Three years ago, at the family Christmas celebration at her parents’ home in Ohio, her brother, Ross, had brusquely told her it was time to get on with her life and stop letting something that had happened seven years before dominate all their family get-togethers. To her horror, her sister, Julia, hadn’t spoken up in her defense, and had refused to meet her gaze. Since then, Milla saw her parents only when her siblings weren’t also visiting. The holidays were lonely, but she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forgive Ross for his callousness.
Two years ago, she’d heard the name Diaz for the first time. After eight years of nothing, finally, there was a whisper of information that could possibly have a connection to Justin.
A year ago, David and his wife had a second child, a son. When she heard, Milla cried herself to sleep that night.
Tonight . . . tonight, she’d seen him, the monster who had destroyed her. She’d been so close, only to come up empty-handed once again.
But he was still alive. That had been a deeply buried fear, that he would die before she could talk to him. She didn’t care what happened to him, so long as she could find out from him what he’d done with her baby. And now that she knew for certain he was alive, and what area he was in, she would intensify her search. She’d hunt him down like a rabid dog, or die herself in the effort.
4
A little after four-thirty, Milla let herself into her condo. She was bone-tired, and so dispirited she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide under the covers.
So close.
She couldn’t get the refrain out of her head. For years she’d kept her hope and determination alive with almost nothing to go on, yet now that she’d actually seen the man and knew he was still alive, knew what area he was in, she felt nothing but despair for having failed to capture him.
“I won’t let it get me down,” she said aloud, going into the bathroom and stripping off her filthy clothes. “I won’t.” That was how she’d gotten through the hell of the past ten years, by simply refusing to give in. Sometimes she felt like one of the Japanese soldiers after World War II, fighting on long after the war was over because they couldn’t accept the outcome.
You’ll never find him, people had said. Get on with your life, her own brother had told her. Justin had been so young when he was taken that she had no idea of how he would look, no way of identifying him short of DNA tests, and she couldn’t go around the country demanding that all ten-year-old boys have DNA tests. That was assuming he was even in the United States. He could be anywhere. He could be in Canada, or still in Mexico. One well-meaning but totally demented woman had even told her it might help to have a funeral for him, and lay him to rest.
The fact that the woman was still alive was a testament to Milla’s self-control.
Justin was not dead. If she ceased believing that, she wouldn’t be able to function.
Her bathroom mirror reflected back a face that was drawn and pale with exhaustion, with dark circles under her brown eyes and a grim set to her mouth. Tonight, she looked older than her thirty-three years. The streak in her untidy hair was stark under the fluorescent lights. Within days of the kidnapping, one of the nurses at the clinic had noticed that a strand of her hair was growing in white. The streak always stood out in the photographs that were taken at fund-raisers, a reminder to everyone that she knew all too well the agony parents went through when their child was lost. The rest of her hair had remained the same, light brown, curly, but the streak was what drew the gaze.
There was another fund-raiser tomorrow night, she thought; her tired brain caught itself. No, tonight. Just because she hadn’t been to bed yet didn’t mean another day hadn’t arrived.
But after she’d showered and pulled on a nightgown, then fallen into bed, sleep wouldn’t come. Tonight she hadn’t just come close to the man who’d stolen Justin, she had come close to getting both herself and Brian killed. If she had charged those four men, pistol in hand, they would have shot her and, inevitably, Brian, who would have charged to her aid. In retrospect, her lack of control horrified her. Brian had been right to be so upset with her. The Finders weren’t vigilantes; they weren’t trained to go into gunfights. The core group all had some firearms training, just so they would know how to protect themselves if necessary, but that was all. Brian, with his military background, was the most qualified of them all when it came to weapons.
But because it involved Justin, she had lost all reason, all sense of caution. She would have to do better than that, or she’d never find him, because she would be dead.
She finally dozed, and she dreamed of Justin. It was a recurring dream, one that she’d often had in the first few years after he was stolen, but now her subconscious seldom produced it. As dreams went it was but a small snapshot, and heartbreakingly realistic. She was rocking him while he nursed, and in the dream she felt the small weight of him in her arms, the warmth of his little body against hers. She smelled the sweet baby smell, touched his blond hair and felt the softness, stroked her finger over his cheek and reveled in the velvety texture of his skin. She felt the release of her milk, the tug of his rosebud mouth on her nipple . . . and she was at peace.
She woke crying, as she always did. In the perverse way the body had when it was really tired, she wasn’t able to go back to sleep. After trying for half an hour to put the dream out of her mind, she gave in, got up, and put on some coffee; then, while it was brewing, she stripped off her nightgown and did some stretching and yoga, which was her favorite form of exercise.
