No Way Back

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Joe Esterhaus waved to the man with the wiry dark hair as he came into the bar. With his broad shoulders and slick gray suit, the man might have fit the image of a mobster more than a senior agent with the FBI.

“Been a while, huh, Joe?” Bruce Paul smiled broadly and stepped up to him. His gaze landed on Esterhaus’s wounded shoulder.

“Shower accident,” Esterhaus said, and shrugged.

“Teach you not to do your showering at Grand Central,” Paul said with a chuckle. “Club soda and lime,” he said to the bartender.

Esterhaus shot him a look of surprise.

“Three years. Clean and sober.” The FBI man shrugged. “Don’t know what the hell took me so long.”

“Arnold Palmer.” Esterhaus raised his own glass. Iced tea and lemonade. “Guess it’s been a while, huh?”

Bruce took his drink and they clinked glasses. “Yeah, guess it has.”

They chatted for a while about some old buddies Esterhaus had lost touch with. He and Bruce had said hi a couple of times, at weddings and a funeral or two since Esterhaus left the force, but they hadn’t really sat down together in more than six years.

At a lull, the FBI man turned to him. “So what’s the occasion, Joe?”

Esterhaus put down his glass. “I need some help, Brucie. I need to get something passed to someone on the inside. Someone who isn’t in anyone’s lap.”

“You mean someone completely marginalized.” Bruce laughed. “It’s not like the old days, Joseph. Shuffling paperwork in Nassau County is pretty much the end of the line for me. I got, what, maybe another year? Tommy Mara is already asking if I’d be interested in joining up with his security outfit.”

“Someone independent is more what I was thinking.” Esterhaus swiveled around and faced him.

“Okay, I’m listening.” Bruce placed his drink down on the counter. “I’m the only one here.”

“I went through her house.” Esterhaus leveled his gaze on his old friend’s eyes. He didn’t need to spell out whose.

“That house is still a federal crime scene, isn’t it, Joe? Considering that shoulder, I thought you would have learned your lesson by now.”

“She’s innocent, Bruce. She’s being set up.”

“For God’s sakes, Joe, the woman killed a government agent. One of us. She shot her own husband. And fled the scene… Look, I know you were tight with her dad-”

“She didn’t kill her husband, Bruce.”

“She shot him! In their own kitchen, for Christ’s sake! With a gun that matched the one that killed that Homeland Security guy back at the hotel. The same hotel, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, from which she took off and ran.”

“So if he was killed in the kitchen, as everyone says”-Esterhaus opened the envelope he had with him and took out a plastic baggie-“be a genius, Brucie, and tell me just what the guy’s blood was doing out on the street, thirty yards away?”

Bruce Paul wrinkled his mouth without answering.

Esterhaus handed him the baggie containing the several clumps of dried blood he had taken from Wendy Gould’s driveway. “I already got them checked out. I ran them against traces of the husband’s blood I took out of the kitchen.”

“You took out of the kitchen? What the hell is going on here, Joe?”

“We can talk about that later, Brucie. All that matters now is that David Gould wasn’t shot in his kitchen like the investigators have said. He was shot on the street. Someone moved that body.”

Esterhaus took out a pen and sketched on the manila envelope. “Look, they have this U-shaped driveway… The kitchen’s here… Wendy claims she and her husband were in the garage, in their car about to leave, when lights flashed on behind them.”

“About to leave? Jesus, Joe, it was in the middle of the fucking night!”

“I know it was in the middle of the night. She said she realized she’d left something behind at the hotel, some conference program or something. But something that could lead back to her. And she was right. So she freaked out and convinced him they had to get out of there. They were in the process of backing out of the garage when the authorities showed up. Not the police, Bruce. And this is important. The same Homeland Security guy from the hotel. She hit the gas and slammed into his car and started to drive away.”

“Call me crazy, Joe, but doesn’t that kind of thing usually fall under the heading of escaping?”

“The woman had just witnessed a man being killed! And it was the shooter’s partner who was there for her at her house.” Esterhaus circled a spot at the top of the driveway. “She said she stopped the car and her husband’s body fell out about here… not in the kitchen. On the street.” Esterhaus jabbed at the spot. “Which is where I found this.” He tapped his finger on the dried blood.

Bruce wiped his hand across his face, starting to take in what Esterhaus was suggesting.

“They moved that body, Bruce. The very same people who tried to kill her at that hotel…”

“Where she had no right being, Joe. Unless she was up to no good.”

“Where she had no right being, Bruce, I totally agree. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen just like she said. That doesn’t mean she didn’t stumble into some kind of a government kill squad with something important they wanted to keep quiet. This Curtis dude, the one who was killed in there, he was a journalist. Maybe he stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have. Wouldn’t be the first time. We go back over twenty years, Brucie. Why would the husband’s blood be out on that street? She wasn’t trying to run away, at Grand Central. She was turning herself in.” He lifted his arm. “You honestly think this friggin’ hole in my shoulder was actually intended for me?”

“Could have been anyone, then.” Bruce chuckled amiably. “The list of suspects would be endless.” He picked up the evidence baggie. “How do I know this is actually from where you say? Anything can be altered. You’ve already snuck into a federal crime scene. You more than anyone have a reason to want to see her cleared.”

“The lab report’s in there. And here’s a series of photographs I took out on that street. You can see how things match up-the electrical box here… It’s a frame-up, Brucie. What’s behind it, I don’t know. Only that it is.”

Bruce leafed quickly through the report. When he looked back up, his lips twisted and his face resembled that of a person who had just taken a swallow of bad milk. “What exactly do you want me to do with this, Joe?”

“Someone needs to see it. Someone who won’t just feed it into the shredder. Trust me, I wish I had someone else to bring it to.”

“I’m a year away from retirement. You don’t just drop this on someone’s desk and go, ‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but you know that case that’s been the lead-in on every fucking newscast in the country? Well, the government’s actually orchestrating this elaborate murder-cover-up scheme. And, oh, where’d I get this from? Some ex-detective pal of mine who was booted off the Nassau County force ten years ago… It’s like Fukushima, Joe. It’s radioactive. At the end of the day, the only seat that’s gonna be empty at the bureau is gonna be mine!”

“The people who want her dead, Bruce, are the same people who are in charge of bringing her in. We both know that’s never going to happen.”

The FBI man stared at Joe awhile, then stood up and put the evidence envelope under his arm. “And I thought you had tickets to a Rangers game or something…”

“You know how much I appreciate this, buddy.”

“If you get an invitation to that early-retirement party, you’ll know it didn’t go over so well.”

“I’ll bring the club soda and lime.”

“Always the life of the party.” Bruce swallowed the rest of his drink and headed out of the bar.

CHAPTER SIXTY

The trip out west took three days.

We took Lauritzia’s Toyota, which Harold had rented for her back in Connecticut. The first night we made it all the way to Columbus, Ohio. We got a room at an Embassy Suites along the highway and basically just crashed.

The second night we got all the way to Kansas City.

That’s where the reality of what we were actually doing hit me-and began to fill me with fear. And the nervousness that I was getting into something that was way, way over my head and that I had no idea how to control. That Robert Lasser was not the tragic victim of bloodshed he had no hand in, like Harold, Lauritzia, and me. But of bloodshed that he was a part of. Harold’s warning kept ringing in my head: These men are hardened killers. You don’t have a clue what they have to hide.

And now Lauritzia was on my shoulders too. We didn’t talk much on the way out. If we had, we probably would have come to our senses and turned the car around. We shared much of the driving. When we did talk, I asked about her life back in Mexico, her brother and sisters. I admired a necklace she was wearing-a butterfly with a tiny diamond chip on a thin gold chain.

It made her smile with affection. “Miss Roxanne gave it to me. Before my trial. She said it stood for second chances. That we all could have them, no matter how lost it might seem.”

I asked her what a second chance would look like for her, and she said being with her father again. Going back home.

“Maybe you should let me wear it sometime.” I looked over and smiled. A sign told us that Missouri was a hundred miles ahead. “I could use one too.”

We spent the second night at a motel outside Kansas City. It was the last day of October. There was a chill in the air. The star-rich midwestern sky stretched above.

I left Lauritzia sleeping and went outside, my blood racing with trepidation, cars on the highway whooshing by.

I felt about as alone as I have ever felt. I missed Dave so much. His strength. His humor. How he always had the skill of making something very complex seem simple. I could use that about now! I stood there with my back against a car, huddled in my fleece and a blanket, and I realized so painfully that I would never see him again. That whatever I was doing here, whatever I was trying to prove, it would not bring him back. That no matter how tightly I squeezed my fist, I would never wrap it around his hand again. My eyes filled up with tears. And once it started, I couldn’t stop it. Second chances, I was thinking. I wanted my son and daughter back too. I hadn’t even been able to be with them at their own father’s funeral. I needed to feel them by me. I hadn’t been able to grieve.

Everything I loved had been taken from me too.

I took out my iPhone. I knew everyone would be watching for it, waiting for a call. Just turning it on was dangerous; there was probably some built-in GPS they could use to find me there.

Suddenly I didn’t fucking care. I just needed to feel close to my kids. To my old life. Just for one second. To turn everything back and have it be like it was before.

I thought about where they were. Maybe up at David’s father’s place in Madison, Connecticut. It was Halloween. Neil had always loved it. But no one would be partying now. I pictured their clapboard house near the Sound and the smoky, pipe-tobacco smell in the den. I didn’t care about the danger. I began to text:

NEIL, AMY, I KNOW YOU BOTH JUDGE ME HARSHLY, AND THAT YOU THINK I DID THINGS THAT ARE UNFORGIVABLE. AND IF I KNEW ONLY WHAT PEOPLE ARE ALLEGING, AND NOT THE TRUTH, I GUESS I MIGHT TOO. I CAN’T TELL U WHERE I AM. ONLY THAT YOU WILL SEE IN THE END THAT I DIDN’T DO THE THINGS THEY SAY. I DIDN’T SHOOT THAT AGENT TO COVER UP THAT I WAS THERE. IT HAPPENED IN SELF – DEFENSE. AND I DAMN WELL DIDN’T KILL YOUR DAD. THOUGH I DID BETRAY HIM, OR CAME CLOSE TO, WHICH IS SOMETHING NO WORDS CAN DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I REGRET. I MISS HIM SO MUCH. I MISS YOU ALL. WHEN I WISH I COULD TURN BACK THE CLOCK, IT’S ONLY OUR FAMILY THAT I LONG FOR. YOU, AMY – KINS, AND YOU, NEIL, MY HANDSOME YOUNG MAN. BUT I CAN’T TURN IT BACK. WHATEVER HAPPENS, LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. AND THAT BREAKS MY HEART. I’M CRYING NOW. AND I’M SCARED. MY BEAUTIFUL KIDS, I BEG, BEG, BEG YOU TO SOMEHOW HOLD BACK YOUR SCORN UNTIL YOU KNOW THE TRUTH. AND TO REMEMBER THAT I LOVE YOU BOTH AS DEEPLY AS IF YOU CAME FROM MY OWN WOMB. I ALWAYS HAVE. AND I ALWAYS WILL. MY DEEPEST, DEEPEST LOVE, WENDY

I looked up at the sky and thought how if I just pressed Send, it would take a second until they read this. Until they felt what was in my heart. I placed my finger on the key…

I stopped. I knew I couldn’t press it. The police would be on us in minutes. At the very least they would know where we were.

It wasn’t just for me; I had Lauritzia now.

I read what I’d written one more time, and it made me smile. I love you, babies…

Then I pressed Delete and shut down my phone.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

The next day we crossed into Colorado.

We got off I-70 in Denver and headed south toward Albuquerque on I-25. In an hour or so we passed by Colorado Springs, signs for the Air Force Academy and Pikes Peak. In another hour, Pueblo.

Forty minutes later we exited the highway on Route 160.

