In Desperation

1

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

Cora Martin was propped against two pillows in her bed when she heard a faint noise and put her book down.

Was that Tilly?

Her daughter was asleep down the hall.

No, that sounded like it came from outside.

Cora listened for half a minute. Everything was quiet. She dismissed the noise as a bird or the Bannermans’ darned cat. The clock on Cora’s night table showed the time: 12:23 a.m. She returned to her book. After reading two pages she began drifting off when she heard another strange sound.

Like a soft murmur. This time it came from a far side of the house.

What the heck is that?

Cora got up to investigate, groaning. She had to go to work in a few hours. She needed to get some sleep.

Wearing only a cotton nightshirt, she padded down the hall to Tilly’s door. It was partially open, as usual. Her eleven-year-old daughter was asleep on her stomach. One foot had escaped from the sheets. Cora moved to her bedside, adjusted it then took in the room: Tilly’s stuffed toys, posters of Justin Bieber and Cora’s favorite-the drawing of two happy stick figures holding hands, titled Mommy & Me.

Cora smiled.

Soft light painted Tilly’s face. She was more than a beautiful child to Cora; she was her lifeline, her hope and her dream.

I love you more than you’ll ever know, kiddo.

She stroked Tilly’s hair, then went to check the rest of the house. Cora had rented the small, ranch-style bungalow at an amazing rate from a widowed Realtor who didn’t hide her maternal fondness for single working moms and their daughters.

Cora checked the front and back doors then the windows in each room. Nothing was amiss. She reconsidered what she’d heard. It had kind of sounded like someone walking around the house.

She thought of calling the police but pushed it aside for now.

Should I go outside?

It would be better to check the alarm system. She went to the console on the wall to inspect the indicator lights. Cora wasn’t afraid to check the yard. This was Mesa Mirage, almost hidden among the larger east valley suburbs of metropolitan Phoenix. Mesa Mirage was a tranquil community of retirement villages and golf courses. It didn’t have its own police department, but it was served by the County Sheriff’s Office, supported by volunteer posses and was safe.

Almost crime-free.

Everything was in order, according to the light sequence of the alarm system. Good. Cora was thirsty. She’d get a drink in the kitchen then crawl back into bed and sleep.

Finishing her water at the sink, she touched her fingers to her lips. She had forged a good life here and she would do anything to protect Tilly.

Especially from the monsters she’d buried long ago.

Cora’s attention shifted to the knock on her front door. Who could it be at this hour? Moving through the living room, she looked at the window and glimpsed two uniformed officers at the door.

Police?

She opened the door.

In the instant Cora absorbed their grave faces, half in shadow under the porch light, she was pricked by a twinge of unease.

Something was wrong.

Not the kind of wrong that accompanies a late-night visit by the police, but something darker. She had no time to ponder it.

“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,” one of the officers said. “We’re checking on the welfare of residents here. Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Can you tell us how many people are in your home tonight?”

“Just me and my daughter. Why?”

As one of the officers took notes, a thousand points of concern flashed across Cora’s mind. She glanced to the street for a patrol car, finding a late-model sedan. She didn’t think the two men were with the county or the volunteer posse. She scanned their uniforms for a shoulder patch and found one. But since she really never encountered police, she was not sure if the officers were from Mesa, Tempe, Chandler or Gilbert.

“I’m sorry,” Cora said. “Who are you with?”

“We’re with the task force,” the first officer said. “Ma’am, are there any firearms in your residence?”

“No. I hate guns. What task force? What’s this about?”

“Earlier tonight, an inmate escaped custody, a convicted murderer. He was sighted in this area of the community.”

“Oh my God.”

“I’m afraid there’s a bit more to this. May we come in?”

“Yes, of course.”

Cora let the two men enter her home. Inside, the officers looked around Cora’s living room.

“Where’s your daughter located at this time?” the first officer asked.

“Down the hall, in her bedroom. She’s asleep.”

The officer nodded to his partner.

“We’ll check on her welfare.”

“But she’s fine.” Cora watched the second officer quietly enter Tilly’s room, while the first officer spoke to her.

“It’s routine,” he said, indicating the kitchen. “Let’s go there and I’ll explain.”

The first officer went directly to the sink over the kitchen window that looked out to Cora’s backyard. He pulled a pocket telescope from his utility belt, clenched one eye and gazed through it.

“The suspect is in the house directly behind yours, one row back.”

“I don’t understand.”

The officer turned to her and she noticed a scar running along his jaw.

“We’re here to help set up a perimeter for the SWAT Team,” he said.

At that point the second officer emerged, nodded to his partner and approached them at the sink.

“Ma’am?” The first officer offered Cora his scope. “Take a look. It’s the house with the pool lights.”

She was apprehensive.

“Go ahead.”

Her kitchen seemed to be closing in on her as the two officers now stood near. Was this a dream? She took the telescope, raised it to her eye, not sure what she was looking for when pain shot through her skull. Her hair strained her scalp, pulled by some force. Duct tape peeled, Cora’s mouth was sealed before she could cry out. The invaders moved her swiftly and silently to a kitchen chair, taping her ankles, her wrists and her chest to it.

Terrified, Cora looked down the hall.

The first man drew his face to Cora’s.

“Your daughter is fine. Look at me!”

Cora tried to talk.

“Are you going to cooperate so we can get through this quickly?” Cora nodded.

“We do not want to hurt you, or your daughter. Understand?”

Cora nodded.

“If you resist, we will kill your daughter in front of you.”

Cora sobbed against the tape.

“Do you understand? If you cooperate, you survive.” Cora understood.

“We know you work for Lyle Galviera at Quick Draw Courier.”

Cora nodded.

“I’m going to remove the tape and we’ll talk. If you scream, if you refuse to cooperate or if you lie, you and your daughter will die. Do you understand?”

Cora nodded and the second man yanked the tape from Cora’s mouth.

She gasped, swallowed and listened to the first man. “Lyle uses his company to distribute our product and move cash to be cleaned. Where is the money?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“He stole five million dollars from us.”

“No! This is a mistake! Are you looking for drug money? Lyle’s not involved with drugs. I’ve got nothing to do with drugs. This is all wrong-it’s a mistake. Please leave us alone! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“We can’t find him. Where’s the money?”

For the next thirty minutes the invaders ransacked the house. What did they do with Tilly? They must’ve tied her down.

Or worse!

“Where is our money?”

“Did you hurt my daughter?”

“She’s not hurt. Where is it?”

“I told you this is wrong. This is a mistake!”

“Listen to me. You will find Galviera and tell him to return our money.”

Sobbing, Cora shook her head.

“This is a mistake. I don’t know anything about this.”

“You know. You do the books for his company.”

“No. No. I’m the office manager, the secretary. I know he left a few days ago for business in San Diego, then in Los Angeles.”

“He is not in California.”

“But I made the travel arrangements. Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave us alone. Please. This is a mistake.”

“No mistake.”

The first man turned to his partner. After speaking in rapid Spanish to him, the man left the house and returned with a large suitcase they placed before Cora.

“Remember,” the first man said. “Do not scream.”

The second man went down the hall to Tilly’s room. Seconds later Tilly emerged, her mouth covered with duct tape, eyes popping with fear as they met Cora’s.

Tilly was in her pajamas with the unicorn pattern; her wrists were taped in front of her in a praying position as she hugged a hastily balled collection of items. Cora could see jeans, a pink shirt and white sneakers. Was that her toothbrush sticking from the heap? It was as if she were rushing off to a sleepover.

Fear twisted Cora’s stomach.

“It’s going to be okay, honey.” Cora tried to comfort her as the second man opened the large suitcase and positioned Tilly inside, bending her knees to her chest, then zipping her closed as if he were a magician preparing a trick.

“What are you doing?” Cora raised her voice. “Wait! No.”

The first man drew his weapon and pointed it at the bag where Tilly’s head would be, moved his finger to the trigger and turned to Cora.

“Have you forgotten your need to shut up and listen?”

“Yes, please, please don’t hurt her. I’m begging you.”

“If you do as we say, she will not be harmed. Understand?”

Cora nodded.

“We are taking your daughter with us.”

“No. Please!”

“Listen carefully. Lyle must return our money, or your daughter will die. And if you go to the police, your daughter will die.”

“Tilly, sweetie, everything will be okay. Do what they say. Tilly, I love-” Tape was replaced on Cora’s mouth.

“Your binding is not that tight. You should be able to free yourself in a few hours,” the first man said. “We will return your daughter unharmed after Lyle Galviera returns the money he’s stolen from us. He has five days.”

The men left with the suitcase holding Tilly, leaving Cora alone, bound to a chair, sobbing in her kitchen.

2

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

An anguished cry rose from the morgue’s viewing room.

“Mi hijo! Mi hijo!”

Paula Chavez bent over the corpse of a young man in his late teens, her son, Ramon. Her face creased with pain. She stared into his open eyes then at the bullet holes in his tattooed chest. Helpless against the horror, she caressed his face and pressed one of his cold hands to her cheek.

It was evocative of Michelangelo’s Pietà, Jack Gannon thought, watching from across the room.

He turned to Isabel Luna, who had raised her camera to shoot several frames of Paula Chavez. At times, the priest and morgue workers had to steady the grieving mother, who was now childless.

Ramon was sixteen. He’d been Paula Chavez’s last living son.

She’d already lost two others to the violence this year.

The sorrow in the air was as biting as the smell of chlorine and the reek of death.

For much of the day, Gannon and Luna had been riding along with forensic experts and coroner’s staff, pinballing from homicide to homicide, when they had come to the fringe of a squatters’ village. Paula Chavez was in a ditch on her knees weeping at the crime scene tape near her son. A priest prayed alongside her while windswept garbage and desert dust enshrouded them.

The priest brought Paula to the morgue. A coroner’s van brought her son. Gannon and Luna had followed them here, where workers had set Ramon’s corpse on a table next to the bodies of six other people murdered across the city so far that day.

Now, after taking half a dozen pictures, Luna lowered her camera and indicated to the pathologist who’d granted access that they were finished.

Gannon and Luna stepped outside into baking heat as another coroner’s van delivered two more white body bags strapped to gurneys.

Another corpse, another coffin, another grave. Another day in Juarez, a battlefield in Mexico’s drug wars.

Welcome to Murder City.

Gannon slid on his dark glasses, and as he and Luna walked to his rented Ford he reflected on Paula Chavez. She lived in a shack and earned less than ten dollars a day running a tiny hamburger stand. She’d lost her husband and sons to the violence. Gannon thought of the pain carved into her weatherworn face, the agony of her cries, how she embodied the toll exacted by the carnage. These images burned into his memory. The impact of random cruelty. Throughout his years on the crime beat he hammered the heartache he bore for people like Paula Chavez into a quiet rage that he used to fuel his work.

Gannon was a journalist with the World Press Alliance, the global wire service headquartered in New York City. He’d been dispatched to Mexico to file features in the WPA’s ongoing series on the drug wars. Correspondents from the WPA’s Mexican, Central and South American bureaus had provided exceptional coverage, but his editor, Melody Lyon, wanted more for a new series.

“The cartel wars have been spilling into U.S., Canadian and European cities with increasing violence. We need to understand why this is happening,” Lyon had told him. “We need you to take WPA readers beyond the statistics, the corruption and the bloodbaths. Take us deeper. Find the human faces on all sides. Take us into the inferno.”

As part of his research before leaving Manhattan, Gannon had contacted Isabel Luna, a crime reporter with El Heraldo, a small family-run newspaper in Juarez known for its courageous reporting.

Few knew more about crime in the region than Luna.

Her father, the paper’s editor, had been murdered several months ago for exposing cartel ties to corrupt officials. His death left Isabel defiant and forged her determination to continue his crusade. She did not hesitate to respond when Gannon called in advance of his arrival.

