The Panic Zone

56

Big Cloud, Wyoming

Swirls of scorched pavement marked the spot where Emma Lane had lost her husband and baby boy.

Today under the morning sun, she knelt near it, where the gravel shoulder met the grass, and placed a memorial wreath of roses against a small white cross that Joe’s friends had erected.

Jack Gannon was watching with Emma’s aunt and uncle a short distance away. Seeing Emma mourning on the high plains before the majestic mountains resurrected what he’d lost. He thought of his mother and father, killed in a car crash in Buffalo. They’d been on their way to meet a priest who had information on the whereabouts of his sister, Cora. Years earlier, she’d run off with a loser who’d gotten her hooked on drugs.

In the time that had followed, Gannon’s parents tried to find her. There were a few long-distance calls from her, an occasional letter with no return address, but ultimately, they never saw her again.

Gannon searched the peaks.

In his loneliest times, when he missed having a family, he thought of finding Cora. He thought of confronting her with all he was carrying: anger for leaving them and hurting everyone. He hated her for what she had done, yet loved her for what she had meant to him.

She was his sister.

As Emma returned to the car, his cell phone vibrated. It was his editor calling from New York. He answered and strolled away.

“Gannon.”

“It’s Melody, how is it going?”

“Major pieces have emerged. Emma Lane believes her son was abducted from a crash that killed her husband. Get this-she says it’s tied to a California fertility clinic she’d used where someone in the lab was selling DNA to some shady corporation. I’ve got some phone numbers we’re trying to trace. I think this could be tied to the cafe bombing, that Rio law firm, illegal adoptions and child trafficking.”

“Is it the clinic Golden Dawn Fertility Corp. in L.A.?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“The Los Angeles Times just reported that a woman who died in a suspicious fire was a former lab worker suspected of selling the clinic’s files to an unknown research group.”

“Oh, man.”

“People are gaining on us, Jack. We need to hide Emma Lane. We’ve invested too much in this story to get beat now. Ask her if she’ll come to New York today, for further interviews on the story. The World Press Alliance will pay her expenses. Try to get back here as soon as possible.”

After Gannon told Emma what the WPA wanted, she contemplated the request then consulted her aunt and uncle.

A moment later she gave Gannon her answer.

“I’ll do anything if it brings me closer to my son.”