In Desperation

29

Mesa Mirage, Phoenix, Arizona

T wenty-five thousand feet over Nevada, Gannon gazed out his window, contemplated the sun setting over the desert and his close call with Vic Lomax.

After weighing the downside of murdering a reporter who was investigating a high-profile case, Lomax had instructed his goons to return Gannon intact to Las Vegas.

The ordeal resurrected other threats Gannon had faced in Texas, Brazil and Africa. That his job could be dangerous was a given, but this time it was his niece’s life on the line and he had to do everything he could to save her. He was unearthing pieces of Cora’s past, but those pieces spawned questions that might, or might not, be crucial to finding Tilly.

Who is Donnie Cargo?

What did he and Cora do in San Francisco? Was Cargo tied to Salazar and Johnson?

Those questions had troubled Gannon when he’d arrived at the Las Vegas airport, where he’d first considered flying to San Francisco. Before buying a ticket he’d launched a quick online search on Donnie Cargo but had found nothing.

Was Donnie Cargo even a real name?

He’d asked the WPA library to help and he’d contacted Adell Clark and Isabel Luna, requesting they check for anything on “Donnie Cargo.” It was not looking good and Gannon feared his luck at finding people fast may have run out. With little more than Lomax’s accusation, he decided to return to Phoenix and confront Cora, again.

She had texted him minutes before he’d departed.

Jack, what’s happening? Did you find Lomax?

Yes. We have to talk.

Call me.

No time. We’ll talk when I get back.

Now, as the lights of Phoenix wheeled below and Gannon’s plane began its descent, he returned to Lomax’s allegation.

“Your bitch sister got into trouble with a cartel a long time ago…the worst kind…you ask her what she and Donnie Cargo did in San Francisco.”

In the time Gannon was gone, Cora had remained lost in her pain.

She had not slept or eaten. The deeper Jack dug among the ruins of her old life, the more dangerous it got.

In finding Peck and Lomax, he’d exhumed demons that would drag her back into the pit of her past.

What did Lomax tell Jack?

It could guarantee that I never see Tilly again.

Forces continued mounting against Cora. Images of the gruesome delivery of eyeballs and those of the headless corpses of the two ex-officers found in the Mexican desert, tortured her. The FBI still had nothing on Lyle or the money. They had no leads on the kidnappers, or any trace of Tilly.

Was she still alive?

Cora prayed but hope seemed as distant as a dying star.

Now she heard the sound of rising voices in her living room. Recognizing one as Jack’s, she went to her bedroom door, stopping when she saw him arguing with Hackett about where he’d been.

“I’m warning you, Gannon, if you’re withholding information or interfering with this investigation-“

“You want to spend time violating my First Amendment rights instead of finding my niece? Want me to alert the WPA’s lawyers in New York?”

“I want you to think about what you’re doing. If you-”

“I have a right to talk privately with my sister.”

Gannon entered Cora’s bedroom, closing the door behind them.

“What did you find out?” Cora asked.

He struggled to keep his voice low as he spat back with a question.

“Are you involved in any way?”

“No!”

“Do you have, or have you ever had, a connection to any cartel that could be linked to this?”

Cora couldn’t answer him.

“All right, so far this is what I’ve got,” Gannon said. “You ran away with a drug addict, destroyed our family, became a prostitute, got pregnant, left the life and cleaned up. Then your daughter is kidnapped by a drug gang because your boyfriend owes them five million dollars and you want everyone to believe that you and your past have nothing to do with this?”

Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hands.

“What are you keeping from me, Cora?”

Could she tell him? Could she spell out every devastating mistake she’d ever made? Several anguished moments came and went.

“Cora?”

She didn’t respond.

“You called me, remember? I’m putting everything on the line for you.”

“It’s not about me, Jack. It’s about finding Tilly. I called you to help find who took her, help me bring her home.”

“Then tell me everything! For Christ’s sake, Cora! I get more help from the scum in your past than I do from you!”

“I have to protect Tilly!”

“From what? What could be worse than this? I don’t understand you!” Gannon saw that she was contending with a whirlwind. He softened his approach. “You were my hero, Cora. My big sister. I worshipped you. It’s because of you I became a reporter.”

“Jack, you have to trust me. It’s not what you or Hackett think. I am a good person, a good mother. I did terrible things to survive a long time ago. I’m not perfect…I made mistakes. I was a seventeen-year-old addict when I ran away. It was stupid but I had my reasons.”

“Yeah? And what were they?”

Fear, horror and shame.

Two life-changing incidents were buried in Cora’s past; events she never spoke of, or dared to revisit. She’d kept them secret for decades. That’s how she’d survived, if you could call it that. But now, in order to help save Tilly, she would have to exhume one of them for Jack. Only one.