“I propose we work exclusively together while I’m in Juarez,” he said. “Your English is better than my Spanish and I admit I’ll need help. In exchange, I’ll share the resources of the WPA. We could buy your photos or pay for joint work on exclusives.”

“Call me when you arrive,” she said.

During their first meeting in El Heraldo’s hectic and cluttered newsroom, which had reminded Gannon of his campus paper in Buffalo, he told Luna of the stories he had in mind.

“I’d like to profile you.”

She blushed and a crooked smile nearly blossomed on her face. It waned when he told her of the other story he wanted to do.

“I want to write about cartel assassins, the young ones they train to be killers. I’d like to interview one. Do you think that’s possible?”

A somber look flitted across Luna’s eyes as she scanned the newsroom, focusing on nothing before inhaling slowly.

“It’s possible,” she said.

“Will you help me?”

She looked at him for a long moment before she said, “Yes.”

In the back of his mind Gannon suspected Luna had her own reasons for pursuing a story on cartel assassins. As with most murders in Juarez, her father’s killer had not been found.

Now, as they left the morgue, Gannon glanced at Luna, in the passenger seat studying her camera, reviewing the crime scene photos she’d taken that day.

“You got some nice stuff there,” he said. “You see anything that looks like an organized cartel hit?”

“No. Just everyday murders, low-level barrio gang members and Juarez drug dealers. It’s terrible to say, but it’s true.”

Luna called her paper to ensure her desk alerted her to any breaking stories as she and Gannon continued roaming the city.

He took in the sprawling metropolis. Juarez was a factory town with a population over one and a half million. It stood on the Rio Grande, across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, where close to eight hundred thousand people lived in relative safety and peace.

Gannon figured he had seen most of Juarez since he’d arrived three days ago. Or was it four? He’d filed news features but had yet to go beyond what had already been reported on the tragedy of the region.

Juarez’s despair had first greeted him with the panhandlers dotting the Santa Fe Street Bridge from El Paso. The city’s beauty was lost in a cloak of desperation and in the dust from sandstorms that laced the low-rise stores and office buildings along the streets.

The downtown bled into bars, cantinas, neon and the never-ending come-on from the hookers in the red-light district. Beyond were endless strip malls, roadside taco stands, pizza shops and neighborhoods of concrete houses and apartment complexes.

Farther out was the bullring.

Then there were the hundreds of huge factories, the maquiladoras, where the women of Juarez earned a few dollars a day working in shifts assembling appliances, electronics and a range of exported goods.

At the city’s edge, beyond the simple wooden crosses of the cemeteries, along a jumble of paved and unpaved sandy roads, among the cacti, tumbleweed and scrubland, were the clusters of shantytowns. Here, Gannon thought, amid the shacks, lived the enduring human virtue: hope.

No matter the odds, one must never abandon hope.

As Juarez rolled by, Gannon, a thirty-five-year-old loner, who grew up in blue-collar Buffalo, was visited by a cold hard fact: he had no one in his life. All he had was his job.

Stop, he chided himself, and turned to Luna.

“If you’d like to knock off, I’ll take you home. Or we can eat first.”

“There’s a good restaurant near my paper,” she said.

It was after sunset when they’d finished dinner. Their conversation was centered on recent history of the drug wars.

Luna said that Juarez was a marshaling point for those yearning to escape poverty by fleeing to the U.S. It was also a major transit point for drugs, and cartels battled for control of the smuggling networks that gave them access to the U.S. market. This was how Juarez came to be one of the world’s most violent cities-with a homicide rate greater than any other city on earth. To battle the violence the Mexican government had deployed thousands of troops and federal police across Mexico.

But the cartels had infiltrated all levels of police.

“Imagine,” Luna said. “You’re a Mexican police officer and the cartel offers to triple your monthly pay for your cooperation. You’ve seen the conditions most people live under.”

Gannon agreed.

“And,” Luna added, “if you refuse to cooperate, the cartels threaten your family. This is how they’ve grown, and they operate with military precision and firepower. The cartels have unimaginable reach and domination everywhere.”

Luna caught herself. Embarrassed, she cupped her hands to her face. She’d never spoken so much to Gannon.

“I apologize for boring you.”

“Don’t,” Gannon said. “It must mean you’re comfortable with me. I still want to profile you, but you’ve been so quiet. I know very little about you.”

Luna told him about her life.

She was thirty-one. Her mother died from cancer when Luna was young. Her father remarried. She had a stepbrother, Esteban. She’d lived in Los Angeles when she attended UCLA. After graduating she’d returned to help with the paper. She was married to a human rights lawyer and they had a four-year-old son. They were guarded about their lives.

“Because of the cartels and what happened to your father?”

Several long moments passed before Luna answered. “You must never tell anyone this, but I was there when my father was murdered. I saw his killer.”

“Did you tell police?”

“No. We told them there were no witnesses. My husband and stepbrother urged me to trust no police. My father’s death was an orchestrated cartel hit because of his editorials about the cartels corrupting police. The killer came to my father’s house as a courier, very nonthreatening. He didn’t see me, but I was there and I saw him. One day we will find him.”

Luna stopped.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t like to talk about it. My father was a respected man. I don’t have the influence he had. No one among the Juarez press does. He was incorruptible. Please, Jack, you must never reveal what I told you. If the cartel knew that I was a witness, they’d kill me. Swear you will not tell anyone, please.”

Gannon gave Luna his word, then drove her home to her family.

That night he stepped out onto his hotel balcony.

He gazed upon the twinkling lights of the city. He could hear sirens and see a helicopter’s searchlight sweep over the latest killing, and a creeping sense of looming failure came over him.

How would he make sense out of this chaos?

He was tired and his thoughts shifted back to himself, the price of being alone. Unlike the teen gangster in the morgue, Ramon Chavez, no one would mourn Gannon. His parents were dead. He’d been estranged from his older sister since she’d run away from home some twenty years ago.

Shut up, he told himself. Quit wallowing.

He got into bed.

But before sleep came, Gannon fell into his usual pattern of wondering what had happened to his sister.

Is she still alive?

3

Phoenix, Arizona

Fear pulsed through Cora Martin.

This can’t be happening! It’s a nightmare! Wake up! Come on, wake up!

Cora’s cries for Tilly were muffled by the duct tape sealing her mouth. She tried to move but was fused to the kitchen chair.

Please, God. Protect her. Please.

Questions blazed through Cora’s mind.

How could this be happening? How could these fuckers just come into her home and take Tilly? Could it be connected to her own trouble years ago in California?

No.

It’s impossible. No one knows about that. No one must ever know. No, they said this was about Lyle. But Lyle couldn’t be involved with drug cartels. She trusted him. My God, they’d talked about living together. About marriage! This was a horrible mistake. It had to be!

Cora forced herself to concentrate.

Calm down. Think.

Her arms were tingling. Her blood circulation had been squeezed by her bindings. Cora’s kitchen chairs were Windsor-style, armless with a fan backrest. The invaders had duct-taped her wrists behind the narrow back and they were starting to hurt. She kept making fists so she wouldn’t lose the feeling in her hands.

Tape bound her chest to the chair’s back and her ankles to the legs.

Time was slipping away.

She rocked the chair, got up on her feet, only to lose her balance and fall back, sitting in the chair. It wasn’t easy to move. She had trouble directing her weight. She could try smashing the chair but it was metal and heavy. She couldn’t risk hurting herself.

She had to find a way out of this.

You have to do something now!

Again, Cora rocked until she got to her feet. She bent forward, tensed her muscles and, using the weight of the chair, kept herself upright. By carefully shuffling her feet with the heavy chair affixed to her back and legs she painfully inched her way across the kitchen like a grotesque snail.

When Cora reached the drawer where she kept utensils, her heart sank.

The splayed legs and angle of the chair kept her from reaching the handle with her hands.

Cora growled into the tape.

Those motherfuckers better not hurt my baby!

Don’t give up! You have to do this!

Carefully contorting her body with strategic leaning, her fingers blindly brushed the handle to the utensil drawer. Her arms, legs, shoulders were ablaze as she forced herself up on her toes and with one great heave got the drawer open. She rattled it until the plastic tray erupted with utensils. Finally the weight against her position demanded she sit.

She fought the pressure.

Come on! Come on!

She shook as her fingers clawed at the disgorged spoons, forks, knives. There! Battling the weight brought waves of pain before she seized as many knives as she could in one solid grab. Her nostrils flared and her breathing roared as she sat, clenching the knives behind her.

Eyes on the ceiling, fingers sweating, Cora sorted the knives and ran her thumb along each blade, one by one. The first was a butter knife. So was the second. Damn. Wait! The third had sharp serrated edges.

A steak knife.

She dropped the others. Working her fingers down the blade to improve her grip, she delicately sawed at the edges of the tape. The first ripping sound encouraged her to work harder. It was followed by another, then another as she sawed without stopping until the tape gave way.

Relief flowed into her arms as she brought them forward, pulling the tape from her mouth, gulping air as she yanked the remaining strips of tape from her wrists, massaging them before cutting her chest and ankles free.

She reached for her kitchen phone, jabbed the button for 9 then 1-

If you go to the police, your daughter will die.

Recalling the kidnapper’s warning stopped her cold. She wouldn’t risk Tilly’s life. Cora aborted the call. She had to find Lyle.

She called his cell phone, got his voice mail and left a message.

“It’s me! Something bad has happened to Tilly!” Cora broke down. “She’s gone, Lyle! They’re going to kill her! Call me!”

Then she called his home number, her heart racing as it rang. No answer. She left a message. Then she texted him and urged him to call.

Cora fumbled through her bag for her notebook, struggling with her composure as she called his hotel in San Diego.

“Blue Sapphire Regency, how may I help you?”

“I have to speak to one of your guests, Lyle Galviera.”

“One moment please, I’ll connect you-”

The line clicked with the transfer.

“Front desk? May I be of-”

“I need to speak to one of your guests, Lyle Galviera! It’s urgent!”

“Of course, that last name again?”

“Galviera. G-A-L-V-”

Rapid typing on a keyboard.

“Lyle Galviera of Phoenix?”

“Yes, that’s him!”

“I’m sorry. We had a reservation for Mr. Galviera but our records show that he never arrived.”

Cora hung up, called Lyle’s hotel in Los Angeles and got the same result. What was happening? Where was he? She stood there, her mind racing.

Do something! Go to the office. Look there!

She dressed without showering and ran to her car.

Dawn was breaking and freeway traffic was light as Cora sped west then north toward Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Quick Draw Courier’s depot, a squat single-story warehouse, was located amid the industrial buildings southwest of the terminals.

Cora could see the delivery trucks backed to the rear loading bays where the night crew was going full tilt processing orders. She parked out front by the landscaped entrance to the administration office. At the card lock, she swiped her employee card and punched in her security code. She entered and hurried to her desk.

No one was in at this hour.

She closed the door to her office, hit the lights and started her computer. Tilly smiled back from her screen saver before Cora navigated to the itinerary she’d prepared for Lyle’s business trip.

She went to the website of the airline he was using and called. She rushed through the prompts only to be put into the queue for a living, breathing agent. While holding, she checked her cell phone for any response from Lyle.

Nothing.

She opened another file for Quick Draw Courier’s credit card. Lyle used a company card for all business. While still on hold with the airline, Cora used her cell phone to call the credit card company’s security department and report a lost card.

“Could you please give us details on the last transaction?” Cora asked.

The card was last used to pay for a business lunch in Phoenix. The agent provided the time. It was the day before Lyle had left for the trip.

“Would you like us to cancel the card now, ma’am?” asked the agent.

“No, thank you. We’re hoping it will turn up. Thanks.”

Cora finally got through to a human being at the airline. She begged the agent to help her confirm if Lyle had boarded any of the flights she’d booked for him.

“Unfortunately airline privacy policy prevents us-”

“Please! This is a family emergency! The ticket was purchased with our company credit card. I’ll give you the number to verify.”