It was a two-lane road, and we climbed through the front range of the snowcapped Rockies. At eight thousand feet we entered the vast San Luis Valley, an endless, barren plain of sand and tundra that stretched out on both sides along the black outline of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

I saw a sign for Gillian, 30 miles.

My adrenaline started to rise.

I could see a huge white expanse tucked into the foothills of the 14,000-foot mountains, and we passed a turnoff for something called the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It turned out to be sand-30,000 square miles of dunes, the highest in the United States, some rising 750 feet. Blown there over thousands of years by the winds whipping across the valley floor. The sight of the Sahara-like dunes against the dark mountains was both beautiful and foreboding in the melting afternoon light, but it wasn’t why we were there.

GILLIAN. 10 MILES

There was nothing for a long time, not even a building in the vast, barren wasteland. Then we began to see auto parts warehouses and fast-food outlets. The Rio Grande railroad yards. Signs for a college.

We passed a rundown main street of old brick bank buildings and dingy 1960s storefronts-a once-thriving western town decades had passed by.

“Let’s find a motel,” I said. “We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”

Something called the Inn of the Rio Grande appeared on the right, with a large, white stucco façade. It looked clean, and we were exhausted. I turned in to the driveway, pulling to a stop in a vacant parking space.

I just looked at Lauritzia. She nodded back. There wasn’t much to say.

We were here.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

The man with the pockmarked face drove past the white stucco motel.

He’d been following the blue Toyota for three days now. He continued on, turning into a Conoco station a hundred yards down. He was exhausted, but patience had rewarded him again.

In a few days, he could sleep for a month if he wanted.

Once they got off I-70 in Denver and headed south, he knew where they were heading. He’d known that all along.

He also knew why they were there.

The man pulled up to a vacant pump and began to fill his car. Then he went inside to pee. It felt like he hadn’t relieved himself in a year. Tonight he would think of how the next days would go. How he would get it done. He had removed some cash from his leather satchel under the seat across from him, wrapping a newspaper around his gun.

Outside, he watched as the sun slid over the mountains into the horizon. He took out his phone. He removed a piece of paper from his jeans and punched in the number on it, and spoke in his best English when an operator answered.

“Homeland Security Tip Line.”

“Senior Agent Alton Dokes, please.”

“Agent Dokes is unavailable right now. I can assist you if you have information on the Wendy Gould case you’d like to pass on.”

“I do have information.” The man took off his sunglasses. “I want you to tell him I also have information about the tenth of March in Culiacán.”

The operator hesitated. “Can I have your name, please, sir? I’ll need to tell him who this is.”

“Just tell him it’s about Culiacán. He’ll come to the phone.”

He waited; the operator placed him on hold. He figured they had already begun a trace, but he had planned this out very carefully over the long ride out and a trace didn’t bother him now. Finally he was patched through to another line. The voice that answered sounded officious and not happy to be summoned. “This is Special Agent Dokes.”

“I know where she’s headed,” the man said, squinting into the setting sun.

“Who?” the Homeland Security agent answered, pretending surprise.

“You know who I’m talking about.”

“If you have information you’d like to share concerning a federal investigation, I can certainly pass you back to the tip-line operator…”

“If that’s what you want. I just thought this was something you were far better off knowing yourself.”

“Who is this?” Dokes lowered his voice, his tone still commanding.

“The better question would be where… where I am. And the answer would be Route One-Six-Oh in Colorado. I think you know that road, don’t you, agente? The town it goes through?”

There was a silence on the other end.

“She’s in Gillian,” the pockmarked man said. “And guess who she’s brought with her. Someone else you may be interested in. Someone Eduardo Cano would wet his panties to find.” He laughed. “You know why they’ve come here. So that ought to make you sleep like a baby tonight, right, huh agente?”

The man hung up and smiled, knowing where the next call would go.

And the call after that.

See you soon, amigo, the man said, chuckling, as he got back into his car.

It felt like he hadn’t smiled in years.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

The next morning we waited outside Lasser’s company’s headquarters.

Apache Sales and Marketing was situated in a modern, one-story brick-and-glass building attached to a large warehouse in a business park on Route 17, five miles outside town. I had no idea how I’d go about convincing him to tell us what we were there for. “I’m Wendy Gould. I’m on the run for the murder of my husband and for shooting a Homeland Security agent. I know you’ve been secretly selling weapons to the Mexican drug cartels. And knowing why your daughter was killed is the only way I can clear my name and show I’m innocent…”

That would sell.

He’d call the cops on us immediately. There had to be some kind of security department in a business this size; they wouldn’t even let me leave. No, I had to talk to him when he was alone. At home, or on his way back from lunch maybe. Not to mention that he wasn’t exactly an innocent victim in all this and had likely done things that had gotten his daughter killed. Things, like Harold said, he would absolutely want to protect.

We drove into the parking lot at 8:30 A.M. and noticed an empty space marked LASSER next to the building’s entrance. He wasn’t there. We parked our Toyota in a visitor’s space nearby. An hour passed. A couple of dozen employees arrived and went inside. No Lasser. The longer he didn’t show up, the more worried I became. What if the guy wasn’t even around? What if he was on a business trip, visiting his other locations? Or on holiday? We could wait another day for him, maybe two. But not indefinitely. We’d stick out pretty good.

Around 10:00 A.M., I was set to do the same thing I’d done while I was waiting for Harold at his office, call in and ask for him, when a white Audi A6 pulled into the driveway and parked in Lasser’s spot.

A decal on the back windshield read UNIVERSITYOFDENVER.

“That’s him!”

He stepped out of the car, and I recognized him immediately from the photos on Apache’s website. He was medium height and solidly built, wearing a blue North Face nylon jacket, plaid shirt, no tie. Fancy boots. He had close-cropped light hair and a sharp, chiseled face. He seemed around fifty.

He was on his cell phone, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He went behind his car and passed about ten feet from us. Lauritzia gave me a nod of good luck. I opened the door, but something held me back.

He was occupied. I knew it wouldn’t work, just running up and starting in. This guy had dealt with the cartels. His daughter had been killed four years earlier in some kind of retaliation. Harold’s voice echoed again: You don’t have a clue what they have to hide.

I hesitated, watching Lasser end his phone call and head up to the entrance. He opened the glass doors and went inside.

“I’m sorry.” I turned to Lauritzia. “I couldn’t do it now.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” I noticed my hands were shaking. I was afraid.

I suddenly realized how crazy it was to try and do this at his office. I suggested we could follow him when he went to lunch. But as we sat, people going in and out, large delivery trucks heading around to the loading gates, another hour going by, I just said the hell with it and took out my phone. “I can’t wait any longer.”

I called the number I had for Lasser’s company. An operator answered. “Apache Sales and Marketing.”

“Mr. Lasser, please.”

“One moment, please.”

I was patched through to a secretary. An accommodating voice came on. “Mr. Lasser’s office.”

“Is Mr. Lasser there?”

“May I say who’s calling?”

I took a breath. I hadn’t rehearsed this. I wasn’t sure what to say. “This may seem a bit out of the blue… but it relates to his daughter… Ana.” I shut my eyes. But what else was there to say?

If pauses could kill, this one was lethal. The voice on the other end grew guarded. “Can I ask you to be more specific, please?”

“I can’t… It’ll only take a minute of his time…” I was pretty much stammering. “Please.”

My heart started to race as she paused an awkward moment more and then told me to hold on. I wasn’t sure that Lasser would even take the call. His daughter had been dead for close to four years now, so while the pain of it might have receded some, someone calling like this from out of nowhere, bringing it up again, might only hurtle him back to a place he did not want to be.

Then I heard someone pick up. “This is Bob Lasser.”

My heart went completely still. My throat dry. His voice was clipped and not particularly friendly. A knot formed in my throat. “Mr. Lasser, thank you for taking the call. I know I made that sound a bit vague…”

“I’m on the line,” he answered, “at least for about as long as it takes to tell you I’m not in the habit of discussing personal matters with someone I don’t know. Just what is it about my daughter, Ms…?”

“I was hoping I could get some time with you, Mr. Lasser. Alone. Maybe outside the office. Today, if that would work out for you. I have something I need to go over with you, and you’re the only person who can help me. I’ve come a long way.”

“Help you? You’re here? In Gillian?” He sounded surprised.

“Yes. I am.”

“Then in the ten seconds I’m going to allot you to explain why you’ve contacted me, just exactly what does this have to do with Ana?”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you over the phone. But I know about the circumstances of her death. Including why… I also know how hard it is to lose someone. I’ve lost someone…”

“Listen, whoever the hell you are, I’m sorry, but I don’t really have the time or the inclination to go through this with you. I’m going to hang up now and ask you not to ever-”

“Do you know the name Curtis Kitchner?” I interrupted him.

This time there was only silence. A silence that strongly suggested that he did. Or that his secretary was dialing the police on the other phone at this very second.

“Are you a reporter? Because if you are, I’m sure you’ve been told, I don’t speak to them. At least, not about this… not to mention, you’re also a little late to the party. This all happened years ago. Now I’m going to hang up, so thank you very much for respecting the privacy of my family-”

“I’m not a reporter,” I said. I waited for the click, but there was none. “Curtis was. And now he’s dead. He was killed. Ten days ago in New York. I don’t know if you know. In a hotel room. By-”

“I watch the news.” He cut me off. “I know what happened. And what happened ought to make it pretty clear to you, you shouldn’t go around asking similar types of questions. Now this conversation is over, whoever you are. Do not bother me again. Don’t call me here. Don’t call me at home. Don’t bother my family. If you do, I’ll be calling the police. This is a small town, and I’m very well connected in it. Just get yourself out of town. Do you understand?”

This time I did hear the click, my heart plummeting with it. I turned to Lauritzia.

“I could hear the whole thing,” she said. “He sounds like a dangerous man. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we should go back.”

“To what, jail? And what for you-hiding?”

“If you call again, he could get the police on you as he said, and then what happens? Even worse…”

“We’ve come this far. I need to talk to him. Besides,” I said, putting the car in gear, “next time I’m not going to call.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The heavyset man with the goatee in the poplin suit and white linen shirt stepped up to the passport control booth at the Denver International Airport. He nodded politely to the blue-shirted officer there and put his Guatemalan passport through the glass.

José Maria Rivera.

“How long do you plan to spend in the United States, Mr. Rivera?” the immigration officer inquired, looking up and eyeing him through the glass.

“Around ten days. I’m doing some business in Colorado,” the portly man said.

“What kind of business?” The immigration official flipped through the green passport, which indicated that the person in front of him was a very worldly man. There were stamps from Germany and the United Kingdom. Honduras, Argentina, and Brazil. Even from the United States several times.

“I’m in real estate. I represent a buyer in Central America who is looking at an investment here.”

“Yet you came in from Mexico?”

“My son is studying medicine there. In Mexico City. I try to visit when I can.”

The officer nodded and ran the document through the scanner, tapping into the shared databases of Homeland Security, the FBI, and Interpol. Not a single bead of sweat ran down the traveler’s face. Why should it? He had been through these interviews routinely under a number of different aliases. And they say that the U.S. border with Mexico is porous, he said to himself, chuckling. The easiest way to get in was to go right through the front door.

“My neighbor’s son is studying to be a doctor,” the immigration officer said with a sigh. “Mine… can’t figure out what he wants to be.” He leafed to an open page in the passport and gave it a stamp. “I hope your business goes well,” the official said, and pushed it back through the glass.

Eduardo Cano smiled and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“And welcome to the United States.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

We couldn’t hang around Lasser’s place forever without attracting attention. So we crossed the road to another company’s parking lot that gave us a view of the road.

I was hoping Lasser would come out to lunch. He never did.

Around 3:00 P.M., Lauritzia began to complain about feeling weak. Maybe from the drive out or the altitude-we were at eight thousand feet. So I ran her back to the motel to lie down. When I got back, Lasser’s Audi was still in its space. Around five, it began to get dark. Employees started to leave. I was still annoyed and frustrated that my call had gone so poorly.