The other must never be revealed.

Cora swallowed hard, hesitated. The pain was unbearable, the shame overwhelming. It hurt so much to even form a thought around the right words. But she had to do it. She’d have to tell him about the night that changed her forever.

The night that made her less human.

“When I was sixteen, I went to a party. Somebody put something in my drink and I was gang-raped.”

Gannon stared at her for the longest time.

His big sister.

Memory carried him back and he no longer saw Cora, the damaged woman before him. Suddenly he saw his sister at the kitchen table of their Buffalo home, blowing out candles for her fourteenth birthday party.

She glows in that pretty yellow dress Mom had made.

Glows like an angel.

Looking upon her now, in the wake of her painful revelation, his heart broke for her. His eyes stung and slowly, his shock gave way to rage. He wanted to drive his fist through something, wanted to attack the violation of his sister.

“Who were the assholes? Do we know?”

She shook her head.

“Jesus, Cora, I’m so sorry. I…I never…realized.”

“This is the first time I ever told anyone. I never told Mom, Dad, anyone. That was a mistake. I turned to drugs. That’s how it all happened. The night I ran off, after my biggest blowup with Mom and Dad, Dad told me to never come back. It was like a knife through my heart. I was garbage to them.”

“That was never true, Cora. They did everything they could to find you, to bring you home. Mom told me how Dad regretted saying what he said to you every day of his life after you left. They loved you.”

“I know. I don’t blame them. I was horrible to live with. I was stupid, so messed up. And after I left, I made one mistake after another for over a decade. I was a failure and nearly destroyed myself. But it all changed when I had Tilly. She was my salvation. When I had her, I turned my life around. Then this happens. I don’t have anything to do with cartels, or any of this.”

“Is that the whole truth? Are you telling me everything?”

“You want the whole truth? Okay. Deep down, I am out of my mind with fear that maybe somehow, in some way, this could be connected to my past. But it’s not about me. My past is behind me. I’m a single mom, a secretary at a courier company. I never knew what Lyle was up to. I loved him, trusted him with my heart and he betrayed us. That’s the absolute truth, Jack.”

He rubbed his haggard face, then his eyes.

“Not all of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who is Donnie Cargo?”

The name tore her wide open. Jack was getting too close to her last secret. Lomax must’ve told him about Donnie. Cora looked at him. Or rather, she looked right through him, as though he wasn’t there, trepidation clouding her gaze. The name pierced her the way lightning pierces the darkness, hurling her back to that night in San Francisco and…

Rain.

A downpour. She’s maybe nineteen and her life’s a blur, like the city with its twinkling lights drowning at night. Donnie’s driving, Vic is with her in the back and she’s tripping, totally wired on crack. It’s a pretty city, cable cars climb halfway to the stars. Donnie and Vic picked her up. You’re coming with us. Donnie Cargo brags that his nickname means shipment because he moves the supplies. He doesn’t have a real name. She doesn’t care. He’s always jittery, always sweaty. You’re coming with us on an errand. That’s right, Vic says. Got to take care of business, then we’ll have a little party. Vic throws good parties, has good drugs. She owes Vic. She works for drugs. A little of this and a little of that. Anything for drugs. Vic owns her because she owes him. Vic’s the boss. Vic the prick, Vic the psycho. Vic has more enemies than friends. What does she know? She’s a tripped-out street ho from Buffalo. What does she care? All she wants to do is party. Kick ass, die young. You’re coming with us on a little errand before Vic’s party. They float through Golden Gate Park, the Haight. I was born late, she says. I should have been a hippie…flowers in my hair…rain fallin’ on my head… Where are they now? Eight miles high. Where we going, boys? Where is this place? I’m a stranger here. Projects, blighted row houses and gloomy alleys. Vic says I got to send a message to a guy. A streetlamp hits on the chrome of the gun tucked in Vic’s waist. A gun? Cora’s upright like a shot. What the fuck? A gun? Donnie, let me out! He smiles. Be cool. Let me out now, you crazy mothers! Vic says be cool. Cora, baby, dial it down. Cora…Cora…Cora…

“Cora, did you hear me?” Jack squeezed her shoulders hard. “I said, something’s going on.”

“What is it?”

He opened her bedroom door to a surge of activity among the investigators in her living room. The air sparked with tension, as an agent, cell phone pressed to his head, passed on information to Hackett,

“Phoenix P.D. emergency dispatcher’s got a caller now in real time who says he’s got a location on our suspects!”

“Can she patch us in to listen to the call?”

The agent spoke into the phone, then gave a big nod.