A tense silence passed.

“Please!” she said. “It’s extremely urgent! Please!”

“Give me the number. I’ll check with my supervisor.”

Cora recited it and the agent said: “One moment please.”

As seconds ticked by, Cora looked at the online news pages showing sports scores; celebrity gossip; international news out of London on the Royal Navy, Hong Kong on business mergers, drug-war murders in Mexico. Then the line clicked.

“Sorry for the delay, ma’am. I can confirm that the departure ticket purchased by your company has not been used, nor has it been adjusted to a different date or flight.”

Cora hung up and concentrated.

Today was Monday. Lyle was to have left Friday morning for San Diego. Tomorrow morning, he was to fly to Los Angeles and return to Phoenix on Thursday. Cora had expected to hear from him later today but was not concerned that he hadn’t called or emailed her over the weekend. She was not clingy and it was no big deal if he didn’t call every day. And, as far as she knew, things were quiet with the business.

But now Cora was desperate.

She dialed the home number for Ed Kilpatrick, the operations manager. It was 5:15 a.m. Ed usually started at 6:00 a.m. Maybe she’d catch him at home. He was accustomed to early calls from the guys in shipping.

“Hello.”

“Ed, this is Cora.”

“Hey, Cora, what’s up?”

“Sorry to bother you at home.”

“I was on my way in. What’s going on?”

“Have you heard from Lyle since he left for California?”

“No. Is something going on?”

“Some people had been asking about him over the weekend.”

“Did you call him?”

“Yeah, but he’s not answering-maybe his phone or BlackBerry’s not working.”

“Could be-I don’t know. I sent him an email Friday on the new shipment deadlines for Zone Five. I need an answer by this afternoon, so if you hear from him tell him to call me. I gotta run. I’ll see you later.”

Cora drew her hands to her face and exhaled. Through her fingers she saw Lyle’s empty office across the hall and went to it. She scoured his calendar, his notes, anything for a clue. She searched his trash bin but the weekend cleaning staff had already recycled everything.

Her cell phone was ringing in her office.

Cora ran back to her desk. Please be Lyle. The number was blocked.

“Hello?”

“Mommy!”

“Tilly!”

“Mommy, please help me!”

“I will! I love you! Are you okay? Where are you, sweetheart?”

The phone was shuffled.

“So you got free?”

“Yes. Don’t you hurt her!”

“Where are you? Did you find him yet?”

Cora recognized the voice of the man who had invaded her home.

“I’m at the office going through his desk! I’m doing all I can! Let her go! Please!”

“Find Lyle Galviera or we’ll release your daughter in pieces.”

The line went dead.

Cora stared at the phone, sank into her chair, dropped her head to her desk and sobbed. She hadn’t slept. She couldn’t think. She didn’t know what to do, or where to turn.

What if they killed Lyle? What if he was dead somewhere?

She fought to keep herself together.

There had to be something she could do. Someone who could help her.

She stared at her computer screen, vaguely remembering an item on drug wars in Mexico. It was a newswire story. She scrolled through the website. Here it was-from the World Press Alliance, a feature that profiled the people victimized by one day of violence in Ciudad Juarez.

She studied the byline.

Jack Gannon.

She knew him, yet she didn’t.

He was from Buffalo, just like her. For years, wherever she’d lived, she’d followed his byline. She’d visited the web editions of the Buffalo Sentinel before he left for the World Press Alliance, a big wire service.

Now that he was with the WPA, Cora saw his stories everywhere. It was like he was always near. Just knowing how he was doing had been so important, she thought, biting back her tears. Her fingers traced his name on the screen. She considered the letter she’d written to him a million times but never sent.

She never had the guts.

Cora thought of Tilly and shut her eyes to deflect her agony.

If ever there was a time that Cora needed to reach out to Jack Gannon, this was it.

His email was at the bottom of the article.

4

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

Startled 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 días, Señor 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.

5

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

Four hours after Cora’s call, Gannon’s Southwest flight landed in Phoenix. Now, as his 737 taxied to the gate, he resumed questioning the wisdom of setting aside his story in Mexico to rush to Arizona.

Am I making a mistake?

He had tried to reduce his risk. Before lifting off, he’d called Isabel Luna at El Heraldo, telling her that he had to leave Juarez for an urgent personal matter in the U.S. Now, in the seconds before the pilot cut the engines, Gannon emailed Melody Lyon in New York, informing her that he’d temporarily left his assignment to fly to Phoenix. He knew that wouldn’t go over well and by the time he stepped from the jet, Lyon had called him to confirm it.

“What the hell are you doing in Phoenix? Your assignment’s in Juarez.”

“Something came up.”

“Who authorized this trip?”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“I don’t care. I want you in Mexico. That’s your story.”

“I know, but-”

“I was under the impression that you were working on securing the assassin’s profile. The WPA needs that story, Jack. The Associated Press and Reuters have been killing us. Why are you in Phoenix?”

He couldn’t reveal the truth-damn it, not yet. Hard-pressed, he searched the terminal for an answer.

“I have an inside lead on a possible kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping in Phoenix? I haven’t seen anything on it.”

“No one knows. It’s just emerging.”

“Did you alert our bureau there?”

“No. Not yet. Melody, don’t tell anyone anything yet. Let me follow this.”

“Is this connected to the drug wars?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure what this is. I have to check it out. If it falls through, I’ll be back in Juarez tonight. All I’m asking for is a little time, please.”

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours and I want updates, Jack.”

As Gannon’s cab wove through the east valley suburbs, doubt continued gnawing at him. Ever since he’d broken a global exclusive out of South America and the Caribbean a few months ago, senior WPA editors had been pressuring him to deliver another big story.

So what was he doing here? Was he making a mistake by ignoring a potentially huge story out of Mexico?

And for what?

Cora.

It was tearing him apart. His sister was a stranger to him. She was messed up when she’d run away from their family. It had devastated their parents. How could he forgive her for what she’d done?

And now this.

What if she was still messed up?

But she had found him, now, after all this time. Something he’d buried deep and long ago warmed to that fact. And she had a daughter, his niece. How could he turn his back on them? They were family. That’s what he told himself as his cab turned down Cora’s street and came to a creaky stop in front of her address. Gannon paid the driver, approached the house with his stomach tensing and rang the bell.

Twenty-two years since he’d seen her.

The door opened to a woman in her late thirties.

Cora.

The sun lit her face, made a bit fuller by time. The way the corners of her eyes creased reminded him of their mother and father. A bittersweet smile blossomed as she spoke his name.

“Oh, Jack!”

She engulfed him on the step, nearly knocking him backward. She held him tight as she sobbed. Gannon felt something in his throat rising, his eyes stinging, for he never believed he would ever see her again.

They went to her kitchen and in the brief awkward quiet punctuated by Cora’s tears, they studied each other. As her red-rimmed eyes took stock, Gannon felt as if he was twelve again, holding the attention of his hero.

“I knew you would grow up to be a tall, handsome man.”

She had become a fine-looking woman, a mother, he thought.

“Help me find Tilly.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, absorbing all the changes in her as each of them grappled with the time that had blurred their memories over two decades.

Cora offered a weak smile, worry lines cutting deep around her mouth, replacing the gleam that had always lifted him before the day she walked out on everything back in Buffalo. A tsunami of remembrance, outrage and regret rolled over him, and Cora saw his mood dim.

“I’ve been a terrible sister.”

“You should have come home.”

“I wanted to. So many times, but I couldn’t face you, Mom and Dad.”

“They died not knowing about your life, your daughter, their granddaughter.”

She turned away.

“I know. I saw it in the Sentinel on the internet.”

“Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

“Why? If only you had come home before they were killed. You could have worked things out with them. They searched everywhere for you.”

“I just couldn’t.”

“Why? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“It’s too hard to explain. Please don’t judge me.”

“Judge you? Cora, I don’t even know you.”

She turned to the counter for a tissue box.

“I go by Cora Martin.”

“Martin? Did you get married?”

“No, I changed it because of, well, because of mistakes.”

“Is that why you didn’t want us to find you?” He shook his head in disappointment.

“Jack, it’s not easy to explain. You have every right to resent me,” she said. “I’m not seeking forgiveness, but resentment can be a poison. I mourn the time we’ve lost. I regret choices I’ve made. Don’t take your anger out on me now, Jack. I need your help. I have to get Tilly home safe.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Gannon took a long, deep breath and Cora related every detail from the night before. He listened, saying little until she’d finished.

“I don’t know why this is happening to us,” she said. “I don’t know who to turn to, Jack. I thought you would have sources, people who know about this stuff and that you would know what to do. Help me find out who took her. Help me get her back.”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“No. They said they would kill her if I went to the police.”

“Are you involved with drugs in any way, Cora?”

“No.”

“But you were?”

“Yes. I used drugs, yes, but that’s all in the past. I’ve changed my life.”

“No one from your past would do this?”

God, I hope not. They told me I would never be free from what I did. Never. They told me I would always be looking over my shoulder. I can’t tell Jack. I can’t tell anyone. I have to protect Tilly.

“Cora, does this have anything to do with your past life?”

“No, I’ve been living a clean life, a good life, for years.”

“What about Lyle? You say you’re dating. What do you know about him? Is he involved in drugs?”

“If he is, he’s hidden it all from me.”

“Can you find him?”

“I’ve been trying and trying. He’s disappeared.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Only you-and I called Tilly’s school.”

“You told her school she was kidnapped?”

“God, no, I said she wouldn’t be in today. Only you know what’s happened, Jack.”

“From what I know about these things, they usually involve a drug debt. The cartels will kidnap someone close to get their money. That looks like the case here.”

“Maybe it’s all a mistake?”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“But they said-”

“You have to call them, or it looks like you’re involved.”

Cora put her hands to her mouth, nodded, then reached for her cordless phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed 911.

“I need the police. My daughter’s been kidnapped…”

As she stayed on the line confirming her name and address, Gannon walked through the house, finding Tilly’s room. Police would soon process the room but he wanted to see it, to get a sense of his niece.

Her white-and-pink bed was unmade, left the way it was when the invaders abducted her from it. On the wall nearby there was a cork bulletin board plastered with birthday cards, a drawing of two people holding hands called Mommy & Me, and photos of Tilly with her friends, their smiles and eyes blazing with adolescent zeal.

She sure resembled Cora.

Under the board was Tilly’s desk. Math, history and science textbooks were stacked neatly on it to one side. Also on the desk he saw Tilly’s homework: a handwritten essay. He began reading it:

The Swiss Family Robinson

Book Report

by Tilly Martin

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss is an exciting story about a family who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and how they must work together to do all they can to survive…

“…how they must work together to do all they can to survive…”

The significance of her words jolted Gannon. He studied Tilly’s neat cursive style, the forward slant, the generous looping of the g, y and p. He recognized that it was precisely the way he wrote.

A family trait.

It hit him full force that Tilly was his blood and that he was her uncle. That’s when he heard something for the first time since entering the bedroom.

Ticking.

It was coming from the metal clock with a clown’s face on her dresser. It grew louder, with the exaggerated smile of the clown screaming to him that time was ticking down on his niece’s life.

6

Phoenix, Arizona

S omething’s not right here.

“Play the mother’s call again.”

Special Agent Earl Hackett concentrated as his partner, Bonnie Larson, turned on her pocket-sized recorder and replayed the 911 call Cora Martin had made twenty minutes ago.

As Hackett wheeled their unmarked sedan from the FBI’s Phoenix headquarters he got a bad vibe about this case. After he and Larson had listened to the call several more times Hackett reviewed the key facts.

The mother says two men in police uniforms kidnapped her daughter. These “cops” said her employer, Lyle Galviera “distributed their product” and stole five million dollars. She says it happened at 12:30 a.m., but calls it in now, more than twelve hours later.

“This is a cartel operation,” Hackett said as Larson activated the dash-mounted cherry.