My prepaid cell phone rang. Other than Lauritzia, there was only one person who had the number. It was almost seven back home.

“How’s it going?” Harold asked.

“It’s going,” I replied halfheartedly. I told him about my botched call. “You find out anything I should know?”

He was continuing to look into Lasser’s affairs, trying to confirm the gun transactions to Mexico.

“I have someone digging into the General Accounting Office records in Washington. According to what he’s found, Apache Sales and Marketing has been an approved government vendor for some twelve years. It was started by his father, selling to Indian reservations. He died in 1995. Then they opened up on the border and began doing consumer goods sales to wealthy Mexicans who came across the border. It was like a boom town back then. They would come over for the day and pay cash for Sonys, Samsung. Washers and dryers. Brands that were three times as expensive down there. They would literally back up trucks. It was a gray-market kind of thing, and both governments just looked the other way. Then in 1994 the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted and that was the end of all that. These brands could now all sell direct without the punishing tariffs. Apache is a private firm, so actual numbers aren’t available, but in 2008 and 2009, the GAO lists several million dollars a year done in business with the U.S. government.”

“How many millions?”

“Two point five in ’08. Three point seven in ’09.”

“That is a lot. Any chance you happened to find invoices that list the items sold?”

“That’s the thing… They were transacted as business loans. To build trade with what they called ‘enterprise zones.’ Which would likely be Indian reservations…”

“But you’re thinking those were black-market guns that illegally crossed the border?”

“Could be. Transshipped from companies like Remington and Colt. Apache also lists some European manufacturers who make these high-velocity pistols they call cop killers.”

“Over six million dollars is an awful lot of weapons,” I said.

“And that’s at wholesale. Double that to get the retail value. And it’s only the tip. There’s also something called ‘ghost inventory.’ ”

“Ghost inventory?”

“Since 2008, the government figures some sixty-two thousand firearms have gone missing from U.S. gun retailers. They just fall off the books, but it’s obvious where they go. According to my source, it’s estimated that some two thousand guns, from AR-15 submachine guns to Barrett fifty-caliber rifles to these five-by-seven-millimeter pistols they call ‘cop killers,’ are smuggled across the border to Mexico literally every day.”

“I thought these things all fell under some kind of government scrutiny?”

“On the contrary,” Harold said, “this is all happening with tacit government approval. We already spoke about Fast and Furious, which was this program that put U.S. guns in the hands of Mexican cartels in order to trace them if they were later used in crimes. Lasser might well have had a hand in that…”

“But Harold, what I don’t understand is, if Lasser was secretly shipping arms to Mexican cartels with U.S. government approval, both Washington and the cartels were his partners. What could he have done to Cano that warranted getting his daughter killed?”

“I thought that’s what you were there to find out,” he said with a grim chortle.

“Hold it a minute!” My blood snapped to attention as the door to Lassiter’s building opened and Lasser finally came out. He stood at the entrance, chatting for a while with two other men, who looked to be employees. They walked Lasser to his car, continuing the conversation. “Our boy’s about to leave. I’m going to follow him.”

“Just be careful, Wendy. The more I find out on this, the more anxious I am that you’re there. These people have a lot to hide.”

“I promise. I’m not trying to be a hero,” I told him. “More later.” I hung up.

The three kept talking around Lasser’s Audi. Nothing suspicious. It was probably nothing more than a billing thing, or how to speed up shipments out the warehouse.

Finally Lasser opened the door. There was no chance to get him alone. The two others waved good-bye, and Lasser climbed into his car. He turned on the ignition and started to back out.

I started up the Toyota and put it into gear.

The Audi pulled out of the lot and onto the main road that wound through the large office park. I waited until he went by, then pulled out of the lot across the street and blended in, several car lengths behind. I knew I had to keep my distance. A few other vehicles from Apache’s lot had pulled out after me. I let a Jetta get in between us. Lasser’s white Audi was hard to miss.

I had no idea where he was heading, but I decided to follow. If he was heading home, I resolved to find the courage to knock on his front door. I wondered if his wife knew the truth about their daughter. Why she’d been killed. I wondered if she even knew Lasser was involved in shipping guns down to Mexico.

Eventually Route 17 fed back into 160, the main thoroughfare that led into town. Traffic was steady, even all the way out there, with the afternoon rush. Lasser headed toward town. I had to speed up at a light or two just to keep up-I wasn’t exactly a pro at this-or else I would have fallen too far behind and lost him.

He drove back into central Gillian, with its dark main boulevard and closed-up movie theater and empty storefronts. Three cars ahead, Lasser pulled into a turn lane, signaling left. The traffic arrow was already green; I’d let a couple of cars get in between us, and one of them drove at a snail’s pace. Lasser’s Audi sped away. Finally I swerved around just in front of a large truck as the light turned yellow. All I needed was to get stopped by a cop here. It would be over! But if I missed the light, I might well lose him. I held my breath and glanced around as I sped up after him. No flashing lights. I was okay.

Continuing on 160, I picked him up again, a hundred yards ahead. The light had thinned, and it was hard to make vehicles out. Finally he pulled down a road and I saw him make a right into a restaurant parking lot. The Sandy Dunes Brew Tap. I let a few seconds pass and turned in after him. Lasser parked quickly and literally went right past me on his way in, not even giving me a glance as I drove by.

I parked in a corner of the lot and waited a couple of minutes, steeling my courage. I finally said the hell with it, and got out of the car and went into the bar. It was a large, barnlike structure, and it was clear this was the after-work meeting place for people in town.

The place was crowded. I hung on the landing, trying to pick out Lasser in the crowd. The pretty hostess smiled at me. “Dining with us tonight?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Waiting for someone. I think I’ll just head up to the bar.”

“Margaritas are two for one tonight.”

“Thanks.” Just what I needed. The last margarita I’d had had gotten me into all this!

The bar area was crowded and filled with smoke; clearly the antismoking laws hadn’t made it out this way. I squeezed through a few groups and managed to find an opening amid the crowd: mostly people in T-shirts and jeans, the occasional cowboy hat. I found a spot at the frosted-glass partition separating the bar from the dining area. There were a few TVs with sporting events on over the bar. I looked around for Lasser.

I didn’t see him at first. The place was large, with several different levels. A massive copper brew tank and other equipment glistened behind a glass wall. For a moment I felt the sensation that I’d been duped, that Lasser had merely gone in and slipped out a rear entrance, knowing he was being followed. Or that he was staring at me from somewhere.

But then I spotted him in the crowd. With another guy-prematurely gray, in a blazer and jeans. They’d pulled up a couple of beers and found a table away from the bar. At some point, through the maze of faces, his gaze seemed to center on me.

I shifted out of his angle of sight.

It looked like any normal conversation. The guy could have been a business contact or a contractor looking to do a project, or even some golfing buddy from his club. I squeezed my way up to the bar and caught the eye of the bartender, a good-looking guy in a white polo shirt with the restaurant logo embroidered on it. He definitely looked like he was in training for something.

“What’s on tap?” I asked above the noise. A lemon-drop martini would have been nice-it had been ten days since I’d had as much as a glass of wine. But I wanted to stay on my game.

He listed the beers-there were a lot of them. I went for something called Fat Tire out of Aspen, and when it came, it was a deep amber and frosty and cold. “Start a tab?”

“Not tonight.” I pulled out a few bills and left them on the bar.

He waved thanks.

I took another sip and went back to my spot, one eye on Lasser, who shifted in and out of view, blocked by the people at the bar. A chubby guy in a sport jacket and cowboy hat swiveled around and raised his glass to me. “Evening…”

I smiled.

If the situation wasn’t so nerve-racking, I might’ve laughed over it being an almost identical situation that had put me in this mess, but with a decidedly different-looking guy. I lifted my drink in return, just enough to thank him, and to indicate I wasn’t interested. I only imagined how I looked, in my blue pullover fleece and my hair pulled back, and not having primped myself in ten days.

I shifted back and tried to relocate Lasser, hoping that when he left, I might be able to find him alone.

But he seemed to have found me.

Our eyes connected-just for an instant. Just enough to tell me he was aware he was being watched. I pulled away, my heart picking up crazily.

He got on the phone.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

I suddenly felt a rush of nerves all over me. Like I was no longer in control. Like I’d been discovered and had to get out of there now.

I took a last swig of beer and edged my way through the crowd toward the entrance, pushing back the feeling that Lasser had gotten up as well and was about to tap me on the back at any second and send my heart through my throat. I stepped up onto the landing and allowed myself a quick glance around. But he wasn’t there.

I went past two new people coming in and found my way outside. The film of sweat that had built up on my neck began to recede. Maybe I was just a little jumpy, but I still hadn’t accomplished what I came here to do. I looked around for his Audi, deciding I’d wait and catch him at his car. I blew out a breath and fanned myself with my hand.

It was one of those crisp Colorado nights with a million stars. It reminded me of all the times Dave and I had spent out there skiing at Snowmass or Beaver Creek. I heard the sound of rushing water nearby and went to the wooden railing at the edge of the lot to take a look. It turned out to be about ten feet or so above a river, probably the Rio Grande. I felt cold spray on my face as I leaned over.

Suddenly someone grabbed me from behind.

Whoever it was took my arm and wrenched it around my back. My heart almost shot up my throat. I was certain it was Lasser-that my fears hadn’t been as crazy as I thought-but it wasn’t. It was an older guy, a rolled-up ponytail, a white western shirt and jeans. Tobacco on his breath.

I felt the chilling sensation of something cold and metallic pressed into my neck.

“Don’t you scream, honey. Don’t you even make a sound. I’ll break your neck right here and toss your body into that river there, and, I promise, no one’ll have as much as a thought you were even here until they find you next spring.”

He turned me around and dug those gray, metallic eyes deep into me, and I didn’t doubt for a second he’d do exactly what he said.

My heart thumping, I just nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. You’re quite the ticket, aren’t you, darlin’? Which would make it all the harder what I’d have to do. But I will. Be sure of that. The problem is, some of us don’t know what a fine-looking specimen like you is up to all alone in town here. But you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?” He still had the gun dug under my jaw. “You’re gonna tell me or I’m gonna do something I’m not inclined to do. You’re understanding me, aren’t you, darlin’?”

“I’m here to see someone,” I said, my nerves akimbo. “They’ll be here at any second. Put a hand on me, and I’ll scream.”

“Scream all you like.” He grinned, two wide gaps in his smile. He forced me to the far side of a red pickup truck, blocking us from view. “Go on, but the first sound you make that isn’t what I’m hoping to hear, there’ll be a bullet through the top of your pretty little brain, and the poor fella who owns this Ford here ain’t gonna like what it looks like when he comes back from his meal.”

I nodded, trembling. “What do you want?”

“What I want, darlin’, is to turn you right around and show you how the deer and the buffalo roam. But what I’ll settle for is what is it you want here from Mr. Lasser? And what is it you claim to know ’bout his little girl? And mostly, just why the fuck is any of it your business in the first place?”

My hands braced up against the cool side of the truck he had me up against. “I need to speak with him,” I said. “Lasser.”

“Mister Lasser, I believe you’re meaning. Say it again, but right this time. We pay attention to our manners out here.”

“Mr. Lasser,” I said, staring into his hard, cold eyes.

“You a reporter? Some kind of investigator maybe?”

I was so scared I could barely answer. Just shook my head.

“Police? Maybe the feds? C’mon, honey, I know you’re not out here to see the dunes.”

“If I was with the feds, don’t you think you’d be facedown eating dirt in the parking lot by now with a gun against your head?”