Because she never knew what a case would demand of her, whether it was running down a city street or climbing rocks, she worked hard at staying in good physical condition, but none of it came easily or naturally to her. She intensely disliked sweating, almost as much as she disliked bugs and getting dirty. She did it, though, because she had to, just as she had learned how to handle firearms even though she hated the noise, the smoke, the smell, everything about them. She was at best mediocre in her marksmanship, but she had kept practicing until she had achieved at least that. To track the men who had stolen Justin, she had learned to deal with many things that she disliked, had turned herself into someone else. The woman she’d been before couldn’t have dealt with these things, so Milla had forced herself to change.
No, it was those bastards who had changed her. She had been changed the instant Justin was wrenched from her. From the moment she’d regained consciousness in that little clinic, too weak to move, racked with pain, she had been a different woman, focused on only one thing: finding her child.
That was why David had divorced her.
Divorced her, yes, but he hadn’t walked away from her. He’d insisted on buying this condo for her in El Paso’s Westside, and he paid her forty thousand dollars a year in alimony. Both gestures enabled her to concentrate full-time on Finders rather than having to find a conventional job that would, of necessity, have severely curtailed her ability to track down any and all leads that came her way.
If she had let him, David would have beggared himself buying a lavish mansion for her and giving her a ridiculous amount of money each year. This condo was strictly middle-class, about two thousand square feet, with two bedrooms and two baths upstairs, and a half bath downstairs. It was twenty years old, cozy without being lavish. The forty thousand dollars was about fifteen thousand dollars a year more than she was comfortable with, but she understood it was David’s way of helping her in the search. He couldn’t do what she did, so he did what he could, and considering he had another family now, that was more than generous.
Her exercises done, she poured a cup of coffee and took it upstairs with her to dress. No jeans and boots were necessary today, thank goodness; she could dress in a skirt and sandals, which were much cooler. Because small luxuries helped get her through the hard times, she always took advantage of nontravel days by taking the time to smooth her skin with moisturizers, take extra care with her hair and makeup, wear perfume; just little things, things
she did for herself, but they soothed a need within her. Though some days she might look like a cross between GI Jane and Thelma and Louise right before they drove over the canyon lip, inside she was still a woman who enjoyed feminine things.
Because she took that time with her appearance, she was late getting into the office. Finders was located on the top floor of a warehouse, the space donated by True Gallagher, an El Paso businessman who in the past few years had become involved in helping bankroll Finders. The bottom floor of the warehouse was still in use, and she was accustomed to the sound of tow motors zipping around below, the shouts of the workers, the rumble of eighteen-wheelers arriving to pick up or deliver machinery.
Upstairs, the offices were bare-bones. Naked fluorescent bulbs, cracked linoleum tile on the floor, and industrial green paint were the predominant features. The secondhand metal desks were battered, most of the office chairs were patched with duct tape, and there were only two private offices—semiprivate, that is, since the top half of the front wall in each office was a huge window.
The phone system, however, was state-of-the-art. Finders put its money where it would do the most good.
Milla loved her staff. God knows they didn’t work there for the pay, which was barely adequate. They worked long hours, including most Saturdays, and sometimes even on Sunday. She herself took no pay, not even a nominal amount. Most of the people in the Finders network were volunteers, spread out all over the nation, who offered themselves and their time whenever they were needed to look for people who were lost in their particular area. The core of Finders, however, the group of people here in El Paso, devoted themselves full-time to the job and were on the payroll.
Most of the volunteers did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Some of her full-time staff were the same, but some of them had personal reasons for being there. Joann Westfall’s best friend in grade school had become lost while on a family camping trip and died of exposure before she was found. Debra Schmale’s ex-husband had disappeared with her two daughters, and it had taken her over two years to locate them and retrieve her children. Olivia Meyer, Harvard-educated, staunch New Yorker, chose to live in hell—her term for El Paso, which greatly offended the locals on staff—because her elderly, senile grandfather had wandered away from his house one November day and spent hours walking the cold city streets without even a sweater for warmth before a cop picked him up and took him to a precinct station.
The best way to find lost people was to flood the area with searchers. All of her people understood that and devoted themselves to the task.
Brian was at the coffee machine when Milla entered. “Want a cup?” he called, and she nodded.
Joann looked up with an anxious gaze. “How did it go last night? Did you find out anything?”
“The man who took Justin was there,” Milla said baldly, and there was a collective gasp from everyone within hearing distance. People shoved back chairs and hurried over.
“What happened?” Debra asked, her blue eyes huge. “Did you talk to him?”