The engine hummed and they cut through traffic to the expressway. While Larson worked on her cell phone gathering background from analysts at the field office, Hackett assessed matters. Cora Martin’s call first went to the County Sheriff’s deputies. They responded, took Cora’s initial statement and were backed up by Phoenix PD, which had the Home Invasion and Kidnapping Enforcement Task Force. The so-called HIKE unit was created when Phoenix became America’s kidnapping capital, averaging a kidnapping a day, usually arising from drug and human smuggling wars. But lately, HIKE was stretched. And because this new case involved a child and potential interstate flight, it fell to the FBI. Hackett and Larson had the lead, with support from other agencies.

As they drove across Phoenix, Hackett boiled things down.

Most of these cases involved criminal-on-criminal acts. Many times people never reported them to police. They paid the ransom, cleared the drug debt and the hostage was released.

Or things ended with a corpse.

You could argue that there were no true victims in this type of crime, but this one involved an eleven-year-old girl so he kicked his biases aside. As the city blurred by, he undid his collar button and loosened his tie. His gnarled face fixed into his perpetual grimace, the flag of his life as a twice-divorced hard-ass who was raised in Yonkers.

What did he have in this world?

Two ex-wives; four grown children, none of whom would speak to him; a slight limp from a gunshot wound; and a bastard’s attitude that hardened as he counted the days to his retirement.

Hackett couldn’t remember the last time he smiled. Maybe when the Cardinals won a game? His outlook was shaped by the crap he’d faced from his time as the FBI’s legal attaché in Bogotá, Guatemala City and Mexico City. He was intimate with the work of narcoterrorists. His limp was a daily reminder of his role in the botched rescue attempt of an American aid worker, taken hostage by cocaine traffickers in Colombia.

The narcos had been tipped that police were coming and the aid worker, a red-haired medical student from Ohio named Betsy, and three Colombian cops, died in the firefight. Later, while recovering in hospital, Hackett learned that one of the cops had been on the traffickers’ payroll, a betrayal that, like his bullet wound, had scarred him.

That was ten years ago and since then Hackett had watched helplessly as the drug lords, with the increasing power of Mexican cartels, extended their reach deeper into the U.S. Corruption greased the drug trade, a fact evinced by the latest memo concerning cartel infiltration of U.S. police ranks. Intelligence showed that cartels were suspected of having “operatives” applying for and getting jobs within U.S. law enforcement. This threw a cloud of mistrust over joint-forces operations, underscoring that you never knew who was on your side. It was an affront to Hackett, who abided by the Bureau’s motto: Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity. These factors weighed on him as they came to Mesa Mirage.

Larson had finished taking notes over the phone.

“No complaint history on the caller’s address. The mother has no criminal history, a spotless driving record. No registered firearms. She’s unmarried and no custody issues-the same for Lyle Galviera. He resides near Tempe and is president of Quick Draw Courier. No arrests, warrants or convictions. He does not possess any firearms. His company is clean.”

“And we’ve got people moving on his company and his home?”

“Yes, based on the statements the kidnapped girl’s mother gave to the sheriff’s deputies we’ve set things in motion to expedite search warrants on Galviera. And we’ve got our Evidence Response Team rolling to the mother’s house to process it as soon as possible.”

“I’m concerned about the time that’s passed since it happened. How many people have walked through that house, contaminating our scene,” Hackett said.

“I figure we’ll want to get the place processed quickly and get a task force set up in the house,” Larson said.

“You figured right.”

Hackett considered Larson a solid young agent. Three years out of Quantico, she’d grown up in Pennsylvania, the daughter of a Pittsburgh cop. She was quiet but sharp, and one of the few agents who could stand working with the walking slab of embitterment known as Earl Hackett.

They neared Cora Martin’s street and recognized a number of unmarked county and Phoenix PD units. As the FBI had requested, they were keeping a low profile but positioned to immediately choke all traffic in the neighborhood.

Hackett stopped their sedan at Cora Martin’s house. A man answered the door. The two agents held up ID.

“Special Agents Earl Hackett and Bonnie Larson. FBI,” Hackett said.

“Jack Gannon.” He swung the door open. “My sister’s over here.”

He indicated the woman sitting on the couch, twisting a tissue in her fists. Her hair was messed and her eyes reddened. After the agents introduced themselves, Hackett said: “Cora, a lot of people are going to work full tilt to get Tilly home safely but we’re going to need your help.”

“Anything.”

After assessing the house and making calls for support, Hackett and Larson talked further with Cora.

“Will you volunteer your property to be processed by our Evidence Response Team, who will look for anything to aid us?”

“Yes.”

“Good. While they do that, would you and your brother come to the Bureau with us now to help us with a few questions?”

“Leave? No. I don’t want to leave-the kidnappers could call.”

“We’ll put an agent here and we can arrange to have any calls that come to your landline go directly to a dedicated line at the Bureau where you can answer. We will not miss a call.”

Upon returning to FBI headquarters, a redbrick and glass building at Indianola Avenue and Second, the agents took Cora alone to a separate meeting room, leaving Gannon to wait in a reception area.

“Would you like something to drink?” Larson asked Cora.

She declined.

“All right, tell us what happened,” Hackett said.

Cora recounted everything. Hackett grilled her, often coming back to the same questions several times. What did she remember about the men? Had she ever seen them before? Height, build, scars, tattoos, accents? What did they touch? Did she still have the duct tape they’d used to bind her? Did she get a look at the car, a plate? The model, make? Prior to the kidnapping had there been any strange incidents? Did Tilly report anything odd at school, like strangers watching her, approaching her?

What did she know about Lyle Galviera? Did the five-million-dollar demand mean anything to Cora or the business? Was he a drug dealer, a drug user, a gambler, a big spender? Did he have debts? What kind of businessman was he?

“Let’s go over this again.” Hackett read his notes. “The kidnappers told you that Lyle uses his company to distribute their product, launder money and that he’s stolen five million dollars from them. Do you know which group or gang this is linked to?”

“No. I wish I did but I don’t.”

“More than twelve hours went by before you called police,” Hackett said. “I need you to explain the delay to me again.”

“I told you, they said that if I went to the police they would kill Tilly. I told absolutely no one. I did all I could to try to find Lyle. I don’t know where he is. When nothing worked, the only person I told is my brother, Jack. I begged him to help me and he told me to call the police.”

Hackett let a few moments pass in silence before he and Larson left Cora alone in the room.

The agents sent for Gannon, leading him to a separate room where Hackett sipped coffee from an FBI mug and flipped through his notes.

“And what’s your line of work, Jack?”

“I’m a correspondent with the World Press Alliance.”

“You’re a reporter with the newswire service?”

“Yes.”

“And you were in Mexico when she called you?”

“Yes.”

“Where in Mexico?”

“Juarez.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“And what were you doing there when she contacted you?”

“I was working on the WPA’s series on the drug trade.”

Hackett and Larson exchanged a look of unease.

“Is that right?” Hackett asked. “Yes.”

“Who did you talk to down there? What were you doing?”

“I talked to other journalists, morgue officials. It’s all in the profile that I wrote. The WPA will put out a day-of-death feature.”

“A ‘day-of-death’ feature?”

“Yes, it’ll likely run in tomorrow’s Arizona Republic, and about two thousand other papers around the world.”

“I’ll have to read it,” Hackett said. “Is it possible there’s a link to your activities in Mexico and what’s happened to your niece? Like maybe you pissed somebody off? Cartels have been known to go after journalists.”

“I know, but I doubt it,” Gannon said.

“Why?”

“I’ve only been there a few days and my sister said that the people who took my niece asked for Lyle Galviera, said he owed them five million dollars. Until today, I’d never heard of the guy.”

“Would you say you and your sister are close? Keep in touch regularly?”

“No. She ran away from home when she was seventeen and I was twelve. I never saw her again, until today.”

“So it’s fair to say you don’t really know your sister that well?”

“It’s been difficult, yes.”

“And here you are, directly from Juarez, Mexico?”

“That’s right. Here I am.”

Hackett stared at him for several long seconds before he and Larson met with other people in the Bureau and made a few calls. Then they led Gannon to the room where Cora had been waiting and questioned them together.

“Cora,” Hackett started, “I need to know more about Tilly. Does she have any medical condition we should know about?”

“No.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“God no, she’s eleven.”

“Does she use drugs? Is she flirtatious? Does she spend a lot of time chatting on the internet?”

“No.”

“Is she a good student?”

“Yes. She has above-average grades. She likes school.”

“Describe her relationship with you.”

“She’s a good girl. We have a strong relationship. There’s just the two of us in our family. We’re as close as any mother and daughter can be.”

“Where’s Tilly’s father?”

“I don’t know. He’s been out of the picture from the start. I raised her alone.”

“Again, characterize your relationship with Lyle Galviera. You indicated it’s more than boss-employee.”

“I started working there five years ago and last year we started dating.”

“Are you engaged?”

“No. A few months ago we talked about marriage but we decided to keep dating, see where things go.”

“Describe Lyle’s relationship with Tilly.”

“He adores her and she likes him.”

“Can you think of anyone who would have reason to take this kind of action against you?”

Cora was stabbed by the memory of California.

No one must know what happened. It can’t be connected to Tilly’s abduction. She can’t be the one to pay for my mistake. I have to keep that night in California secret. No one must know. Not Jack, not the police, no one. I have to protect Tilly. This is the one thing I have to keep secret until I know who took Tilly.

The one thing.

The kidnappers said this was about Lyle, not me. Please let that be true.

“No.”

“What about Lyle and his company-any enemies?”

“I can’t think of one. Everyone likes Lyle.”

“Is the company involved in the trafficking of narcotics?”

“I told you, no, not to my knowledge. I know we were facing some hard financial times. Lyle had to lay off a couple of people and told me to watch office costs, but drugs? No, this is all wrong.”

“You said that this morning the kidnappers called you at your office?”

“Yes. When I got loose, I went there immediately to try to find some clue as to where Lyle was. They called me on my cell phone and put Tilly on.”

“Did she give you any idea where she was?”

“No, it was only for a second and she sounded so scared.”

“How did they get your number?”

“Tilly would have given them my cell phone number.”

“Have you ever been involved with illicit drugs, Cora?”

She was struggling to hold herself together and covered her mouth with her cupped hands, feeling her brother’s eyes upon her. “Yes.”

“Elaborate.”

“For about ten years, starting when I was seventeen, I was addicted to drugs-pot, coke and crack. I was messed up. I drifted across the country. I hit bottom. I cut myself off from my family. Then I got pregnant with Tilly. I got clean for her, started over with her. I changed my name from Cora Gannon to Cora Martin.”

“Why did you change your name?”

“To put my past behind me and start over. I moved to Phoenix, put myself through college and started a new life. I got clerical jobs. I’ve been clean since.”

“So it’s been about twelve years since you’ve used?” Hackett asked.

“Yes, about that.”

“Did you deal?”

“I didn’t deal. But I knew dealers.”

“Do you associate with them now?”

“No.”

“Do you think anyone from your past could be involved in this?”

“I knew bad dealers, but that was a long time ago, another life. Anything is possible, but no, I hope not.”

“Can you provide us with names of those old dealers?” Hackett asked.

“I never knew their real names-they were street names. There was Deke, a white guy in Boston about fifteen years ago. Before that, Rasheed, a Middle Eastern guy in Toronto.”

Larson made notes.

“When did you last have contact with people in the drug trade?”

“About twelve years ago. My old life is dead, behind me.”

Hackett stared at Cora. Fine threads of doubt and apprehension webbed across his face before he said, “Are you telling us everything we need to know?”

Several moments passed before she answered.

“Agent Hackett, I’ve made mistakes. I have not lived a perfect life but I am a good mother and I swear to you I am not involved.”

“All right.”

