In Desperation

4

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

S tartled from sleep, Jack Gannon was trying to grasp why he’d awakened and where he was when the bedside phone rang again.

Hotel. Mexico. Still in Juarez.

He answered.

“ Buenos dias, Senor Gannon. As requested, this is your wake-up call. Your breakfast will be delivered shortly.”

“Thank you.”

Groaning, he hung up and reached for his cell phone to check for messages. Was there anything from Isabel, the other WPA bureaus or headquarters in New York?

Nope. Nada.

He shaved, showered and had just finished dressing when his breakfast arrived at the same time as his cell phone rang. Gannon set the tray on the desk, gave the server a tip and took his call.

“Jack, this is Isabel Luna. I’ve learned from a good source that a power struggle is going to explode within one of the major cartels and that assassins may be used.”

“Do you know where or when?”

“Not for a few days at least. I’m trying to get more information. Can you meet me at El Heraldo at 9:00 a.m.?”

Gannon glanced at the bedside clock. He had time to do some work.

“I’ll be there.”

This could be the key to getting access to a cartel assassin, but he decided against alerting his editor in New York.

Better hold off until he had something nailed down.

He switched on his laptop and took a hit of coffee. As he ate his toast, sliced bananas and oranges, he reviewed the WPA’s summary for the pickup of his last story. His profile of Juarez’s drug war victims and the morgue was used by some two thousand English-language newspapers and websites in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, parts of Africa, Europe, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Vancouver Sun, Irish Times, Sydney Morning Herald and South China Morning Post were among those who gave it front-page play.

Not bad, he thought, checking his email box for the address tag at the end of his story. Most reporters hated this feature because, while much of the spam was filtered, what you mostly got were emails from religious nuts, political zealots, scam artists, idiots and nutcases. A story rarely yielded a solid lead to another story, but it did happen.

You had to check.

Typically for Gannon, an article would attract about a hundred emails. He was adept at getting through them. Like panning for gold. He’d sorted about half, flagged three to consider later. Before continuing he reached for his coffee and locked onto the subject line of one email:

Your Sister Cora Needs Your Help Now.

He froze.

Cora? After so many years?

He set his coffee down, swallowed, then opened the email.

Dear Jack:

Reaching out to you like this is extremely hard, but above all I want you to know that in my heart for all these years I thought of you, Mom and Dad every day since I left Buffalo. Losing touch with you was one of the most painful mistakes I’ve made in my rocky life. You don’t know how many times I came close to calling you but I couldn’t find the strength.

I told myself I was stupid and as time went by I wanted more than anything to call you, to try to make things right with my family, to be sure you knew everything about me before it was too late. I had planned to do that once I started to get my life together and in the last few years I was getting things together, I really was.

Jack, I can never make up for hurting you or the lost years and I understand if you hate me and ignore my plea for help.

But I pray to God you won’t.

I’m in trouble, Jack. It’s an urgent matter of life and death and I believe you’re the only one who can help me. This is not a hoax. I am your sister, and I’ve been following your reporting career for all these years. I was the one who told you to follow your dream, took you to the library and got Mom and Dad to buy you that old Tandy computer so you could write. And now you’re with the World Press Alliance traveling the globe. I’m so proud of you but I need your help.

Jack, I’m begging you to contact me as soon as possible.

God bless you.

Your big sister,

Cora

Gannon felt the little hairs at the back of his neck stand up.

Cora.

It had been more than twenty years since she had walked out of their lives. Anger, love and unease swept through him as he looked at the contact information she’d left: email, cell phone, home phone, office phone and home address.

She was living in suburban Phoenix.

Well, to hell with her, he thought. It was too late. Mom and Dad were dead. They’d died brokenhearted. The wounds were too deep. Besides, she probably wanted money, or an organ, or something.

Call her.

Because there was a time he’d loved her with all his heart. It didn’t matter that she had left his life; the truth was she’d had an effect on it. The truth was, no matter what, she was his sister.

I’m in trouble, Jack. It’s an urgent matter of life and death…

Before he realized it, he was gripping his cell phone and calling. He stepped out onto his balcony and into the morning heat bathing the city as the line clicked through.

“Hello.”

A woman had answered.

“Cora?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, emotion rising in her voice. “Is this Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, is that really you?”

He went numb at the sound of her voice, somehow different with the passing of time, yet somehow the same as it pulled him back across two decades to Buffalo.

He is twelve and trembling in his bedroom; his heart is aching. He flinches as doors slam and screaming rages in an Armageddon between Cora, Mom and Dad.

“We know you’re taking drugs, Cora!”

“You don’t know anything! Stay out my life! I’m almost eighteen!”

“Please, honey, listen! We love you!”

“I’m leaving to live my own life! I’m never coming back!”

Cora left, all right. And no matter what they did, or how hard they searched, they never saw her again.

She’d become a ghost.

Now that ghost was pleading across a lifetime, over a phone line between Phoenix and Juarez, Mexico.

“Jack?”

“Yes, I got your email.”

A long crackling filled the chasm that yawned between them.

“Jack, they took my daughter! Help me!”

“Your daughter? You have a daughter?”

“Yes, and two men dressed like police officers came to our house last night and took her!”

“Call the police.”

“ No! They said they’d kill her if I went to the police!”

“What?”

“They said the man I work for owes them a lot of money.”

“Who do you work for? What the hell are you involved in?”

“Listen, I think the kidnappers are drug dealers. It’s like the stuff you’re writing about now in Mexico.”

“Damn it, Cora, are you still screwed up with drugs after all this time?”

“No, Jack, I’ve put that behind me. I’m a secretary for a courier company. Jack, I don’t know why they took my daughter!”

“What about your husband? What’s he doing to help?”

“I’m not married.” Cora released a great sob as she continued. “I don’t know why they took Tilly. That’s her name, Tilly. She’s all I have!”

It was their grandmother’s name.

“She’s my little girl. She’s eleven years old and they said they’ll kill her if I don’t help them get their money back. Help us, please! I don’t know what to do, or who to turn to!”

Gannon hesitated.

“Jack, she’s your niece!”

My niece.

Gannon’s breathing quickened as he looked out at Juarez, trying to comprehend what was happening. In a matter of minutes, he’d gone from being alone to having two people in his life.

Two people who desperately needed him now.

It was a ninety-minute flight from El Paso to Phoenix.

He could be there in a few hours.