He dug the gun deeper under my chin. Terrifying me. “God help me, lady, it’s gonna take just one second for me to take you out of this world, and it won’t even be on the list of the worst things I done today… No, by the way you’re shaking, I suspect you’re not a cop. But I am gonna have to check it out anyway, you understand? Just to be sure…”

He put his hand on my butt, groping the pocket of my jeans as if he was looking for some kind of ID. If this bastard’s name wasn’t Clem or Earl or whatever, his folks had missed a world-class naming opportunity. He brought his hand to my front, letting his arm brush palpably against my chest, all the while just smirking with his bright eyes to let me know he was enjoying it. He dug under my top, looking for a wire or maybe for some ID. I was too scared to even flinch. I just looked back in his eyes in helpless anger, breathing heavily, his fingers lingering on my bra. Even in the dark, his eyes had the gleam of a coyote and his dead smile convinced me he’d do what he said.

“Well, what do you know.” He chuckled. “Not a thing.”

When I didn’t say anything again he just let his rough, calloused hand drift down my skin, until it found my belt, and he just kind of flicked his thumb against the edge of my jeans, three or four times, just to let me know it was there, all the while leering that creepy, I’m-in-control-here smile at me.

I stayed frozen.

I said, “I know how his daughter died. Mr. Lasser’s. I know she was killed by the Zeta drug cartel, who made it seem like it was a hit on two DEA agents. But I know she was the actual target there. I also know he was shipping guns to the Juarte cartel. For the U.S. government…”

“Keep it going, sweetheart.” Clem or Earl smiled his gap-toothed smile. “I’m liking how you’re sounding now.”

“I know there was a reporter who came to talk to him a couple of months back. His name was Kitchner. Who probably knew the same things too. And that whatever he was doing continued on up in the U.S. government.” He moved the gun straight into my face and put the muzzle against my forehead. “All I know is that it’s high enough that people are willing to kill to keep it a secret, which is exactly how this Kitchner died, by the hands of a government agent…”

Suddenly I heard the sound of pebbles being crunched nearby. Boots walking on gravel.

My head jerked to the side, my heart pounding so loudly, I couldn’t hear the sound of the river anymore.

Lasser came into view.

“You seem to know quite a lot, Ms. Gould,” he said, taking off his glasses. “So I guess my next question is… other than whether I should let Emmit here go to work on you for good… if you know all you say you do, just why the hell are you here?”

Emmit. I pulled myself out of his grip. How did I miss that one? I looked at Lasser, knowing that what I said next would either save me or cost me my life.

“I need to know why your daughter died.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Emmit, do me a favor and grab a smoke over there and let the two of us have a word.” Lasser nodded toward a spot about ten feet away. “You’ve been very persuasive, as usual.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lasser.” Emmit removed his hand with a kind of you’re-one-lucky-girl snicker and went over to a Jeep just out of earshot and leaned against the hood.

“I could easily let him kill you, Ms. Gould, and maybe I still will. I might well be doing a lot of people a very large favor.”

I took a deep breath and tried to regain my composure. “How did you know who I was?”

“You think we’re just a bunch of cow chips out here? Me, I’m just a country businessman trying to live a private life. Privacy is very important to me. And I don’t like it when people stick their noses into things they shouldn’t be and scratch the scab off old wounds.”

“You can be sure,” I said to him, “I’d rather be anywhere else in the world.”

He chuckled and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a flashy lighter with a turquoise stone, blew out a plume of smoke. “I suspect you would. So why did you come here, then? Why have you tried to contact me?”

“Your daughter was killed by Eduardo Cano…”

“My daughter was shot in Mexico with two of her friends from college. She was caught in an ambush that was aimed at two corrupt DEA agents, who happened to be stopped at the same place…”

I looked at him. “Mr. Lasser, we both know that’s not true.”

“Why?” He took another drag, his measuring gaze drilled into my eyes. “Why would the details of Ana’s death be of any matter to you? I’m long out of the game. I’m not some big prize. No one cares about me. The U.S. government. The narco boys. You ever heard the term la cuota, Ms. Gould? That which is owed. Well, I’ve paid that debt. A lot dearer than most. I’m out. I’m just a private guy trying to remain so. There aren’t any big stories here.”

“I’ve paid too.” I nodded.

“Yes, I suspect you have. Much in the same way you seem to have your doubts about Ana, I figure it’s likely the same about you. Your husband. I know how these things work. And I’m truly sorry, Ms. Gould. But not so sorry that I’m going to let you come around here and tear my life apart again and reopen old wounds. I earned my out. And I intend to keep it that way. So I ask you again, Emmit and I here are just itching to hear it from you. Why?”

“Curtis Kitchner came to see you, didn’t he? He knew about all this. The same things I know. That you were selling guns to the cartels. As a middleman for the U.S. government. Cano.”

Lasser nodded, just a twitch of his chin. “Go on.”

“The man who killed him in New York. He was a government agent. He said, ‘This is for Gillian,’ just before he pulled the trigger. I think you know the rest of the story. I was there.”

Lasser sniffed amusedly. “Seems like Door Number Three was definitely the wrong choice that day, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was. At first I thought it was a person, of course. This Gillian. Everyone was trying to pin it on me-that I had killed the man in some kind of panic. And then killed my husband. So I had to prove I’d stumbled into something a whole lot more secret than just a roll in the hay. Like a hit. So I followed what Curtis had been working on. I came across the Culiacán shootings, then, virtually by accident, your daughter’s photos at her school, and then I read where she was from. Then it all kind of came together: That she had been the actual target of what happened down there, not the Bienvienes. Now the only question is why?”

“Ana’s photos.” Lasser smiled wistfully. “Least they came to some use.”

“Mr. Lasser, I made a big mistake being in a place I should never have been. I’ve lost my husband. My family. My freedom. My life’s been taken too. I think we both know, the people charged with bringing me in would rather see me dead than in jail. We also both know why. Well, I want out too. And I’ve damn well earned it as well. I can show that the man who killed Curtis in that hotel room was with the DEA in El Paso at the same time as the agent currently heading the federal task force charged with bringing me in.

“And that they were both there, at the Kitano Hotel, that night. And that they both worked for the same person in El Paso, who is now running the DOJ’s department on narco-terrorism. I have every reason to believe they were all somehow connected to Cano, and that they were part of the plot to kill your daughter. What I don’t know is why. What was behind Curtis Kitchner’s death? What did he know that I still don’t? I was a witness to his murder, and now they’re trying to cover that up. They don’t want to capture me, Mr. Lasser. They want to silence me.”

Lasser took a last drag on his cigarette. “You have had your hands full, haven’t you, now? And you think by knowing why my daughter died you can get your life back?”

I shook my head. “I’ll never have my life back, any more than you. That’s gone. But maybe, just maybe, I can get back my children’s trust. You have other kids, Mr. Lasser? I know you do.”

He hesitated before answering and finally just shrugged. “Yes.”

“Do they know? Do they know why their sister died? Does your wife know?” Lasser’s look hardened, but he seemed to get what I was saying. “So how did you earn it, Mr. Lasser? Your cuota. Tell me: Why did Ana have to die?”

He tossed down his cigarette butt and stamped it into the gravel with the heel of his boot. I couldn’t tell if he was weighing my nerve at asking him the question I just had and was about to call ol’ Emmit back over. Or if something else was brewing in him. The feeling like, what the hell. None of it matters now.

I kept on him. “You were selling arms to the Mexico cartels, weren’t you?”

“Nothing illegal in that. They were businessmen too. I’ve sold merchandise across the border for twenty years. Big-screen TVs, VCRs. Levi’s. Ralph Lauren. How they got them home was their business.”

“AR-15 semiautomatics? Cop-killer pistols?”

“Guns are simply product to me. It rubs you the wrong way, write your congressman. That’s what I do.”

“Then, what? The government approached you to act as an intermediary to the cartels?’

A couple walked by us to their car. They seemed to have had a few too many.

“NAFTA turned my world upside down,” Lasser said, turning away from the noise. “We went from a thriving business, people coming across the border in droves, backing trucks up to our warehouse. Wads of cash you’d only see in a casino. Then, poof…” He snapped his fingers. “Gone! In a year there were Apple showrooms on the Plaza San Jacinto in Mexico City. Costcos in Guadalajara. So you figure, how can something be illegal if it comes from the U.S. government?”

I let him go on.

“Don’t you get it… some twenty-five billion dollars a year finds its way into the Mexican economy from the narco trade. Some forty-odd banks there show assets of over ten billion that no one can explain or trace where they come from. And it’s not just the Mexican economy. You’ve got narco tycoons buying up real estate in Miami and Southern California. Half the hedge funds on Wall Street wouldn’t divulge where half their money comes from. And of course the gun trade here. You think I wanted in on this? I was just riding a wave. My Ana was pretty as a rose in springtime. And talented.”

I nodded. “I saw her photos.”

“You walked into that hotel room…” He drew in a breath and shook his head. “And I-”

“You were selling guns directly to the Mexican cartels.” I cut him off. “Guns that were purchased by the U.S. government with money that was repaid to you as interest-free loans. More than six million dollars in just two years. But you’re not telling me it all… Everyone already knows about the gun trade to the drug cartels. This Fast and Furious program. That’s all come out. Eduardo Cano sided with the Juartes. So what did you do to incur their wrath? And the wrath of the U.S. government?”

“What no one will ever tell you, Ms. Gould…” Lasser leaned back against the truck. “Several years back the Mexican government came to the conclusion this was a war they couldn’t win. But that in order to regain control of their country, to stop the killings-judges, reporters, regional politicians-to get people back out on the streets, the war had to end. There had to be a winner. You cannot have a civilized country in the Western Hemisphere where over seventy newspaper and TV journalists, two dozen elected judges, hundreds of policemen and elected officials, are brutally killed.”

“I understand.”

“So the only way out was to take sides. Go with the strongest player. So the Calderón government made its peace with the Juartes against their rivals. And it got its big brother to the north to agree. At least, certain factions within it…”

“So all these millions you sold for the U.S. government were sent to the Juarte cartel?” I furrowed my brow. “That seems madness.”

“The U.S. government wasn’t trying to curb the drug trade, Ms. Gould…” Lasser shrugged. “Only trying to end the violence. The trade itself, it’s a boon. It’s good times for everybody. That’s why this war had to be put to an end. It was interfering in the commerce. In everything. So they took sides.”

“And you were the delivery pipeline? And Curtis found this out?”

“He came around here asking the same questions. I told him he didn’t have long to live if he kept asking around.”

But it still didn’t answer my question. Why had Cano turned on him? What had Lasser done to deserve his wrath?

Suddenly it came clear.

What everyone was trying to keep buried. Why Oscar Velez had to be silenced-if it ever came out just who the real, intended target was. Why Curtis was killed, his computer files destroyed.

It wasn’t just the illegal selling of guns to the cartels. That was just the first course.

The main event was that they had taken sides. That the United States government was secretly arming a cadre of murdering thugs and abetting drug traffickers across the border. That they were spilling blood and had their own hands in dozens of hooded assassinations and bodies left headless on the road. All in the hope that one billion-dollar narco conglomerate would destroy their rivals, and there would be stability there.

One winner.

And least, as Lasser had said, certain factions within it.

“How high did this go?” I asked, glancing at Emmit, who was catching a chew, wondering if I was ever going to get the chance to tell this story.

“I don’t know how high. To me it was all simply merchandise. They were customers. I received instructions from one particular person. I never knew the person’s name. Only their code name. The operation’s name.”

“And what was that?” I pressed.

Lasser chuckled. “You must be joking.”

“You haven’t given me a single name. You haven’t given me anything that can be traced back to anyone. Or back to you.”

“Damn right. That kind of information could get me killed.”

“No one even knows I’m here, Mr. Lasser. Or where it would’ve come from. That name is my way out. It’s the way to get my life back. I’ll never bring you into it. I swear.”

Lasser spread dirt over his dead butt with the toe of his boot. Then he turned away from Emmit and said a word in Spanish, barely louder than a whisper, almost under his breath. “Saltamontes.”

“Saltamontes?” I stared back at him, the lamplight making his face appear white.