Larson’s cell phone rang. After listening for about ten seconds, she said: “They’re almost finished processing the kitchen and the living room.”

Hackett adjusted his sleeves.

“We’ll take both of you back to the house in Mesa Mirage. The task force will set up. We’ll have people from VAP, our victim specialist unit there too, to help you with anything you may need. You’re going to have a lot of police keeping you company.”

“Whatever it takes,” Cora said. “But there’s something I need from you.”

“What’s that?”

“Your word that you will do all you can to bring Tilly home.”

Cora’s request gave him pause. It was identical to the plea he’d heard from the mother of the aid worker from Toledo, Ohio, who’d been taken hostage by Colombian drug traffickers.

“Give me your word you will bring my daughter back.”

He did.

But he brought her home in a coffin.

Now, looking into Cora’s face, Hackett told her the truth.

“I give you my word I will do all I can to find your daughter.”

“Thank you.”

He stared at Cora. “And to arrest the people responsible.”

7

Phoenix, Arizona

A few miles north of Mesa Mirage, at the South Desert Bank & Trust, Bill Grover, the assistant manager, realigned the stapler and pen holder on his desk.

The two FBI agents sitting across from him were studying the files Grover’s branch had assembled with some urgency. The action was in response to a warrant to provide the FBI with records on all of Lyle Galviera’s financial dealings and those of his courier company.

The agents, Ross Sarreno and Winston Reeve, were the Phoenix Division’s white-collar crime experts. They wore dark suits and somber expressions. Whatever they were chasing, it was serious, Grover thought.

First, they confirmed that there’d been no activity on any credit or bank cards held by Galviera since the day before he was to depart for his California business trip. However, on that day, there was a cash withdrawal from one of his accounts for nine thousand dollars.

This guy was planning something, Reeve thought after he and Sarreno studied the company’s banking files.

“These records show the company is in trouble,” Reeve said.

“Yes.” Grover cleared his throat. “The big boys were securing their hold on Quick Draw’s regional market. About two years ago, Lyle’s outstanding debts climbed to about four million dollars. A few times he came close to not making payroll. We could no longer extend his line of credit. Things were getting dire. We were talking about Chapter Eleven.”

“Then he turns things around, appears to have found a source of business and funds,” Reeve said. “Ten months ago he begins knocking down his debt with significant weekly payments, fifty-, seventy-, ninety-five-thousand-dollar range.”

“He said it was the result of a new business model.”

“But all of the transactions were in cash,” Reeve said.

“That’s correct.”

“This is a courier business. It does not deal primarily in cash. The transactions could be indicative of money laundering. Under the law there’s an obligation to report this activity,” Reeve said.

Grover reached for the file, tapped at specific pages.

“You’ll see here that Currency Transaction Reports were filed with the IRS for all of his cash transactions over ten thousand dollars.”

“What about SARs?”

“This bank filed three Suspicious Activity Reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at Treasury.”

“What was their response?”

“Nothing to us. We did our part.”

“The bottom line here, plain and simple?”

“He owes $1,950,000 by end of next month and if he does not pay that amount in full he will lose his company. Now I know Lyle built that company practically from the time he was a college kid and I don’t think that he was going to let that happen under any circumstances.”

The agents closed the files, thanked Grover and left. Next stop: Cora Martin’s bank in Mesa Mirage to scrutinize her records. Heading to their car in the lot, Reeve turned to Sarreno.

“Our guy was in a dire financial situation, then found a sudden and significant source of cash. Someone dropped the ball. This should’ve raised flags,” Reeve said.

“Sure raises some big ones now.” Sarreno was reaching for his cell phone. “I’ll alert Hackett and Larson.”

At that moment, Vivian Brankowski, manager of the Tranquility Palms Condominiums near Tempe, reread the document the two FBI Agents, Douglas and Allard, had presented her.

Shocked, she watched the words leap at her from the pages: “…United States District Court…Search Warrant…affidavits…electronic data process and storage devices, computers…” The list went on, but offered no details as to what it concerned, other than the property listed for Lyle Galviera.

Vivian stood there in disbelief. This sort of thing never happened at Tranquility, a sedate community of urban professionals.

“Ma’am?” Agent Allard said. “We don’t want to force the door. Do you have a key and a floor plan?”

“Mr. Galviera uses Tranquility’s cleaning service. I have a key.”

It was the Segovia model, a two-bedroom multilevel condo with a balcony overlooking the small lake. Several swans were gliding on the surface when the FBI backed a white panel van into the driveway.

Vivian felt like she was trespassing as she opened the door to Mr. Galviera’s home for the agents. But the warrant gave them legal access. With mute efficiency, the agents snapped on latex gloves and began seizing and cataloging Galviera’s computer, personal files and other belongings.

Vivian stood at the doorway watching in disbelief. Mr. Galviera was a first-rate resident. Always smiled and chatted. Now the FBI was searching his home, taking things. Good Lord, what was going on? She stared at the warrant for the umpteenth time but failed to find an answer.

“Can you gentlemen at least tell me what this is about?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Agent Douglas said. “We can’t discuss it.”

Ed Kilpatrick’s jaw dropped when the FBI and detectives from the county arrived at the main office of Quick Draw Courier’s depot. They gave him a copy of the warrant authorizing them to seize the company’s computers, files and phone records, among other items.

“What the hell is this?” Kilpatrick asked.

Heads turned and conversations halted as management and administrative staff watched.

“We’re not at liberty to share other information at this time,” Agent Hutton said.

“But you’ll shut us down. Our customers are relying on shipments.”

“That’s not our concern, sir,” Hutton said. “Have your people step away from their units now.”

Kilpatrick and his staff complied with the order, then scrambled.

“Bobby! Get Lyle on the phone-tell him what’s going on. Agnes, call our lawyer, Kendall Fairfield. His number is on the firm’s calendar in my office.”

Kilpatrick was stunned as he watched FBI agents and county detectives shut down and disconnect computers. He tried to think.

“Gloria, can you get through to Metrofire Computer Solutions? Tell them we need emergency backup-now. Then start calling our clients. Tell them we’re having a major computer issue.”

Bobby Wicks shouted to Kilpatrick that he could not reach Lyle Galviera.

“Damn.” Kilpatrick ran his hand over his face, remembering Cora Martin’s call from earlier. Did she actually come in today? “Has anyone seen Cora today? Maybe she knows what the hell is going on.”

8

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

Cora’s phone rang.

All activity in her home ceased.

She held her breath and looked at Gannon.

This was the first call on her landline since she and Gannon had returned to the house with Hackett and Larson a few hours earlier. During that time a stream of agents and detectives had flowed through her door. The FBI had put a trace on her home phone to identify incoming calls.

“This call’s from the Phoenix area,” said the agent working at a computer laptop equipped to record calls.

As the agent locked on the address, an FBI hostage negotiator put on a headset to listen in. He had a clipboard and pen, ready to give Cora instructions. She looked at the negotiator. He nodded.

Her hand trembling, she answered on the third ring.

“Hello.”

“Cora, Ed at the depot. Are you coming in at all this afternoon?”

“I can’t.”

“Have you heard from Lyle yet?”

“No. Have you?”

“No, but-you sound upset, Cora. What’s going on?”

“It’s just-it’s a thing with Tilly. I’m sorry, Ed.”

“Well, we’ve got trouble. We’ve got the FBI in here with search warrants and nobody knows what the hell’s going on. We can’t reach Lyle. Have you had any luck? Do you have any idea what’s happening, Cora?”

“No, I wish I could talk but it’s a bad time.”

“Man, tell me about it.”

“Ed, I need a favor.”

“What is it?”

“If you hear from Lyle, tell him I need to talk to him now.”

“That makes two of us, kid.”

Cora hung up and thrust her face in her hands. Hackett, Larson and the dozen other law enforcement people from the FBI, the Phoenix PD’s HIKE unit, the County, the DEA and U.S. Immigration and Customs who’d joined the case, watched her for several moments before continuing their work.

When Cora regained her composure, she resumed describing the suspects to the FBI’s sketch artist, a blonde woman with red fingernails.

“The one who spoke had a Hispanic accent,” Cora said. “He had a scar along his left jawline. He had narrow eyes. He was in his mid-thirties, about five feet ten inches, one hundred and sixty pounds, slim build. The silent one was in his early thirties, about the same height, weight and build. Both had short black hair. The car was a light-colored Ford. I think maybe a Crown Victoria. It looked like the one my friend at church has.”

As the artist worked with her on the faces of the suspects, the magnitude of her daughter’s kidnapping began to sink in.

Investigators had moved fast, filling Cora’s living room with tables of equipment, including extra phone lines, GPS, radios and encrypted fax machines. She had volunteered her phone, bank and computer records, everything. They examined it all. People worked on laptops, talked softly on cell phones, drank coffee, consulted files and shared notes, while uniformed officers came and went after updating detectives. Still others continued searching her home.

So far, they’d determined that the call Cora had received at her office from the kidnappers was made on a prepaid cell phone bought with cash at a corner store in Tucson. From there, the trail went cold.

After finishing with the artist, Cora joined Gannon in the hall, watching the FBI’s evidence team. They’d finished with the kitchen and living room and were now processing Tilly’s bedroom. It was the first time Cora had looked into her room since the abduction.

Since the moment when she’d last checked on her daughter.

Cora took a deep breath as her eyes went around the room. The room where she’d tucked Tilly in, the room where she’d listened to her dreams, chased away her fears and promised to keep her safe.

Now, seeing the evidence people in there with their protective clothing and latex gloves-people who worked in the aftermath of evil touching Tilly’s most private things-felt like a violation. Yet it was eclipsed by the greater desecration committed by the monsters who’d stolen her child.

Where was Tilly? Time was slipping by.

Panic rose in Cora’s stomach and was stifled by a dog’s yelp.

Through the bedroom window she glimpsed the K-9 unit sniffing in her yard for evidence. Down the street she saw other detectives canvassing the neighborhood, interviewing people. Cora dreaded the fact that soon everyone would know what had happened. Her attention was pulled back to the living room, where Hackett was huddled with agents and detectives. Not far under the surface of the investigation, his suspicions toward her bubbled beneath his cold, insistent frown.

“Are you telling us everything we need to know?”

She had nothing to do with Tilly’s abduction and nothing to do with drugs. Cora and Tilly lived a good life. Still, Hackett’s mistrust tore at her, made her feel guilty for not knowing Lyle, for every sin of her past.

Like the secret she’d kept buried for so many years.

Did one single act, all those years back, deliver Tilly into the hands of a drug cartel now? No, it can’t be. It’s just not possible. It was so long ago. That was another life. No one must know about what I did. I have to protect Tilly.

“Excuse me.” One of the agents had follow-up questions. “Could you tell us what she was wearing when she was taken? It’s for the alert.”

After Cora described Tilly’s pajamas, and the sneakers, shirt and jeans Tilly had been carrying, the agent asked for a recent photo. She found one of Tilly taken at a friend’s birthday party.

“This was last weekend.”

There was Tilly with other eleven-and twelve-year-olds at the mall, laughing in the food court, eyes bright with innocence, on the cusp of adolescence, her whole life ahead of her.

Would she ever hold her again?

Cora then saw forensic people bagging Tilly’s old toothbrush and comb. “For DNA analysis,” someone said. She watched them process Tilly’s computer mouse for fingerprints.

Hackett approached her.

“Cora,” he said. “Were you aware of the seriousness of Quick Draw’s financial trouble?”

“Like I said, we had to cut some staff and watch costs. Lyle told me we had faced rough times but that he’d taken care of it.”

“Did you know where his influx of cash came from?”

“No, he did the books. He never showed me the company’s finances. I ran the office. He ran the company.”

Hackett took a moment to assess her answer.

“All right, in a few hours we’re going to hold a press conference and make a public appeal for Tilly and for Lyle.”

“What?” Cora said. “No! The kidnappers said they would kill her. God knows what they’ll do to Tilly when they learn I’ve gone to the police.”

