the chopper itself. He tried to stick to the densest clusters of trees, the best visual screens available.
Fifty yards from where Eversman had fallen, Dryden stopped. He turned and crouched as low as he could in the brush. He watched the chopper slow and take up a hover directly above the corpse.