“Grasshopper.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

A couple came out of the restaurant, walking past us on their way back to their car. Lasser’s man stood up and blocked any sight of us with his body.

“I think you’ve had your questions answered,” Lasser said. “It’s getting cold, and my boy Emmit here, tough as he acts, has a low tolerance for a chill. Which wouldn’t be good for you.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked.

I expected him to nod toward the suddenly weather-afflicted Emmit and that was going to be it for me. Instead Lasser rubbed his jaw with his hand, two fingers across his nose. “You’re going to get yourself out of town, Ms. Gould. Consider it your lucky day. You got what you came for. Now you’re going back to wherever it is you’re from. Tonight. Now. You tell this story to a single soul, you implicate my name in any way, I promise on the soul of my daughter, what happened to her will be a romp in the hay compared to what your kids will go through.”

“I have to tell it,” I said to him. “It’s the only way to save my life.”

“Sorry, but that’s not my concern. I think it’s yours. Emmit…”

The grizzled cowboy came toward me. I grabbed hold of Lasser’s arm. “You still didn’t tell me why she was killed. Why was she targeted? The Zetas were aligned with the Juartes. Making Juarte a winner was good for them as well.”

“What does that matter now? I told you what you wanted. Now it’s up to you how you choose to use it.” He nodded to Emmit and headed toward his car.

I grabbed his arm. “It matters because I’m not out here alone. It matters because the person who’s with me, Eduardo Cano has murdered her entire family to keep what you just told me quiet. What did you do that caused your daughter to be murdered by the same people you were selling to, along with four other innocent people?”

I looked at his face and saw it. In the pale, questioning cast of guilt that came over it; he was barely able to look me in the eyes. What had he said a few minutes before: You walked into that hotel room. And I-

He’d been about to tell me, and now I saw it.

He’d walked through the wrong door too.

“You didn’t just sell to them, did you? You were diverting arms. To other buyers. The Gulf cartel? Or the Jaliscos? You were selling to other buyers, and the Juartes found out. But they needed you for the arms, so they couldn’t just kill you as they would normally do. So they punished you with your daughter. I’m right, aren’t I, Mr. Lasser? That’s what caused it. Your beautiful Ana…”

He pulled his arm away, but his look of shame and pain gave it all away. “It was how I stayed alive. The only way I stayed alive. Mexico is a complicated place, Ms. Gould, even with the United States as your protector. You think I had a choice? You don’t think the others came to me and threatened me with far worse? But yes, they needed me. Now get in your car and drive out of town, before the situation changes.”

“What situation?” I asked. His look seemed to shift.

“My largess,” he said. He tapped his palms against the truck and shrugged. “I’m afraid the friend you mentioned won’t be quite as lucky.”

Those words were like the blade of a sharp knife curling the peel off an orange. Except the orange was in my gut. And it was throbbing. “What do you mean about my friend? Lauritzia?”

“You were wrong,” Lasser sniffed grimly, “about no one knowing you were here… Just drive out of here, Ms. Gould. Don’t even go back to your motel, if you want to remain alive. This one’s not your fight.”

My heart grew tight in terror. “Who knows we’re here?”

“He only wants her. He doesn’t care about you.”

I saw the answer to my question reflected in his own fear that rose up in his eyes.

Cano.

Lasser dug his dead cigarette butt further into the dirt with his boot. “You didn’t think you were the only ones who ended up in Gillian tonight?”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Lauritzia!

A car came down our row, its headlights momentarily blinding us, and I took the chance to break free of Emmit’s grasp and took off down the row of parked cars to where I’d left the Toyota. Behind me, I thought I heard the cowboy ask if he should go after me, and Lasser simply mutter, “Let her go if she wants to die so bad.”

The panic and dread that was suddenly suffocating me made me realize how fondly I’d grown to think of her, and that I’d left her alone back at the motel in danger. And that I wasn’t going to let someone who had suffered so much, who had lost everything in life, die now, in a place I had brought her. And at the hands of that monster.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind who Lasser meant. But who could have alerted him? How could he have known we were there? And Lasser had never told me how he knew who I was. I suddenly felt both incredibly stupid and completely in over my head, a pawn in someone else’s game. Which had become my nightmare! And we’d played right into it, in our stupid search for the truth. Lauritzia was the last of her brother and sisters. And now I’d left her in danger. She might already be dead.

Please God, I begged. I wasn’t a religious person, but I heard myself praying as I ran. Don’t let any harm come to her. Please.

I got to the car and turned on the ignition. I threw it into reverse and did a frantic three-point U-turn to get out of the lot. Our motel was only about a mile or so away. I had no idea what I might be heading into. I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have anything to protect her with. If I even got there in time. I drove onto River Street, which led back to the main drag. I took out my phone and pressed Lauritzia’s number. It took a few seconds to connect. I felt my heartbeat bursting through my skin. It started ringing. Once. Twice. Please, Lauritzia, answer. Three times.

Her voice mail came on. “This is Lauritzia. If you’ve reached this, you know that-”

I cut it off. No point to leaving a message. She had called me only an hour before to check where I was. I pulled around cars and sped up through a yellow light, unable to stop my heart from lurching. How could I have left her there alone?

I thought about dialing the police and ending the whole thing there.

Two blocks from the motel, I was forced to pull up at a light, stuck behind a huge eighteen-wheel diesel. I pounded the steering wheel. “C’mon!” I shouted, my foot twitching on the accelerator. I could run there from here! I thought about jumping out and making the dash.

The light finally changed. I sped up alongside the truck and veered into the turn lane. The motel was just there on the left. I didn’t know what I could do, but if she was in danger… I was living this nightmare all over again, just like with Dave.

I turned sharply in to the motel drive and screeched to a stop in front of our wing of the building. Our room was number 304, accessible from an outside staircase. I sprinted to it, leaving the car door open, bolting up the stairs-up two flights to the third floor-in a white stucco stairwell made to look like a church bell tower. I made it up and dashed down the long hall toward our room, praying I wasn’t too late.

“Lauritzia!” I shouted.

I swung around the corner and, to my shock, slammed headfirst into someone. Someone large and immovable, who had clearly been waiting for me there. Almost knocking me to the ground.

I screamed. The person put his arms around me, and I shouted, “Get off! Get off me!” needing to get by, my arms flailing to get away from him. Crying. I knew this was bad. Lauritzia might already be dead. I knew I’d failed her.

“No, no, no!” I yelled. “I have to get to her. Let me by…”

And then finally I looked into the face of my captor and my heart fell off a cliff. I knew it was even worse.

Worse for me.

“Good to run into you again, Ms. Gould.” Alton Dokes pinned my arms and smiled.

I never saw what happened next, only felt the hard blow against my chin, likely with the butt of his gun. My legs giving way.

And the sinking feeling that I’d failed her. Lauritzia. That she was dead. As he held me to keep me from crumpling to the floor, the darkness swarmed over my brain.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

When Lauritzia got back to the room, she was hardly able to keep her eyes open at first, thinking that it might be the long drive they’d just completed; or the endless wait for Lasser; or maybe even the altitude. They were at eight thousand feet.

She napped for a while, then she came to, looking around the small room: at the printed, western-themed curtains that led out to the small balcony; the cowboy prints on the wall; their clothes folded neatly on the one chair. Why was she there?

She was there to find the answer to the one thing that had held her prisoner.

And when she found it, she would be free. She would be able to go about life like any person. Go to school. Maybe meet a boy. Get married. Have kids of her own. Leave behind the darkness that had followed her. Rid her mind of the terrible pictures that always came to her like a horror film she would look away from.

No, she knew, this thing would never make her free.

That was what she realized in the car that had made her so distressed. Because the answer to her problems was far different from Wendy’s. Wendy’s would allow her to prove that she had not done these things she was accused of. To show clearly that she was caught up in someone else’s evil. Not hers. It would come out, the people who had done these things. She would go back to her life. Not with her husband, but maybe with her kids. Who would one day forgive. Life didn’t give you all of its blessings, only some… Gillian was indeed Wendy’s key.

Just not hers. She had been wrong; their stories did not lead to the same place.

It would never let her go.

This man they sought, Lasser… he held no answers for her.

She sat up in bed. It was after 6:00 P.M. It had grown dark outside. She went to the balcony and opened the door. The cool night air hit her. She was dying for something to eat. They had not eaten any lunch.

Where was Wendy?

At first, the thought came with a shudder that something was wrong. But it was always that way with Lauritzia. A missed call, one of the kids not exactly where they were supposed to be, always came with the premonition of danger.

Maybe there was a call?

She found her phone and was relieved to see a message from her. She listened, “Hey, you must be napping. I’m at a restaurant. Lasser is here. Wish me luck. I’m going to do this now…”

That was forty minutes ago. Lauritzia thought about calling her back but then decided she would wait. Instead, she took the phone and called down to the restaurant. Asked for some toast and tea. They said it would be twenty minutes. She went in and washed her face.

Maybe Wendy had met with him. She knew she would find the courage. Maybe she was with him now.

She went back out and threw a sweater over her shoulders against the night chill. She flicked on the TV. The local news. She found an old episode of The King of Queens and sat on the bed. That always made her laugh.

After about ten minutes there was a knock. “Room service. You ordered tea.”

“Sí.” Lauritzia went to the door and opened the latch just a crack. It was a blond young man in a red waiter’s vest. She opened the door and he came in, with an amiable “Evening” and a cute smile, and set out the tray on the small table, clearing all the magazines. “There’s milk in the container. Butter and jelly for the toast. Need anything else?”

“No, that will be fine,” Lauritzia said. She signed the bill, leaving him a couple of dollars as a tip.

“Call down when you need it picked up.”

“I will.” He was cute, Lauritzia thought. He was probably in the local college here. She let him out, closing the latch on the door again. She poured herself some tea, which felt good going down and made her feel stronger. She took a couple of bites of toast and watched the end of the show, giggling amusedly at the father-in-law, who had spent the last of his money on some get-rich scheme.

She glanced at her watch. It was now 7:15 P.M.

She picked up her phone again. It had been an hour since her message. This time she would call. The room suddenly seemed to have a stillness to it. And a chill. She got up to fully shut the outside door, pressing Wendy’s number on the phone.

There was another knock on the door. She’s here!

“Room service again,” the voice from outside said. “Forgot something.”

Lauritzia went to the door, this time opening it without hesitation, and there was the same cute boy. “What did you forget?”

Except this time his smile was more like a deadened slate and his eyes contained an empty, blank glaze.

She gasped. “Oh God…” She tried to jam the door shut.

The door flew open, nearly clipping her face, and the boy in the red vest seemed to crumple right on top of her, like some gangly, red spider, his legs buckling to the floor. His eyes-those cute boyish Colorado eyes-now staring at her like motionless pools.

Behind him, someone pushed into the room. Lauritzia stepped back and went to scream. But she couldn’t scream-her voice was trapped; and by that time it was too late. She stared in horror at the person who had come in, as if he was the Devil himself.

Because he was the Devil to her.

“Buenas noches, Lauritzia Serafina Velez.” Eduardo Cano smiled. “I am very sad to disturb you in this way,” he continued in Spanish, pushing the waiter’s body farther into the room and kicking the door closed behind him. “But I think we have an appointment, no? And I have waited a very long time to make your acquaintance face-to-face.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

She would not allow herself to show him fear. Please, Lauritzia, be strong. She steeled herself. For Eustavio and Nina and Rosa and Maria. Though her body shuddered like an earthquake, her heart felt three times its size.

She stood straight up to him, this Satan she reviled, who had taken everything from her. Small as she was, she stood up tall. She would show no fear. She held back tears, tears of anger and of acceptance, knowing her time had come, her gaze darting to the body of the boy crumpled on the floor. Another innocent victim.

“Why?”