“Your daughter’s life was in danger the second they stole her,” Hackett said. “We can’t deal with these people. Right now secrecy is their best weapon.”

“But we can’t have a press conference. There has to be another way!”

“There isn’t. At this time, we have no leads on your daughter’s location or safety. We have no leads on Lyle’s whereabouts. We have no leads on the suspects, or the gang involved. We have no choice, none.”

Hackett shot a glance toward Gannon.

“It could be the only way to get Tilly home,” Gannon said.

“Earl,” Larson said from down the hall. “Call from EPIC.”

Gannon’s ears pricked up. He knew EPIC was short for the El Paso Intelligence Center, the multi-agency operation at the U.S.-Mexico border that coordinated information on Mexican cartels and human smugglers.

Gannon had an idea and took it to a quiet corner of the house. Up to now, he’d been useless in the search for his niece. Using his cell phone, he called Isabel Luna in Mexico. “Isabel Luna, El Heraldo.”

“It’s Jack Gannon.” He lowered his voice. “I’m in Arizona and I need your help but this is confidential. You can’t report any of this yet.”

“Of course, Jack, we are working together.”

“An eleven-year-old girl has been kidnapped from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, by narcos. They claim a Phoenix businessman who runs a courier company stole five million dollars from them and vanished. He has five days to surface and return the money.”

“Has any of this been reported?”

“Not a word yet, but you must keep this all confidential.”

“Why the secrecy?”

“The girl is my niece.”

“Your niece? Do you know who took her?”

“No, my sister works for the man the kidnappers are trying to pressure.”

“What can I do to help you, Jack?”

“I need you to find out who might be responsible. Can you check with your sources in Juarez, see what you can dig up confidentially?”

“I will at once.”

Gannon ended the call and exhaled just as his phone rang.

“Jack, Melody in New York. Where are you and what do you have?”

“I’m in Phoenix and we have a story.”

“What is it?”

“An eleven-year-old girl has been kidnapped from her Phoenix home, likely tied to the theft of five million dollars from a cartel.”

“I’ll put it on the next news budget. You write us a first hit. We’ll need it in about thirty minutes.”

“No. We can’t write anything yet.”

“What?”

“Alert our Phoenix bureau to expect a news conference with the FBI late in the day.”

“News conference? Isn’t this our exclusive?”

“No, it’s complicated.”

“We need exclusives, Jack.”

“I know and this could lead to one. You have to trust me.”

“What’s going on?”

Since he’d already told Isabel Luna, Gannon surrendered his information to the editor he trusted most.

“The girl who’s been kidnapped is the daughter of my estranged sister, Cora-my niece. I’m sorry, but it’s complicated. I’ll explain later.”

“Good Lord. Is she okay?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Thanks, I’ll let you know. Just trust me on this for now, please. I really have to go. I’ll call you when I know more.”

Gannon scanned the house and saw Cora on the edge of a chair, being offered water and comfort by paramedics. They’d been monitoring her vital signs from the get-go.

Watching her now, he battled his emotions.

Am I scum? His sister had called him for help. Was he being a brother and an uncle, or was he being a reporter? Why did he feel a greater obligation to his job than to Cora? Because it didn’t feel like she was his sister. At times he felt that she was a stranger. Then there were warm flashes, when he’d recognized the same gentle spirit who’d guided him when he was a boy.

His big sister, Cora.

And he wondered what their lives would’ve been like had she not run off and devastated their family. But dwelling on it made him angry. His thoughts shifted when Cora indicated that she wanted to talk to him alone.

The paramedics gave them privacy.

Cora gripped his arm.

Since this had happened, she hadn’t slept or eaten. Her eyes were reddened from tears. She pulled him closer. Her lower lip started trembling.

“Am I being punished, Jack.”

“What do you mean?”

“For my past. In the worst times of my life I had to do things to survive-awful things, Jack.”

“What things? Tell me. Maybe it will help find Tilly.”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“If it has something to do with why you cut yourself off from us, then tell me. I need to know. I deserve to know.”

“I can’t.” Her face contorted with fear. “What if I never see her again?”

“Take it easy.”

“This is not about me, not about my mistakes. It’s about my daughter.”

“I know, I know. You’re upset. Maybe you should rest.”

“You have to help me find her before it’s too late, find out who took her and bring her back!” She collapsed onto his chest.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, looking down at her. He held her until she calmed down. When the paramedics returned to check on her, Gannon met Hackett’s stare. He’d been watching.

He took Gannon aside.

“Saw you on your phone, Jack. Mind telling me who were you talking to and what you told them?”

Gannon considered his question.

“My boss needs to know where I am.”

“That right? Listen, you’d better give serious thought about your role here. For some reason, your long-lost sister thinks having you here now is important.”

“She was scared and she called me. The situation brought us together.”

“That’s fine-you’re family. But your actions could be counterproductive to our efforts. Anything you learn here is privileged. Sharing it outside the investigation could undermine our work, force us to look at excluding you from the house and consider obstruction charges. You got that?”

“Oh, I get it.”

“Good.”

“We have the same goal-the safe return of my niece.”

“As long as we’re on the same page, Jack.”

“We are-the one that says you do your job and I’ll do mine.”

Hackett glared at Gannon until a heart-stopping shriek cut through the impasse. Paramedics were struggling to stem Cora’s rising hysteria as she moaned to everyone.

“Please, bring my daughter back to me! Please!”

9

Phoenix, Arizona

T ick. Tick. Tick.

The clock on the wall of the FBI’s office was all Cora could hear.

Time counting down on Tilly’s life.

Or was that Cora’s heart racing under the fierce light of cameras?

Some fifty news people had gathered for the press conference at the FBI’s Field Office. They adjusted lenses, tripods, checked BlackBerry phones, made notes and last-minute cell phone calls while Cora and other officials took their places in front of the crowd.

The announcements would start momentarily.

Prior to arriving, Cora had slept for an hour but adrenaline still rushed through her. She’d refused sedatives from the paramedics and had managed to eat saltine crackers to quell her stomach butterflies after she’d agreed to make a live statement to the press.

Hackett and Gannon had convinced her that it was critical to reach out to the kidnappers and that this was the best way to speak directly to them, to Tilly, to Lyle, and to get the whole world looking for them. It could lead to a break in the case. Her plea would be distributed everywhere on the air and online.

Jack had helped her compose a few sentences. They were printed in large font on the folded sheet of paper she now held in her hand.

Cora clasped her hands over it to steady her nerves as a thousand disconnected thoughts shot through her mind; her fear for Tilly juxtaposed with the absurdity of deciding how to dress for the press conference.

What do I wear to plead for my daughter’s life?

She’d decided on her charcoal jacket and matching pencil skirt, what she would have worn to work or a funeral. What about makeup? A female FBI agent had offered to help fix her face, but Cora had declined. Somehow it seemed wrong.

My daughter’s life is at stake.

The conference began.

Gannon was standing a few inches to her right and the Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix FBI was a few inches on her left, gripping the podium. She noticed his wedding band but had forgotten his name. Lewis something. He’d given it to her with a crushing handshake.

As the agent spoke, Cora struggled against a state of unreality. Her child had been abducted by a drug cartel. How could this be happening? She was a single mother, a secretary. She wanted her daughter back. She thought she knew Lyle. Where was he? Was he dead? Five million dollars! What had he done?

What had she done?

The kidnappers’ warning flashed.

“Lyle must return our money or your daughter will die. And if you go to the police, your daughter will die…”

Cora heard her name.

The FBI man finished his opening remarks and had turned to her.

“Now, Tilly’s mother, Cora Martin, will make a brief statement. But please-she will take no questions.”

He gestured and she stepped in front of the cameras. The intense light glared like a judgment. Beside the podium she saw the tripod bearing enlarged photos of Tilly and Lyle. Next to it stood another tripod bearing a sketch of one of the suspects and a picture of Lyle’s pickup truck.

This was real.

Cora’s mouth went dry. She glanced at her brother. He nodded encouragement.

She had to do this for Tilly.

Cora unfolded her paper. The cameras tightened on her, the lines on her face, her bloodshot eyes: the anguished mother. News networks were broadcasting live with Breaking News flags. Some carried a graphic at the bottom of the screen: Drug Gang Kidnaps 11-year-old Girl From Phoenix Home Demand $5 million.

Cora started.

“To the people who have my daughter, Tilly, I beg you, please, do not hurt her and please return her to me.” Cora stopped, then resumed. “Sweetheart, if you can see me or hear my voice, I love you. We’re doing everything to bring you home safely.”

She paused, kept her composure and continued.

“Lyle, if you see this, please help us. Go to the police, wherever you are. Please. We need your help. And I beg anyone who has any information to please contact the police. Thank you.”

As the agent took her shoulder and Gannon helped her retreat from the podium, several reporters fired questions. Above them all, they heard the voice of Carrie Cole, a news celebrity known across America for her nationally televised crime show based in Phoenix.

“Mother to mother, Cora! One question, please!”

Cora stopped, looked at the famous face and lifted hers, inviting the question.

“I know this must be a horrible, gut-wrenching time. No one can know what you’re going through, but please share with us the last words your little girl spoke to you and when?”

Cora glanced at the FBI and her brother. The FBI man nodded.

“It was early this morning, after the kidnappers took Tilly. They called me and put her on the phone.”

“What did she say to you?”

Cora hesitated.

“‘Mommy, please help me!’”

Cora covered her face and turned away sobbing. The reporters shouted more questions, but the agent raised his palms and resumed control.

“To recap and conclude, as you know we’ve just issued a national alert. The FBI is asking for the public’s assistance in locating Tilly Martin and Lyle Galviera. I want to stress that Mr. Galviera is not a suspect but a person of interest. He was last known to have been destined by air travel for California on business. He has not been located. All vehicles registered to him have been located except for his red Ford F-150 pickup truck pictured here. You have details. We are also seeking any information concerning the unknown suspects fitting the artist’s sketch and details. There is still no description of the suspects’ vehicle involved in this case. That is all we can release for now. Anyone with information is strongly urged to call the Phoenix FBI or your local police. We’ll keep you apprised of any developments. Thank you.”

10

New York City, New York

At that moment, at the World Press Alliance headquarters in midtown Manhattan, several senior editors had extended the late-day story meeting to watch the news conference on the large screen in the main boardroom.

“Am I wrong, or did I just see one of our reporters participating in an FBI press conference, in violation of WPA policy that we don’t align ourselves with police?” said George Wilson, chief of all of the WPA’s foreign bureaus.

No one spoke. A couple of the other editors consulted their cell phones for messages. One made notes on a pad.

“Am I the only one who has a problem with this?”

It was known that Wilson, a pull-no-punches journalist, had a prickly relationship with Gannon. Wilson swiveled his chair, turning to the head of the table, taking his issue to Melody Lyon, the WPA’s deputy executive editor.

“Mel? Are you aware of the perception here?”

Lyon arched an eyebrow. She was a legendary reporter who’d spent decades covering the world’s most turbulent events and was the most powerful person in WPA management after her boss, Beland Stone, the WPA’s executive editor.

“I’m well aware of the perception. As I said in my memo to senior management, Jack advised me of his situation and is keeping me apprised. Henrietta Chong from our Phoenix bureau staffed the conference and will cover the story for us.”

“Gannon’s supposed to be in Mexico on foreign features. We’re led to believe he’s on the brink of delivering an exclusive. Then he abandons the assignment because of this cartel kidnapping of his niece,” Wilson said.

“Yes, I alerted you when he informed me that his situation had changed,” Lyon said.

“I never knew all the details until now. None of us did, Mel.”

“I recognize this puts him in a potential conflict, but that’s not our main concern right now.”

“You seem to be missing the greater point,” Wilson said.

“Which is?” Lyon was twisting a rubber band in her hand.

