Page 142 of Gone Before Goodbye

“That Trace Packer was involved.”

“How about…?” She stops, swallows, tries again. “Based on what you see, is there any chance that you’re alive…”

The screen freezes up again. Maggie pushes on.

“… that you faked your own death or, I don’t know, that you’re still out there somewhere, alive?”

She waits. But the screen doesn’t unfreeze.

In the morning, Guillaume and Élodie drive Maggie and Porkchop to Château Haut-Bailly. When they arrive, Guillaume says, “We have guns, if you want.”

“Will they do us any good?”

“Only if you want to get killed. We will leave you a bike and wait by the road with our top people. If you give the word, we can be there in minutes.”

Porkchop thanks them. He and Maggie walk the path in silence. She leads. Her plan is a simple one. When they get to the fence, Maggie signals for Porkchop to stop. He does. There are no visible buildings, just overgrown grapevines as far as the eye can see. Maggie moves along the fence line until she reaches the gate.

She stands there and stares up into the camera.

Enough with the pretense.

Trace is either here or not. The answers are either going to come or they are not.

Whatever is going on, this is it. The end of the journey.

So Maggie stands there and stares up at the camera and waits.

It doesn’t take long.

She hears the crunch of footsteps before she sees the hulking form of Ivan Brovski come into view. He walks to the gate. Porkchop eases himself a little closer to Maggie. Ivan doesn’t so much as glance at him. His eyes are locked on her eyes and only hers.

“Come with me,” Ivan Brovski tells her. “He’s been waiting for you.”

Ivan Brovski finally shifts his gaze toward Porkchop and then brings it back to Maggie.

“Just you,” he says to her. “No one else.”

Three armed men come out from the brush. They keep their weapons at their sides, but the meaning is clear. Maggie looks back at Porkchop. She gives him a nod that she’s fine with this and he should stand down. Porkchop doesn’t nod back.

The gate slides open. Maggie steps through. Porkchop stays where he is.

Brovski greets her with a handshake and a smile. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor McCabe.”

She says nothing. Brovski leads her down a path of unruly grapevines, leaving Porkchop and the fence in her rearview. Ivan starts off by her side but as the path narrows from the overgrowth, they’re forced to move single file. Up ahead, half hidden by the heavy foliage, is a building Maggie assumes was once a wine cellar. The exterior is scarred and worn limestone. Moss clings to the walls for dear life. The stones look weak, wet, spongy, as though you could push your fist right on through them.

There is a heavy iron-banded wooden door with rusted hinges. Brovski opens it to let them in. The interior is musty, dingy, lit dully by a string of yellow lights tied to the ceiling beams. Two-tone oak wine barrels are stacked on their sides along the right-hand wall. Brovski heads to the back and pushes a stack of barrels away, revealing a blue door. He puts his hand on a control panel, and the blue door slides open with a Star Trek whoosh.

They head down a set of stairs to a matching blue door. When Brovski opens this one, Maggie is greeted by a sudden cold gust. The air has a stale, metallic tang to it. They step into a strange bunkeror tunnel—a sterile underground artery of white tile and polished chrome. Humming LED lights form a stripe down the ceiling’s center. Brovski leads the way. His shoes clack and echo. Maggie looks down at the shiny floor and sees her own distorted reflection staring back.

As they make their way down the artery, Maggie begins to see faceless people dressed in white lab coats—faceless because they all wear oversize surgical masks and caps and opaque goggles, and Maggie wonders whether the getup is to protect or disguise. She keeps walking. Walls become windows to laboratories of some sort. Various faceless lab-coated people perform various experiments.

At least, that’s what it looks like. Maggie doesn’t really know. She also doesn’t really care.

She wants to see him.

This bunker is trying very hard to look—time to say it again—“cutting edge” and “state of the art.” And yet it doesn’t. The “hidden lair” has something of a faux vibe to it, the feeling of an overwrought reproduction, as if this is a Hollywood version of what a secret medical science lab should look like. She, Marc, and Trace were all involved in cardiology—and right now, this place may be well-kept and clean and sterile and sleek and even beautiful, but there is no beating heart. That’s how it feels to her.

The people in lab coats—doctors? scientists?—startle when she walks past. They look up furtively, not wanting to make eye contact, even through the opaque goggles.