“I’m sorry, my dear, but it had to be done.” Cano wiped the short blade of blood on the side of his pants, then slipped the blade into its sheath hanging from his belt. “Would you have actually opened up for me? That makes me feel so nice. Anyway, what is one more? So many have already died. But you know that so well, don’t you? I just couldn’t hold back when I heard you were here. To come and have the pleasure of finally meeting you myself. In person. You have shown a lot of guile, girl. Twice, I had the hangman ready to take you in his cart, and twice fate intervened.” He scanned the room, checking the bathroom, the windows. “But I’m afraid that will not happen again.”

“Do what you have to do.” Lauritzia glared at him with spite. “I’m not afraid. I am only ashamed I cannot kill you myself. With my own hands. You are a monster.”

“A monster, huh? You think so?” Cano stepped around the room. “You think this is all just some spectacle to me? A spectacle of blood. Like in the arena. You have no idea. Your father understood what he would bring on the moment he did what he did. It is he who has brought this fate on you and your family. Not me. I am only the person who carries it out. Someone has to. Look to you own father when you see him in the afterlife. Though I doubt the two of you will ever meet, unless God grants you a day trip into hell.”

He took the gun from his belt. A small-caliber pistol equipped with a silencer.

“Do not insult my father. My father would only say one thing to you. To your face, El Pirate.”

“And what would that be, Lauritzia?” Cano tapped the gun against his side and came closer. “Your dick-sucking coward of a father. Tell me, what would that be?”

“This.” Lauritzia stood on her toes and spit in his face, the hatred burning through her eyes like an X-ray.

Cano wiped off the spit with the back of his hand and smiled. “Now I see why it’s been so tough to kill you. It is hard to kill anything that has so little regard for its own life.”

“Then do it!” Lauritzia exhorted him. She thought of Wendy, who might be returning at any second, and glared back at him with burning, ready eyes. “Do it now. I am not afraid. You have already killed the fear in me a hundred times. A little more with each of my brother and sisters. So there is nothing left, only my heart, which curses your soul for the people who can no longer speak. Go on, shoot me!” She pushed out her chest. “Your power is weakened to me. There is nothing you can take from me any longer, but my spite. The rest is gone.”

“Shoot you?” Cano rubbed his mouth, unable to conceal his snicker. “Who said anything about shooting you, my darling.” He slowly unscrewed the silencer from the gun and put it back in his jacket pocket. “No one who escapes El Pirate twice dies so easily, especially one who holds such an illustrious status as you. The last of your line. No…” He pushed open his jacket and showed the knife he had killed the waiter with. A short, two-inch, military-looking blade with a curl at the edge. “I think for you there is only the blade. And you should know, Lauritzia”-Cano thumbed its edge to show its sharpness-“that this is something I do very, very well. And anything done that well takes time. Lots and lots of time. Don’t you agree?”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

In the chill of the Colorado night, outside the motel room, the pockmarked man climbed across to the third-floor balcony.

It was not difficult, once he saw that Cano had arrived at the motel. His work was almost done. Patience had always been his trait, and now the bear had set foot in the trap.

And now he would cut it off.

It was not hard to hoist his way up there. The small terraces were only eight feet apart in height, so he easily pulled himself up. And in the darkness no one would see. This time he was careful not to make a sound and carefully moved the balcony door ajar, enough to hear what was going on inside, keeping himself concealed behind the heavy drapes.

After so long, his heart accelerated to be so close.

“Do it now,” he heard the woman say. “I am not afraid.” He smiled. Lauritzia had always been the brave one. Even as a child she would dive into the swimming hole from thirty feet.

“Who said anything about shooting you?” Eduardo Cano said. The man watched through the curtains as the killer took out his knife.

The man carefully removed the gun that he had tucked into his belt. He had waited a long time for this moment, and of all the things he thought might go through his mind as he was about to do the one thing he had dreamed of for many years, he never imagined it would be this: That in the place of his home people would be parading through the streets, dancing and wearing masks, this very night. The churches would be open for business deep into the night. All the undertakers would stay up late too.

He slid the door open and could not hold back his smile. Today was the Day of the Dead. November 2.

What a day to die.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

This time Lauritzia did show fear. She could not help it. She had made her peace with God many times, and in ways, longed to be with her brother and sisters, who she believed with everything in her soul were in heaven now.

But this… Her eyes shot fearfully to the knife. Since she was a child that had been her one fear. To be cut. Even the slice from a thorn unnerved her. So now it was this.

“You say you no longer have any fear for me,” Cano said with a shrug, circling the room. “So we will see. We will see just what you have left. I suspect I will find something. Are you still a virgin? You’re a sweet piece of pie, Lauritzia. I can see that. Do you really want to die without ever feeling how a man feels inside you? Even one you despise. You might not hate me as much as you think! I could make that happen, Lauritzia. Give you a little thrill before you go. What do you say?”

“I say the only way you will ever put yourself inside me is if I’m dead.” Lauritzia tightened her fists. “And even then, I would not let you-”

“Ha!” Cano laughed greasily. “I’m not so bad.” He stepped closer. “You smell nice. The smell of someone who wants exactly what she thinks she doesn’t. What she doesn’t know. I bet you’re wet down there, my little niña. Wet for it with a man who represents everything you revile, right? Who has taken everything you love from you. Wet and juicy. What do you say?” He tapped the blade against his cheek. “If I cut off a nipple, you may beg me to do it. Or beg me to kill you, I think. You say I am powerless, eh? So we’ll see. We’ll see just how powerless I am.”

Cano circled, the burning eyes of a wolf hunting its prey. He unbuckled his belt. “So tell me, my brave Lauritzia, what would you say to me, now that I am here? To the one who has slaughtered your brother and sisters, with as little thought to it as if I were ordering a beer? You must have dreamed of this moment. So here’s the chance. It’s just me. The famous El Pirate. See, I’ll even put this away.”

He placed the knife back in its small sheath hanging from his belt. “It’s just you and me. Tell me what words you have for the killer of your entire family? I am yours. Nothing to say?” He laughed. “What do you think your dog piss of a father would have said?”

“He would say, in the name of God, Eduardo Cano, prepare to meet your judgment.”

A voice rang out from behind Cano, and a man stepped out from behind the curtains holding a gun. Cano spun around in surprise.

“And I hope that judgment is painful and endless, El Pirate, and I pray with all my heart, for that reason only, that there is indeed a hell.”

“Papa!” Lauritzia exclaimed, her eyes as wide as if Saint Anselmo himself had appeared in the room.

It had been more than three years.

“So,” Cano said, chortling with a look between bewilderment and amusement, “the fisherman has finally reeled in his big catch. The one who’s been eluding him all these years. So was it you, Oscar, my old right arm, who lured me out here? Was this your plan all along? How very, very shrewd. You deserve big applause, Oscar. I mean this. You do.”

“Get away from him, Lauritzia. This man is about to die, and I do not want him to soil you one more second. It’s over for him. In this world. The rest, I can only hope, is only just beginning…”

“Papa,” she uttered again, still in shock, and moved away.

“So this is the big finale?” Eduardo Cano showed his teeth and laughed. “You sound like a fucking priest, Oscar. This is your big revenge? The afterlife? Eternal damnation. As if I need you to consign me to hell. Well, I hope it tastes sweet. Very sweet. You look a little thin, Oscar. Have you been eating your own cooking?”

“I’ve been living on the dream of one day holding this gun at you, Eduardo, and now I feel pretty full. You asked what I would say… well, I too have dreamed of this. And what I ask you is, why? Why, Eduardo? Was it that I betrayed you? The one you took up from nothing. Because of what I knew. Who we were meant to kill that day… You could have taken any of my children, and it would have kept me in anguish for the rest of my life. But all? Even their unborn children. Even unfed dogs do not act like this. Why?”

Cano wiped his face and looked into Oscar’s eyes; even holding the gun, Oscar seemed to shrink from his presence. “You think it was to protect myself, eh, Oscar? Or my friends up north who let us battle to the death in our own country? You are a fool. It was because I thought it would bring you out from under a rock, you cowardly cur. It was because each one, I thought, Now, this will bring him back. To face me. So that I could kill you myself. So I could strangle the life out of you with my own hands. No man could sit by and watch his family slaughtered one by one. But you didn’t come. Each one, you still chose to hide, while I took the things you loved. What of that, Oscar? Even the most cowering lizard in the desert does not behave like that.”

“I was in U.S. custody, you bastard. I could not come.”

“Well, now the coward has his revenge. Go on, get it over.” Cano turned his back to him. “I’ll make it easy for you. See if you have the guts. Go on. Right in the back of the head. Isn’t that want you want, Oscar? You can brag about it. The killer of El Pirate. Do it now. Take your big revenge.”

Oscar moved up behind him and placed his gun to the back of Cano’s head. “Do you know what day it is, Eduardo?’

“The day the worm catches a cow and has his banquet.”

“It is November second.”

“Ha, the Day of the Dead! What a fucking joke! Now go on. Before it becomes November third. I’m sure your daughter can’t wait to see my brains sprayed all over her pretty outfit.”

“No more talk, Eduardo. Your time has come. See you in hell.”

Oscar stiffened to shoot, but in the same instant, Cano’s hand darted toward his belt and came out with the blade sheathed there, and as if in the same motion, he thrust it downward and spun away from the gun and dug it into Oscar’s knee.

Oscar yelped, buckling, the gun firing wildly, the bullet missing Cano’s head and shattering a lamp by the bed.

Cano pivoted and came upward with the blade, slashing Oscar across the forearm, tearing the gun from his grip and sending it rattling across the floor.

Lauritzia screamed.

“I told you to shoot me, Oscar, didn’t I?” Cano said, his eyes now ablaze with a coyote’s gleam, and he kicked Oscar’s legs out from under him, toppling him to the floor, and reached into his belt and took out his own gun. He thrust his knee onto Oscar’s chest and pushed his gun into Oscar’s mouth. “I gave you the chance, didn’t I? What a pair you are. One is a coward and the other one only talks of heaven. You know what day it is? Of course I do, Oscar, this is the day you die. Not me.”

Oscar looked up, his eyes darting in futility, his thoughts rushing to Lauritzia. His arm flailed, seeking to locate his gun on the floor, his fingers grasping. Cano raised the muzzle to the roof of Oscar’s mouth. “You were a cook when I found you, and you will always be just a cook. I am El Pirate. No one tells me when I die. I tell you! Now, eat this, asshole-”

“No-you are wrong, El Pirate!” It was Lauritzia who spoke, who now pressed her father’s gun to the back of Cano’s skull. “Just this once we do.”

She squeezed.

Cano spun, his eyes wide in terror, as the side of his face caved in, like a building imploding. He rolled off Lauritzia’s father and landed face first on the floor. Even dying, his hands kept grasping and twitching, like an animal moving around without its head, trying to locate his gun. His eyes rolled up, but they still had that arrogant laughter in them. I decide who lives and dies. I do. His chest still rising and falling with his breath, as if he were some vampire Lauritzia had seen on TV, who would not die.

He would never die.

She went up and put the gun against his temple. “For me, heaven will have to wait, but for you, hell is ready, El Pirate.”

She pulled the trigger again. This time he didn’t move.

“Just this once, we do.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Deputy Director Carol Sinclair, third in line at the Department of Homeland Security, stepped into the makeshift offices of the joint task force investigating the deaths of Agent Raymond Hruseff and David Gould.

With her was Richard Sparks, who headed up the FBI’s New York office, along with three military-looking men in suits.

The dozen or so agents manning phones or sitting behind computers sat up or hastily threw their jackets on.

“Where is Senior Agent Dokes?” the deputy director asked them.

At first, no one spoke up. Not that anyone actually knew his whereabouts. Only that he was in the field. Following up on a lead. Dokes was their senior officer in the investigation. You didn’t rat out your superior, even when your superior’s superior came into the room. Even with a good chunk of the U.S. military police standing behind her.

At least for about five seconds.

“He’s not around, sir,” a nervous agent said, standing up. “Agent Holmes may be able to help you. I know they’ve been in touch.”