“Look at the optics. While on assignment covering cartels in Mexico, Jack Gannon suddenly surfaces in Arizona in the eye of the kidnapping story involving cartels, drugs, five million dollars and his family. It implicates him and by extension implicates the WPA and threatens our credibility.” Wilson muttered, “Remember who hired him.”

“What was that?”

Unease rippled around the table.

“It’s no secret that many of us were opposed to Gannon’s hiring,” Wilson said.

Lyon had stood alone with her desire to hire Gannon after he was fired from the Buffalo Sentinel, where he’d become embroiled in a scandal over a source there. Everyone had rejected him but she’d sensed something about him, about his news instincts, his passion, his ability to dig. He was as uncompromising as truth itself.

“I resent what you are implying. No one has been charged in this case.”

“Not yet.”

Lyon slapped her palm on the table.

“Stop this bullshit, George!”

The air tensed as she continued.

“When reporters find themselves in trouble or victims of circumstance, their news organizations stand behind them. Look at the cases of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC. And look at what we just went through in Brazil.” Lyon paused. “Gannon is a WPA employee. His niece has been abducted by a drug cartel. And you’re damned right-by extension that implicates the WPA. But at a time like this the WPA does not consult its policy, George. It looks into its heart and makes the easy, moral choice to do what’s right. Because at a time like this, we’re talking about the life of an eleven-year-old child. Is that clear?”

Lyon let several moments pass.

“We will stand behind our reporter as this tragedy unfolds. Is that understood?”

Murmurs of agreement went around the table then bled into talk of updates and other business before Lyon ended the meeting. She stayed behind, alone in the room, and replayed the Phoenix press conference.

Looking at Cora, at Tilly’s picture, Lyon saw the family resemblance with Gannon as she watched.

This is a hell of a way to find your long-lost sister, Jack.

11

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

Cora was terrified by what she had done.

Now that she had defied the kidnapper’s orders, would they carry out their threat to kill Tilly?

Forgive me, Tilly. I didn’t know what else to do.

Cora also feared that her appeal to find Tilly would resurrect her dangerous secret and make things worse.

Returning home after the press conference, she was exhausted, as if a lifetime had passed since Tilly was taken. FBI crime scene experts were still processing parts of her house and agents had set up additional lines to run off Cora’s home and cell phones.

Hackett opposed talk of sealing her entire home as a crime scene. He wanted her in the house in case, by some miracle, Tilly got free and called. Or the kidnappers called, or Galviera surfaced. The FBI would be listening and ready to take command of her line, or clear it.

As expected, the press coverage had yielded a steady number of tips to the FBI’s hotline. They were screened by analysts at the Phoenix office and assessed by agents for follow-up.

But most leads lacked detail. One caller said: “I saw that missing kid. She was walking near a Wal-Mart, or Target? Not sure which, but check it out.” Another said, “I saw a dude with a scar like the kidnapper’s in a bar.” One email said, This was foretold in the Book of Revelations. And then there was a woman claiming special powers who wanted to “spiritually channel your visions on the kidnapping.”

Tilly’s distraught friends and neighbors called. So did people from her church. All offered Cora kind words and prayers. Other support was more tangible, like the swift help that came from the American Network for Vanished and Stolen Children. The Phoenix chapter worked with police, creating flyers and marshaling volunteer search parties at the Mesa Mirage Shopping Center. News cameras recorded the response to Tilly’s kidnapping from her schoolteachers and worried parents. They quoted criminologists, expert on the nature of drug cartels.

The press also kept a vigil at Cora’s home.

Satellite trucks and media vehicles lined her street in front of her bungalow. Some two dozen in all, but the number grew along with the requests for interviews. All the networks wanted Cora to appear on breakfast and prime-time news shows. Their enquiries were handled by advisors from the volunteer group, one of them a retired news assignment editor.

“Cora’s not making any more statements today, folks,” he said. “The next media briefing might be tomorrow, if the FBI has any updates.”

Though Cora’s number was not listed, some news organizations managed to obtain it. Those that tried to call in to Cora were deflected by the FBI, except for one reporter outside, standing among the pack.

She didn’t call Cora.

Inside the house, Jack Gannon’s cell phone rang.

“Gannon.”

“Jack, this is Henrietta Chong with WPA’s Phoenix bureau. Melody Lyon in New York gave me your number and told me to call.”

“Did she?”

“I am so sorry about what’s happened to your niece. I hope she comes home safe.”

“We all do.”

“I hate doing this, but you’re going in the story. AP and Reuters are making reference to you being Cora’s brother. We have to do the same.”

“I figured.”

“Jack, New York wants me to interview Cora. Can you help me with that?” Then she clarified, “Melody wants me to talk to her, exclusively.”

After a long pause, Gannon told Henrietta he would have to call her back. Hanging up, he looked across the room at Cora resting on the sofa and approached her with the request. After considering it, she said, “Just two minutes over the phone.”

At that moment Hackett materialized, eyeing Gannon.

“Two minutes with whom and for what?”

“A short interview with the WPA,” Gannon said.

Hackett weighed it. “As long as she only repeats what she said earlier. I’ll be right here, listening.”

Gannon called Henrietta Chong on his phone, then passed it to Cora. As he watched and listened, ambiguity gnawed at him. He knew he was exploiting his sister. But he rationalized it. After all this time, she’d called him. Some twenty-two years had passed between them. There was so much he didn’t know about her and it had kept him ambivalent toward her, torn over whether he should be consoling her or questioning her account of what was really at work with Tilly’s kidnapping.

Why had Cora asked him if she was being punished for past sins? What did she mean?

I knew dealers.

What had happened in her past? Was this somehow linked?

At that moment an agent rose from the worktable where he had been listening to his cell phone while working on a laptop. His face taut, he tapped Hackett’s shoulder.

“We just got something.”

12

Tempe, Arizona

Thick dried mud covered all but the first two numbers of the license plate on the back of the truck.

Vanita Solaniz could not read the rest of it but was convinced the pickup that had wheeled into the Burger King parking lot was the one the FBI was looking for: a metallic red, 2009 Ford F-150 with a regular cab.

As an assistant manager at Clear Canyon Auto Parts, Vanita knew cars, trucks and vans. A few hours ago, she and her customers at the shop halted their business to watch the TV above the counter when the news broke about the little girl who was kidnapped by a drug cartel from her home in Mesa Mirage.

“My lord, that just breaks your heart, doesn’t it?” she said.

One old-timer shifted the toothpick in the corner of his mouth, then said, “A damn shame. I got a granddaughter that age.”

For the rest of the afternoon, with every commercial break, the TV news repeated details on the case and the F-150. Vanita watched when she could, hoping for a good ending to the story. Nothing new had happened when her shift ended and she headed for her apartment near Escalente Park.

Vanita’s welder boyfriend was out of town. They had no food in the house, so for supper she’d decided to treat herself to her favorite: onion rings and a shake at Burger King. After getting her order at the drive-through, she parked her car in a shady corner of the lot, dropped the windows and caught a sweet breeze.

That’s when the Ford pickup rolled into the spot in front of her.

Hey, it’s a metallic red 150, like the one on the news, Vanita thought, munching on her rings. From the tailgate’s style she knew it was a 2009. The driver got out, a man wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. His passenger was a girl who looked about ten or eleven. She wore a sun hat and sunglasses. The man took her hand and they entered the restaurant.

An icy feeling shot through Vanita.

She looked at the Arizona plate, making out the first two numbers.

Five, then seven.

Vanita stopped eating.

She clawed through her bag for the blank order form where she’d jotted the pickup’s plate from the news.

Oh my God.

Vanita grabbed her cell phone, called 911 and reported the details to the Tempe police, repeating her location. “It’s them! Send somebody! It’s on East University.”

The Tempe police dispatcher kept her on the line while she alerted the FBI. A moment later the dispatcher told Vanita, “Police are on the way. Keep your eyes on the vehicle, your line open and do not move.”

Hackett drove and Bonnie Larson relayed information over the phone to a Tempe police detective who’d turned up his radio.

“Tempe’s on the line with the caller now,” Larson said. “The vehicle description fits Lyle Galviera’s pickup.”

“And the man and the girl?”

“They match the general description of Tilly and Galviera.”

As they wove through traffic, Hackett shook his head, uncertain what to make of this break. If it was Galviera, what was he doing with Tilly? Had the kidnappers released her?

“Advise Tempe not to send any marked units into the area,” he said.

“They’re only sending unmarked cars, no lights, no sirens.”

“We don’t want to lose them.”

“Tempe’s dispatching marked units to set up a one-block perimeter to stop the suspect vehicle if he flees.”

In Mesa Mirage, Cora waited in agony.

The investigators who’d stayed behind with her had few updates.

It was torture, as it had been watching Hackett and Larson scrambling from her home a few minutes ago when she’d begged them to tell her what was happening before they’d left.

“We have a lead on a truck that looks like Lyle’s,” Hackett had said.

“Take me with you!”

“No, we don’t know what to expect. We urge you to stay here.” Cora turned to Gannon as Hackett added, “I can’t prevent you or your brother from leaving your home. You’re not under arrest, but you could jeopardize things. That’s why I’m not giving you details on the location. It’s for your own safety.”

“All right.” Gannon nodded and the FBI agents left.

“But, Jack,” Cora pleaded, “one of us should be there.”

“Hang on. I’ll try to find out where it is.”

Gannon started to call Henrietta Chong when his cell phone rang.

“Jack, this is Henrietta, there seems to be a lot of activity coming out of the house and the TV guys listening to police scanners say that something’s going on in Tempe but police are being cryptic on the air.”

Gannon turned away and kept his voice low.

“Can you get an address from them for me, Henrietta? I’ll fill you in.”

When she called back with the address, Gannon asked Cora for the keys to her car.

Now, as Gannon drove alone in Cora’s Pontiac Vibe, the GPS system indicated he was about two blocks from the Burger King. His phone rang. It was Chong, about six blocks behind him with a WPA photographer.

“Jack, the whole pack is headed to this place. What’s going on?”

“They may have found Lyle Galviera’s truck.”

The knot in Vanita’s stomach was tightening.

It was twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes since she’d called police. Every minute or so, the 911 dispatcher asked for an update.

“The truck still hasn’t moved,” Vanita said.

“Thank you.”

But Vanita worried. Were police here? If they were, they did a good job of keeping invisible. What if the man and girl had slipped out of the restaurant? What if they got away?

Vanita couldn’t stand it any longer.

With her cell phone pressed to her ear, she left her car and entered the busy outlet. She threaded through the dining room, unable to find them, concern mounting until she spotted them in a corner booth.

“I see them,” Vanita told the dispatcher. “They’re done eating and getting ready to leave by the door near their truck. You have to do something fast!”

The dispatcher relayed Vanita’s alert to Phil Zern, the Tempe police sergeant in charge. Plainclothes detectives were positioned in the lot, some in cars, some on foot. There was no time for SWAT to set up and too many people around.

This would be a rapid takedown.

“Everyone on position, stand by,” Zern said, “on my order.”

A few seconds later, as the man and girl neared their truck, a siren yelped and an unmarked police car, dash light and wigwag grill lights flashing, roared from nowhere to within inches of the truck, boxing it in.

At the same time, detectives, guns drawn and badges displayed, approached the man while a voice over a loudspeaker shouted orders.

“Police! Get down on the ground-now!”

“Why?” The startled man put his hands up and looked to the girl. Two female detectives had grabbed her and were pulling her away.

“Daddyyy!”

The man was handcuffed.

“What the hell are you doing? What’s going on?”

Hackett and Larson, watching from the far end of the lot, trotted to the scene. Beyond them, news crews scrambled to record it. Some people in the restaurant began taking pictures with their camera phones. A few hurried to the parking lot, where a crowd gathered. Vanita introduced herself to a detective who told her to wait near his car.

Gannon arrived and approached the scene.

