Long Gone Read Free Page B

call his father—sad, but so true.
    “I need a favor.” He strapped his gun holster to his calf and reached for his jeans.   
    “What kind of favor?”  
    “I need you to fly me to Myrtle Beach tonight, right now. It’s a matter of life and death,” he added, stepping into his Levis. 
    “Whose death?”
    “Mine.” Considering his life wouldn’t be worth living if anything happened to Sky, that wasn’t an exaggeration. 
    His father breathed heavily on the other end.  
    “Y es or no? I don’t have much time.”
    “Fine. I’ll meet you at the airport in half an hour.”
    “Make that twenty minutes—please,” Drake tacked on. In truth, he was taken aback by his father’s cooperation.
    Connor hung up on him. 
    Stowing his phone in his rear pocket, Drake turned toward his closet to pack a bag. Having no idea what he was up against, he tossed a hodgepodge of clothing into his black duffel, stuffing in a dozen spare clips for his nine millimeter, just in case.
    He fetched his shaving kit from the bathroom. In the process of zipping it shut, his gaze fell on the box of condoms he'd purchased months ago for the purpose of expunging Skyler Dulay from his heart and mind. Only he’d never used it.  
    If the fates were kind, maybe he would never have to.
     
     
    Drake had to give the old man credit. He’d filed a flight plan, fueled up, and completed a preflight check by the time Drake joined him in the cockpit of his Beechcraft Bonanza.
    “Let’s go,” he said, urging his father to take off right away. 
    Luckily, the weather was crisp and clear with a full moon and a light tail wind blowing out of the north. It gave the two-seater added speed as they climbed into the night sky and banked south. 
    “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”
    The question came one hour into the flight. Drake had hoped the audio on the headset he was wearing wasn’t working. Instead his father had waited until they were three thousand miles up in the air to interrogate him. Typical. Keeping his gaze fixed on the thin veil of moonlit clouds, Drake answered “Nope.”
    “Does this have anything to do with your current assignment?”
    Drake spent his weekdays down in Freeport, Bahamas, posing as a yacht salesman in an FBI-coordinated effort to curb drug smuggling out of the Caribbean and into the United States. “Nope,” he said again.
    “ Did you tell your mother anything?”  
    Drake whipped his head around. “I left her a note.” He fought to keep his resentment from bubbling up, but it boiled over suddenly. “That’s more consideration than you ever showed her—especially the last time you walked out.” 
    Connor sighed. “You have no idea what happened with me and your mother,” he said tiredly.
    “I don’t need to know,” Drake snarled.
    “Son, if this is company business, you need to tell me what the hell is going on .”
    “ Don’t call me son. I stopped feeling like your son the day I took over your household responsibilities.”
    Connor shot him a scowl. “Stick to the subject.”
    “I am. Trust me, Dad, the less you know about this the better.”
    “So...plausible deniability,” Connor concluded, using a term coined by the CIA during the Kennedy administration. “You think I’d lose my job if I knew,” he guessed.
    “Exactly.”
    Gnawing his lip in frustration, Connor went back to fiddling with his instruments.
    Drake, in turn, studied the stars burning light years apart in the vast expanse before them. They made him think of star-crossed lovers, fated never to be together.
    Screw fate. He was flying to Skyler now, and nothing in the universe could stop him.
     
     
    An hour and a half later, the two-seater came to a standstill at Myrtle Beach International Airport.
    As the single piston engine wound down, Drake set aside his headset and unbuckled his seat belt. He was now within minutes of Skyler’s last known location. Dawn silvered the sky above the trees dripping with