“Thank you,” the deputy director said, her tone clipped and about as frigid as a glacier.

Sinclair continued down the hall, stopping at the glass-enclosed workspace that was home to the task force’s senior leadership. It took about a second for the redheaded agent at the desk to see who stood at his door. He jumped up, throwing on his jacket and straightening his tie, his mind doing eighty to figure out just why they were here. “Ma’am!”

“I’m looking for Senior Agent Dokes.” The deputy director stepped into his office.

The Homeland Security agent cleared his throat, the first time he’d been addressed directly by someone of this rank. “I’m afraid he’s not here, ma’am.”

“And where might I find him?” She had a handful of files in her hands. “There are some questions he needs to answer.”

Questions that had landed on her desk about how David Gould’s blood had shown up in a completely different place from where Dokes claimed he was killed. Questions relating to certain government postings throughout his career. That coincided with other events that now had come to light.

“He’s out.” The young agent cleared his throat, thinking he may have backed the wrong horse in this race, the race of his once promising career. “He’s in the field.”

“The field?” The deputy director looked at him skeptically.

“Yes, sir.” The agent swallowed. “The field.”

“You were with him, at the Goulds’ house, the night David Gould was shot, weren’t you, Agent Holmes?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Holmes felt his stomach plummeting. “I was.”

“So why don’t we have ourselves a little discussion…” The deputy director dropped the files on his desk. “And then you can tell me just where we can find Senior Agent Dokes.” Her gaze had the firmness of concrete. “In the field.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

When I finally came to, everything was bumpy; I had the sensation of being tossed around. I found myself in a car-a Range Rover or Jeep, actually-my wrists bound in front of me and clasped to a handle bar on the dashboard. I yanked them toward me, and they didn’t move.

Next to me, Dokes was driving. I blinked several times, trying to clear the fuzziness from my head. Along with the throbbing ache. We were on a dark road, no longer in town. And this didn’t have the feel of an official trip. I was pretty certain that ache was about to become the least of my worries.

“Where are you taking me?” I turned to Dokes.

“It doesn’t matter where I’m taking you. How about we say the beach.” There was a tiny chuckle in his reply. “Do you like the beach, Wendy?”

I looked around and recognized the main road, 160, that led in and out of Gillian. “There’s no beach around here.”

“Don’t be so sure. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

I didn’t like that no one else was in the vehicle. If Dokes was arresting me, he’d certainly have a support team along with him. My mind flashed to Lauritzia. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. Dead, I figured. I’d gotten there too late. We went over a bump, and I lurched forward, held back by the handle bar.

“You should’ve just stopped,” Dokes said with an air of resignation. “Back in that hotel when I told you to.”

“If I had, I’d be dead,” I replied. “We both know that.”

“Maybe. But you surely would have saved us both a lot of trouble. There must be a lesson in there somewhere though.”

“I’m waiting…”

Dokes shrugged, slowing the vehicle. He put on his turn signal. Left. “Beware the piano player.” He chuckled as he turned the car. “Next time someone asks you up to his hotel room…”

He pulled onto another road, and it was only then that I saw where we were heading.

The beach.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park.

And that’s when I understood just what we were doing here. We weren’t heading to any place. But to the middle of nowhere. The beach… And this would be my last ride. I jerked on my cuffs. It only made them tighter. I jerked them again in anger and desperation, trying to rip the handle bar off the dashboard.

It didn’t budge. Just dug the cuffs deeper into my wrists until they hurt.

“You know it’s true, what they say about them,” Dokes remarked at my frustration. “I could have told you that.”

We drove into the dark park. We approached the front gate. It was unmanned. Dokes drove around it anyway, bouncing onto the tundra. This was one of those open natural sites. No fences or manmade barriers to keep it in. You could get at it from probably a hundred directions, especially in the right vehicle.

“Isn’t this a bit after hours, Dokes?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not my hours.”

I was growing scared. My heart started to beat faster. I knew he was taking me up there, deep into the acres and acres of desolate, barren dunes, to kill me. I jerked at the bar again. It was only tiring me out.

“You think that’s really gonna make a difference.” Dokes grinned at my desperation.

I said, “I know why you’re doing this. I know what this is all about. I know what Curtis found out about Culiacán. That the DEA agents killed there weren’t the intended targets that day. That it was Lasser’s daughter.”

“I know you know.” Dokes shrugged dismissively. “What else would you be doing here?”

“And I also know where it leads,” I said, my tone growing harder and more frantic. “I know you all used to work in El Paso in the DEA. For Sabrina Stein. I know the Mexican government came up with the idea to let one cartel win, as their way to stop the violence. I know the U.S.’s role in that was to procure the arms. Lasser’s job. Just the Juarte cartel. That’s why you’re doing this to me. So that it doesn’t come out that the U.S. government was arming drug traffickers and took sides in the war between narco-terrorists. That it basically allied itself with the Juarte cartel.”

“All very interesting.” Dokes nodded. We left the paved road and began to bounce over the sand. “Too bad you won’t be able to tell anyone.”

“I’m not the only one who knows this. Others do too, and when I disappear, they’ll bring it all out. We have the proof.”

“You really think that’s what this is all about?” We started to climb. I saw a sign: MEDANOCREEK. An arrow pointing. Another sign read: DUNES.

That was what we took.

“Trust me,” he said, “it’s a whole lot larger than that.”

“What could be larger than the U.S. government taking sides in the drug wars? Arming killers and drug cartels?” I racked my brain for what I had missed, for what was still out there.

Dokes merely laughed at me. “My career.”

“Your career? Are you insane? Your career is more important than the United States supplying millions of dollars in illegal arms to drug cartels?”

This time he wasn’t laughing. “It is to me.”

He drove down the long main roadway toward the shapeless, dark mountains. Thousands of acres of them. I remembered looking it up. Whatever he had in store for me, by morning there would be no trace. It was pitch dark. The winds were whipping. The moon shed some light on the crests of the dunes, rolling like huge black waves in a turbulent sea. Soon we began to bounce. I had to cling helplessly to the handle bar to keep from being thrown out of my seat. The vehicle climbed a steep, dark incline, Dokes downshifting and powering through. The headlights cut through the darkness, flashing a widening cone of light ahead. Then the car pitched forward, like we were surfing a giant wave, traversing the backside of the dune and heading out into virtually nowhere.

“Please, please,” I begged him, becoming really scared now. He just kept his gaze on the road, focused intently ahead.

“You don’t have to do this. You’re a government agent, for God’s sakes. Do you have kids? I do. Two. You know that. They don’t have a father now. Please, please, Dokes, don’t do this.” He ignored my pleas. “Say something to me, goddamn it. Dokes. Please…”

He didn’t answer, just continued to drive. As if I wasn’t even in the car. The moon lit a trail over the dunes, and it was like in Lawrence of Arabia, shimmering against the darkness. I knew precisely why he was taking me out there. By morning, the shifting sand would cover me completely. No one, no one would ever find me.

Not a grave. Not even a trace.

Nothing.

He drove about ten minutes longer, the wind now snapping at the windows, the temperature starting to drop. I figured he didn’t have a specific destination in mind. He was just heading as deep as he could into the void. It was November. Who would ever know?

My heart felt like it might crash through my chest.

Then suddenly he stopped. Completely terrifying me. We were on the upside of a massive dune. Rising above us in the night like that giant wave in The Perfect Storm.

The one that drove them under.

“Please, no,” I begged him.

Dokes put the vehicle into park, leaving the lights on. “This is as far as we go.” He got out and came around to my side of the vehicle, but before he did, he opened the back and came out with a shovel. My heart started to beat wildly. He came around to my door and opened it, took out a key, and took off the cuffs that had bound me to the handle bar. “Let’s go.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I murmured.

“You shouldn’t have been up there,” he said. “You crazy, stupid bitch. Don’t look at me. You got what you asked for. You should have just gotten on that train and gone home.”

For a moment I thought I saw the slightest weakening in him-realizing he was putting an end to the life of an innocent person-but it was quickly covered up by all he was bent on protecting: his stupid rank, his pension, his career. The counterfeit notion that he was preserving the security of the United States. It had all hardened around him in this fake, inpenetrable veneer. And it wasn’t going to crack. No matter what I said.

What gnawed at me most was that the bastard was going to win.

“Get out,” he said, grabbing me by the chain linking my cuffs and dragging me out of the vehicle. I fell into the sand. “Get up.”

I didn’t get up. I just looked up at him, tears forming in my eyes. “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you to hell. You’re nothing but a piece-of-shit murderer hiding behind his badge. You’re scum, Dokes. The slimiest form of it. You’re going to rot in hell, and for what? To protect your fucking pension. Even the cartels are higher than you. You’re zero, Dokes. Pretending you’re saving the country…”

He raised the shovel and I was sure he was about to bring it down on me and end it all right there.

I turned away.

“I said, get up!” he shouted at me. He hurled the shovel at me and took out a gun.

“Okay, okay,” I said, and pulled myself to my feet. I started to cry.

“Start walking.”

I started to walk, trudge really, stumbling into the massive dune in the dark, the only thing illuminating us the beam from the vehicle’s headlights.

I thought of Neil and Amy, that they’d never, ever find out a thing behind what had happened to me. I would just disappear. That they’d never know I wasn’t guilty of the things they said I was. They’d grow old despising me for murdering their father. And never fucking know.

I fell, tears and mucus covering my face. Dokes kicked me forward and ordered me to go on. I thought of Dave. I love you, honey, I said inwardly. I’m so sorry for what happened. Maybe I’ll see you soon. Maybe…

Dokes pushed me from behind with his foot. I fell face first into the sand. I was miles from anywhere, in an unmarked grave that by morning would be invisible, swept over with sand. I would probably never be found.

Dokes stood over me. This was it. He brought out his gun and pulled back the action.

I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cower. I wanted to look him firmly in the eyes. I wanted to say Fuck you in the last, willful breath that I would breathe. I wanted to tell him I’d meet him in hell.

But I couldn’t. I didn’t do any of these things. I was scared. I was trembling in the cold, the wind blowing sand in my face. I looked at him, and all I could do was turn away. Away from the gun as he pointed it at me. I love you, Dave… I waited for what would happen.

I centered on something, high above the dunes, in the far-off sky. A star or a planet. A bright light flickering amid the stars. I wasn’t religious. But it brought me some peace. I thought maybe it was Lauritzia. Pretty, brave Lauritzia, who had come along with me to who knew what fate? And who was with me now. I actually felt sad.

Then I heard something… not the wail of the wind across the dunes, but a whirring. In the sky. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack…

The far-off star I was focused on was getting larger.

Not some glowing, spiritual light like they say happens when you die. But like a beam, coming toward us at a fast pace above the dunes. With an approaching hum. The winds picking up, sand whirling all over us.

I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or already dead.

An engine?

Dokes shielded his eyes and looked up. “What the fuck?”

My heart began to rise.

And then the noise grew louder, until it became almost deafening in my ears. A roar. And the light glared in my eyes, blinding me, wind whipping the sand in all directions. I realized what it was, and stared up at it with my hand over my eyes.

I heard a voice over a speaker: “This is the Department of Homeland Security. Put the gun down and raise your hands in the air!” The copter hovering over us, like some angel God had sent.

Suddenly Dokes ran toward me, darting from the beam of light, his gun still trained on me. I could see in his eyes what he was calculating to do. “You may think you’re going to get away, but you’re not. You’re still the only one who knows.”

“There’s no point, Dokes. It’s over.”

The voice bellowed from the copter again, “Agent Dokes, put your gun down now!”

“It’s not over! I’ll claim it’s a matter of national security. They won’t want what happened to come out any more than I do. Say good-bye.” He shot out his arm to shoot. “I’m not done. You are.”

“No.” The noise of the copter was unbearable, and the whipping sand almost blinded me. “Please…”

I never heard the shot. I only saw the gun fly out of Dokes’s hand and a spatter of red explode on his shoulder. He staggered back and fell to his knees.