Afraid and confused, the little girl was placed in the front seat of a police car. Hackett and Larson showed their ID, then compared her to the photo of Tilly Martin. Not even close, Hackett thought.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Larson asked.

“Melissa Hanley,” she said through tears. “Are we in trouble?”

A few yards away, Melissa’s father, Doug Hanley, demanded to know why he was arrested. A detective wiped the mud from his plate.

This was not Lyle Galviera’s pickup truck.

It took Tempe Police and the FBI over half an hour to sort out and confirm that Doug Hanley was Melissa Hanley’s father and that they lived in Kingman, where Hanley was a carpenter and Melissa’s mother, Rachel, was a bank teller. Doug and Melissa had driven down to Tempe to get Rachel, who was visiting her mother, Melissa’s grandma.

Police apologized to Hanley for the alarm and inconvenience caused by the arrest but stressed that under the circumstances it was the right call. Zern asked Hanley to consider what he would want police to do if Melissa were taken under the same circumstances as Tilly Martin.

Gannon called Cora and told her what had happened.

Night was falling when he returned to his sister’s house.

In the wake of the takedown in Tempe, the FBI hotline continued receiving tips, most of them vague. A funereal air enveloped Cora’s home as the darkness outside deepened.

She’d refused food, sedatives, even rest.

Sitting alone, she stared at photos of Tilly. Between news reports and talking with the WPA, Gannon watched Cora, studying her anguish as time swept by. Seeing her suffering had inexplicably resurrected the pain he’d shouldered when their parents were killed.

He’d gone to the crash site.

He’d arranged the funeral.

He’d shaken with rage against Cora because their parents had died looking for her. They’d died not knowing anything about her life since the night she’d run off and destroyed their family. And there she was, flipping through memories of the life she’d created away from the family she’d devastated.

There she was, subjecting him to it.

He went to her.

“I have to know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“Why didn’t you come home? Mom and Dad died searching for you. They never knew they had a granddaughter. Why didn’t you come home?”

She met his stare with a vulnerability that bordered on near defeat.

“Please, Jack, don’t push me on this now.”

“I deserve to know.”

“I can’t tell you. I can’t. Stop asking me. This is not about me, Jack. You have to help me find Tilly.”

Gannon said nothing as one of the TV news reports pierced the tension. A commentator on Tilly’s case observed how most kidnappings involving cartels are revenge actions.

“I’m afraid to say but they almost always end horribly.”

Later that night about an hour after Cora fell asleep, she woke.

It was precisely the same time the kidnappers had entered her home. Realizing it had now been nearly twenty hours since Tilly was taken, Cora was overwhelmed with fear and released a long, anguished scream.

“Tillyyy!”

Startled from sleep in the sofa chair where he sprawled, Gannon was haunted by how his sister’s wail was identical to the one he’d heard in the morgue in Juarez.

13

Somewhere in Greater Phoenix, Arizona

The whine of the meat saw’s electric blade filled the night air.

Rising from the Golden Cut Processing Plant, it echoed over the forgotten piece of industrial wasteland occupied by the plant, the Coin-O-Clean Car Wash, Odin Tool & Die and the Sweet Times Motel.

Several years back, the Sweet Times had been a favorite of truckers. Sitting across from the Golden Cut, the motel had been lovingly cared for by the original owners, a retired Navy cook and his wife.

It had offered guests a small restaurant, and flower gardens everywhere.

But the restaurant was gone and the little gardens died long ago, leaving dirt patches that encircled the property like a disease. Chipped paint ravaged the motel’s exterior walls. Nearly half of the doors were fractured from being kicked in and the neon sign only lit the word Time, as if it had run out on a dream. The motel, now a refuge for down-and-out hookers, crackheads and outcasts, was managed by an embittered alcoholic with green teeth, who told every guest, “I don’t give a rat’s A what you do in there-it’s sixty bucks cash for every twenty-four hours up front.”

Several beer cans bobbed in the pool’s brown water, near the shallow end and Unit 28. This was a deluxe suite of adjoining rooms. Inside, the lights had been dimmed. The two male guests were surfing TV channels, monitoring news reports on the kidnapping of Tilly Martin. The screen’s glow flickered on their faces and the room.

An assortment of empty take-out food containers and a bag of fruit covered the small table. The desk near it had an array of prepaid cell phones. The phones would be used for one call then destroyed.

Two police uniforms hung in the room’s closet, ready for use. Under one bed, there were two AK-47 assault rifles and four Glock-20 semiautomatic pistols. At the edge of one of the two beds, there were three portable digital police scanners. Their volumes were low but the men were listening. They understood the codes.

Now, as they watched the TV news reports, their concern continued to grow. It seemed all of Phoenix was looking for Tilly.

“You did not answer me, Ruiz. What do we do now?” Alfredo, the younger man, asked in Spanish. “The bitch disobeyed the order and went to police. Now she’s got the damn FBI involved!”

As with Alfredo’s other questions, Ruiz’s response was silence.

Until now, Ruiz had hidden his anger over the situation. This time, he reached for his knife. The glint of its blade reflected in the TV light as he cut into a large apple. He placed the first slice carefully into his mouth and chewed slowly.

Chewing helped Ruiz think.

He knew Alfredo was less experienced in these matters and therefore worried. Let him ramble with his questions.

“So what are we going to do, Ruiz?” Alfredo opened a soda. “In Mexico, a case like this is business. People don’t trust police. They don’t go to police.”

“Alfredo-” Ruiz pointed the knife at him “-you knew this one would be different, or did you forget that after you took your extra advance payment.”

“Yes, but she went to police.”

“It was to be expected.”

“So what do we do? This creates a problem for us, for the operation. It is our job to set up the arrival of the sicario, to make sure everything goes smoothly for him. And now-” Alfredo thrust his finger at the screen as the clip of Cora’s press conference plea and photographs replayed. Again, the entire screen filled with the artist’s sketch of one of the suspects-the one resembling Ruiz. “And now your face is shown over and over for all of America and the world to see, Ruiz!”

Ruiz stared at the sketch. Once more he listened to the details about his description and his scar. He scratched his growth under his chin. He had not shaved.

“Ruiz, you and I know they will check your scar with the databanks and sooner or later they will know who we are. We have to do something.”

Ruiz cut another piece of the apple and chewed.

“I think we should pull out of the operation,” Alfredo said.

“No,” Ruiz said. “We’ve not been ordered to abort. We’ve heard nothing, which means we continue.”

“Continue? And do what? Where is Galviera? We have nothing set up for the sicario. We’re not even close. They told me you were the best. I don’t think so. Tell me, what is your next move?”

Ruiz turned to Alfredo. He’d insulted Ruiz’s pride.

Ruiz was seething. His anger was directed at Cora, but Alfredo’s fretting fueled it. Now, watching Cora, over and over, pleading to the camera while standing next to a sketch of his face, a good sketch, Ruiz grew furious.

All they’d asked was that she find Galviera so they could retrieve the money. That was all. The kidnapping was their leverage, their insurance that Cora would act quickly.

But does she find him?

No, she goes to the FBI. This woman did not know her place. She did not know the price she was going to pay for her disrespect.

“Ruiz, what are we going to do?”

The muscles along Ruiz’s jawline pulsed as he turned to the open door and Tilly Martin, bound and gagged on the bed in the next room.

14

Somewhere in Greater Phoenix, Arizona

Tilly sat upright.

The one with the knife was approaching her room.

What was he going to do?

Tilly tried to keep calm but fear pulled her down, the way Lenny Griffin had held her underwater that day at swim class.

She had thought she would drown.

She’d struggled but couldn’t breathe. Heart slamming against her chest, lungs bursting, alarm screaming in her ears, she kicked, scratched and gouged Lenny until she broke free.

All the jerk did was laugh.

But his smile had vanished after Tilly landed a swift punch on his face. She was glad that she’d retaliated, giving him a shiner and a guarantee that she would always fight back.

But Lenny Griffin was a stupid twelve-year-old boy.

The monster in her doorway now was a grown man with a knife, a creep who was obviously a fake cop. Because real police officers, like Deputy Sheriff Taylor, who had visited her school, didn’t do the things this creep and his friend, Creep Number Two, were doing. Real police didn’t take kids from their homes at night and stuff them in suitcases.

What were they going to do to her now?

Creep Number One, the one called Ruiz, just stood there, leaning on the door frame, cutting into that apple with his big knife, looking at her and chewing.

Tilly hated them.

Ruiz and Creep Number Two, the one called Alfredo, had been watching their TV and arguing for a long time. Then they stopped. Now Ruiz was just standing there, looking at her.

She was scared.

What were they going to do to her?

Her mouth was gagged, her teeth clamped on a twisted bandanna tied behind her head. Her hands were bound with duct tape. Her eyes filled with tears as she scanned the room.

That big black suitcase was in the closet.

Her coffin.

Please don’t put me in there again.

It was so dark in there. When they’d taken her from her mom, they’d scrunched her in the suitcase. She could feel them lift her into the trunk of a car. Then they drove.

She was trapped in a nightmare.

Seeing her mom tied up in the kitchen was horrifying. Tilly felt so helpless. All she could do was say her mother’s favorite prayer from church over and over.

Hail Mary, full of grace…pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…

Tilly didn’t know where they were driving or for how long. But when they stopped, they lifted the suitcase, with her in it, from the trunk, rolled it inside and let her out here, in this scuzzy place.

A hotel, she guessed.

The place smelled like cigarettes and BO. The toilet never stopped hissing. The air conditioner hardly worked. She didn’t know where they were. The creeps had removed the telephone and phone book. They left the TV on a kids’ channel with cartoons for babies and kept the sound low. She tried to sleep but it took hours for the aching in her legs, shoulder and neck to go away.

They gave her teen magazines, pizza, chips, chocolate bars, cookies, soda and stuff. They didn’t hurt her or touch her or yell at her or anything. They kept her tied up and sometimes they asked her about Lyle Galviera, her mom’s boss, if she knew where he was.

As if she would know.

Tilly just shook her head, which made her chain jingle a bit.

For, in addition to gagging her and binding her hands, they’d put a metal clamp on her ankle. They secured it to a long dog chain and locked it to some steel pipes, so she could get up and go to the bathroom and stuff.

The chain clinked a little now as she trembled under Ruiz’s gaze.

Just then, sound from the creeps’ TV in the other room spilled into her room. Her heart swelled. Oh my God, that was her mother on TV!

“Sweetheart, if you can see me or hear my voice, I love you. We’re doing everything to bring you home safely…”

It filled her with hope, like when Lenny’s grasp on her had loosened.

I hear you and I love you, Mommy!

Ruiz kept his attention locked on Tilly and ordered Alfredo in Spanish to shut the TV off. Then he cut the last piece from his apple and took his time chewing it before tossing the core in the overflowing trash can in the corner.

Ruiz stood at the door, his tongue methodically probing his teeth for the apple remnants. Then he carefully wiped the serrated blade clean against his jeans and began tapping it against the palm of his hand.

“It appears your mother has disobeyed my order.”

His voice sounded friendly, but Tilly knew it was phony, because he was breathing hard. Under that fake nice voice, he was pissed.

Tilly was not fooled.

The man was holding a knife.

He just stood there, tapping it in his hand, staring at her for the longest time as if watching some plan play out in his mind. Then he went to the curtains and using his knife, parted them slightly to look at the Golden Cut Processing Plant across the street, listening to the meat saw echoing in the night.

Then he turned to Tilly.

He touched the tip of the blade in his palm.

He’d reached a decision.

“Remember, it was your mother who forced us to take this next step. For the action we’re about to take, I will beg your forgiveness.”

Tilly didn’t understand. Then Ruiz said, “Alfredo, come in here. I am going to need your help.”

The chain chinked as Tilly tensed.

“Your mother does not appreciate who she is dealing with. We will give her a lesson she will never forget.”