The copter started coming down.

Oh God. Oh God. Can I believe this?

I couldn’t help it-I started to cry. Jubilant tears at first, then they turned into deep, convulsive sobs. Maybe it was just everything I had been through pouring out of me. I realized I no longer had to be afraid. Or be brave. Or prove anything.

It was over.

I crawled up the sand and looked at Dokes, illuminated by the searchlight’s beam. His left hand covered his right shoulder. Somehow he still had that smug, unworried expression; he even smiled at me like everything was going to be okay. He would roll. There were people much higher than him who would end up taking the fall. He looked up at the copter as it began to come down.

I picked up the shovel, the one he intended to use to bury me in an anonymous grave. To eliminate the final trace that I ever existed.

“This is for my husband,” I said, and swung with all my might, catching him on his back and sending him face first onto the sand. I was sure I heard a few ribs crack in there too. He pushed himself back up to his knees, looking as helpless and dazed as I had felt just moments before.

“It was just business,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been in that room.”

I raised the shovel over him one more time. “And this one’s for me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Dokes was put in cuffs and taken away in the copter. The last I saw of him was his glowering glare through the open cargo door as the aircraft whipped up the sand and sped off to I don’t know where.

I begged them not to make me go along-rambling pretty much incoherently how I had to get back to the motel in town, how Lauritzia was in danger. How she might already be dead. They put me in the custody of two federal agents, and we jumped into Dokes’s vehicle.

As we rode at eighty on the dark road back into town, I was certain that the elation I was feeling at coming out of this alive would soon turn to anguish as we got there and found her dead. Lasser’s warning echoed over and over in my mind. I’m afraid the friend you mentioned won’t be quite as lucky.

We got to town and sped up to the motel, which was now ablaze in flashing lights and emergency vehicles. Every cop in Gillian was likely there. I flung the Jeep’s door open and sprinted up the stairs, ahead of the two agents who were trying to keep up with me. A throng of local cops were blocking the hallway. They stopped me before I got within fifty feet of our room.

“Let me in! I have to get in!” I said to two gray-uniformed cops standing guard at the door. “This is my room!” My heart was beating just as riotously as when Dokes was dragging me out into the dunes.

One of the agents accompanying me flashed his badge, and they apologetically let us through.

I steeled myself for the worst: To see Lauritzia sprawled there, her bloody body-that would have sent me over the edge.

She wasn’t there.

Instead, I almost tripped over the red-vested body of what appeared to be a waiter from the motel crumpled near the door. His open eyes and blond hair leaking blood made me almost scream. A medical tech was kneeling over him.

Farther in, I fixed on the facedown body of a heavyset Hispanic man in a white shirt and jacket, the back of his head virtually caved in in a red mash, his arms splayed wide.

I was certain who it was even without anyone telling me.

Where was Lauritzia?

“Lauritzia!” I called out worriedly. I looked around for her belongings. The small traveling case she had brought with her and-I rushed into the bathroom-her toiletries were all gone.

“Save your breath,” a female detective in a navy windbreaker marked GPD said to me. “There’s no one here.”

“She has to be here,” I said, barely coherently, gazing at the two bodies and Lauritzia nowhere to be found.

“This is your room?” a second detective, a man with thinning hair and a heavy mustache, asked me.

“Yes. Yes it is.” I nodded.

“Any idea who this is?” He pointed to the guy on the floor with the bullet in his head. “His ID says José Rivera. From where, Karen?”

The female detective checked her notes. “Guatemala.”

“He’s not from Guatemala,” I said. “He’s from Mexico. I think you’ll find his name is Eduardo Cano. He’s an enforcer with the Los Zetas drug cartel. He also has extensive contacts in the United States government.”

The words “drug cartel” got the detectives’ attention big-time. They probably hadn’t had a crime bigger than drunk driving here for years.

“We have to find Lauritzia!” I turned to the federal agents with me. “I was traveling with her. She came back here ahead of me. This man has been trying to kill her. He’s killed her whole family.” I realized I was rambling. I ran over to the window to check for her car. It was still there in the lot in the back. That wasn’t a good sign. I looked back around, stunned. How she could have possibly killed Cano? Or this other guy. She had no weapon. There was only Cano’s, and that was lying next to his body on the floor.

She also had no idea he was here and coming after her.

“This Lauritzia have a gun?” the female detective asked me.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then it makes me wonder just who this one belonged to…” She pointed to the table. There was a handgun lying there. The only other was inches from Cano’s outstretched hand.

“Seems like there was a third person up here,” the male detective said.

“A third person?” I asked.

“Fourth, I suppose, if you count the guy over there…” He motioned to the waiter. “Couple parking their car saw someone climbing up the balcony. They reported it to the manager, but by the time anyone came up, with the police, this was what they found.”

Who would have climbed up here and killed Cano? Then taken off with her? It hadn’t been forced. She’d even taken her things.

Who would have even known we were here?

Then I saw something. Over on the bed. On my pillow. I went over and picked it up.

A flower. A dried hydrangea from an arrangement in the room. And I thought back to something she had told me on the trip out. That when she’d had to leave Roxanne’s children back in Greenwich, she’d placed a flower on each of their pillows. That it was supposed to protect them. So that the saints would watch over them.

And then, like a beam of light shot through a dark tunnel, I realized who that third person was.

Who had done these things and left with her. And I suddenly realized she wasn’t in any danger.

No danger at all!

A second chance? I thought of her butterfly necklace. Were there any two people on this earth who deserved one more?

“That hers?” the female detective asked, pointing to the flower.

“No.” I shook my head. “Mine.”

“Well, everything’s gonna have to stay as it is until we sort things out. And you’re going to have to answer some questions. We have a double homicide here. And the only witness to it seems to be gone.”

“Of course,” I said, inwardly hiding a smile. In a day or two maybe. Enough time to let them reach where I knew they would be heading. When I was sure no one could ever find them again.

“But first I want to talk to my lawyer. Harold Bachman.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

It took three more days for me to be fully released. They transferred me back east, to a secure location at Fort Dix in New Jersey. They interrogated me about everything that had happened. From the time I first laid eyes on Curtis Kitchner. To Dokes dragging me out in the dunes.

This time they called it a debriefing.

Harold was allowed to be present. When he first stepped into my tiny room, the first time since leaving for Colorado that he’d set eyes on me, the strain of our collective losses seemed to rise to the surface, and he came over and hugged me as deeply and tearfully as if it were his wife standing before him.

And in my mind as if it were Dave.

It was hard to let go.

“This isn’t very lawyerly,” I said, sniffing back the tears. “You’re sure you want to represent me?”

He pulled away, giving me that studious smile from behind his wire rims. “Well, this is surely a lot more interesting than real estate trusts. And my principal reason not to seems to have changed.”

Cano.

We sat down. “Tell me about Lauritzia,” he said. He’d never heard the full story of what happened at the motel, so I told him what I thought had taken place.

“I’m sure it was her father.”

“Her father?’ He scrunched his eyebrows.

“Who else? Someone else was up there. Cano was dead. Her things were gone. They found a second gun.”

I told him about the flower. He took off his glasses. That seemed to bring a tear to his eye.

“She’ll be in touch,” I said.

“No. She won’t.” His face was drawn, but he was trying to be upbeat. It was clear he loved her as a daughter.

“She will,” I took his hand. “One day.”

I asked how they had known to find me out there. So far no one had said. Not the agents who had saved me, who were out of Denver. Nor the ones who escorted me back.

And just as important, how they had come to believe I was innocent.

“Your friend,” Harold told me. “Esterhaus.”

“Joe!” My heart almost exploded with joy. “He’s okay?”

“Apparently more than okay.” He told me how Joe had found Dave’s blood outside my house on the street. Precisely where I said he was shot. It proved the body had been moved. “He gave it to an old FBI crony of his. Apparently, it got as high as the deputy director of Homeland Security. Dokes’s official vehicle had some kind of tracking mechanism in it.”

“Joe always did have clout,” I said, laughing. “I want to see him.” I couldn’t contain how warm that made me feel inside.

“Soon as we get you out of here,” Harold said. “Thought that might make you smile. Here…” He opened his briefcase and took out a copy of the New York Times and tossed it onto the interview table. “This might too.”

The headline read:

ROGUE HOMELAND SECURITY AGENT IMPLICATES HIGHER – UPS IN CARTEL CONSPIRACY. EX – DEA OFFICIAL, SABRINA STEIN, NOW DRUG POLICY CHIEF, RESIGNS PENDING ARREST.

“You’re right,” I said, beaming. “It does.”

“Next time I’m gonna choose my defense witnesses a lot more carefully.”

I thought of Curtis-and Elaine Kitchner, who would now know the truth. I also thought of Dave. The people who knew and loved him. Who would now know he’d died for something.

They all had.

The third day I was told I could go home. I was a free woman. The attorney general’s office said there would be no charges pending against me. A government representative came and said they hoped to give me back what I’d lost.

My freedom. My reputation.

The only thing they couldn’t give me back were the people I loved.

Harold had arranged an apartment for me in New York City. I couldn’t go back to the house right now. Not with what had happened there. Not yet. I had no idea how to resume my life.

“How do you just pick up and go on?” I asked Harold, as I picked up the bag with the few things I had on me at the time of my rescue. “I lost my husband. I lost who I was.” I realized I was petrified to leave. Scared of the attention that I knew was in front of me. The judgment I would face.

“You have your kids,” I said resignedly, as we went through a secure door leading to the barracks’ entrance. I hesitated before heading outside.

“And you have your kids too.” Harold pointed in front of me.

Waiting outside the entrance were Amy and Neil.

I lost it there. I couldn’t hold back. Everything I’d bottled up inside. About losing Dave. About thinking I was dead. What I’d gone through.

Neil came up to me, Dave’s face so visible in his, and I latched onto him and just started to sob. I was afraid to let go. Afraid I’d lose them all over again. I hugged Amy too, though she was a bit more hesitant. I knew I’d done wrong and that I’d have to earn her trust back over time.

The apartment Harold set up for us was on Riverside Drive with a view of the river. I was just so grateful not to have to go back home. Not that day anyway.

That first afternoon we all sat around, just learning to trust one another again. If that would ever fully happen.

Neil asked if I wanted to talk about what I’d gone through. And I did. I wanted to tell them everything. The good and the bad. Hruseff. Dave. Dokes. Lasser.

And Curtis too.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you, Wendy,” Neil said, hearing everything I’d gone through. How close I’d come to dying several times. How I’d watched their father being killed. How I’d lived on the run. He said, “I was just so angry about Dad, I had to blame someone. I know you tried to tell me. I just blamed you.”

“It’s okay.” I squeezed his hand. “No more blame. I just want to be your mom again. I need you so much. Both of you. You’re all I have.”

Neil nodded. I wiped a tear or two off his cheek. I couldn’t describe how good it felt to have them back.

“But you still went up there,” Amy said. “You went up to that room. Even if you didn’t sleep with him, you cheated. You cheated on Dad. You can’t take that back.”

“No, I can’t.” I nodded. “And Amy, I’m so sorry for that.”

“So I can’t just forgive you,” she continued, hurt and some anger in her voice, “because you killed that man in self-defense. You still betrayed Dad. And it got him killed. So what I need to hear from you is why. Why you went up there, Wendy? Why you went up to that room? You had a good life. You had someone who loved you. You had us… That’s all I want you to tell me. Why?”

I nodded. Over the past two weeks, I’d asked myself the same question a thousand times.

In the bar, when Curtis was at the piano. Our eyes casually falling on each other’s a couple of times. After I’d heard him play, when everything inside told me to leave. I could have at any time.

Why I stayed?

And a thousand times the answer came back the same.

“I don’t know.”

We had tears in both of our eyes. Hers of accusation, mine of shame.

I knew I’d be trying to answer it for the rest of my life.