Brian approached and shoved a polystyrene coffee cup into Milla’s hand. “No. There were four of them, just two of us.” He flicked a glance at her that said he wasn’t going to spill the beans about her loss of judgment.
She wasn’t about to dissemble, though, so she came clean. “That was the idea, anyway, that we wouldn’t try to talk to them if there were more than two people. When I saw him, though, I lost my head. All I wanted was to get my hands around his throat.”
“Omigod,” Olivia blurted. “What happened? Did they shoot at you?”
“They never knew we were there. I was jumped and knocked out by another man.”
“Omigod,” Olivia said again. “Were you hurt? Did you see a doctor?”
“No, to both questions.”
“I don’t get it,” Joann said. “This other man obviously knew you were there, so why didn’t he tell the others?”
“He wasn’t with them. He was watching them, too.”
“Well, that’s a twist,” someone else muttered.
“Any idea who he might be?” Debra asked.
“Not a clue. I didn’t get a look at him. Whatever he was up to, though, he saved our lives by jumping me. And since I’m confessing, I also went in a cantina and offered ten thousand dollars to anyone who could tell me where to find Diaz. So if you get any phone calls asking about a reward, that’s why.”
“That explains that,” Olivia said, her eyebrows rising. “First thing this morning I got a threatening call, telling me to stay away from Diaz or die. I think that’s what she said, anyway. That was pre-coffee, so my Spanish comprehension wasn’t up to full speed yet. I told her I don’t have a boyfriend named Diaz.”
“Her?” Milla asked, her own eyebrows going north.
“Definitely a ‘her.’ That’s why I was thinking angry girlfriend. Sounds like you pulled on someone’s chain, for sure.”
Yes, it did. This was interesting, and exciting. “Did you get the number?”
“Sure.” Olivia went over to her desk and checked Caller ID. “It says ‘El Paso,’ but I don’t recognize the exchange.”
Brian ambled over and looked at the number. “Phone card,” he said. “Untraceable.”
There was something about Brian that always got on every last New Yorker nerve Olivia possessed. “Really.” Her tone was ice cold. “I suppose you can tell age, sex, and weight from the phone number, too, O Great White Hunter.” The last was a subtle dig at his military background; Olivia was a staunch dove who had only with the greatest reluctance learned anything at all about firearms.
“Not sex,” he said, grinning. “I use another method for that.” He topped things off by ruffling her hair before prudently retreating out of reach. “Not only that, I buy phone cards to use for long-distance calls, so I know how the numbers show up on Caller ID. With my vast expertise, I’d say that’s an AT&T card, easily purchased at any Wal-Mart and a gazillion other places.”
Milla had often bought phone cards to use while she was on the road and cell phone service was spotty, but she doubted Olivia, with her moneyed background, had ever even noticed the cards for sale practically everywhere. If she needed to make a call and didn’t have cell service, she would simply charge the call to her credit card or her home phone, thereby guaranteeing astronomical rates.
Getting back to the subject, Milla said, “Let’s lay out the facts. Late yesterday afternoon, I got a call on my cell phone giving me the tip on Diaz. The caller was a man. I didn’t notice the number, but I’ll check it, see if it matches up with today’s call. Brian and I both thought it might be a setup, not for us, but for Diaz. Someone wanting him out of the way.
“We get to the meeting place, and the man who took Justin is one of the men who show up. He’s the only one I recognized. The odds are he’s Diaz, because the coincidence is fairly large.”
Milla noticed that as she talked, Joann was busily writing down each point.
“The four men arrived in two cars, two in each car, and took something out of one car trunk and transferred it to the other. I couldn’t see what it was—” Because her head had been pulled back at a painful angle.
“A body,” said Brian, his tone flat. “Wrapped in a tarp or blanket.”
A chill went down Milla’s spine. She should have realized, but she’d been too focused on the one-eyed man. This was yet another illustration that she had to get control of her emotions; she was missing things that should have been obvious to her.
“I was knocked down by an unseen assailant who was also very interested in the four men, and not at all interested in what I was doing there. When the four men drove away, he used the carotid-artery thingie to knock me out—”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Brian interrupted, his gaze sharpening.
“Knocked out is knocked out. At least I didn’t have a concussion.”
“No, but unless you know what you’re doing, you can cause brain damage if you press too long. Tho
ugh I guess in most cases you wouldn’t care, considering you’re cutting off someone’s blood supply to his brain. Or her brain, in your case.”
That was a perspective she could have done without, to realize how easily she could have been left impaired. Not that there was anything she could have done to protect herself, other than not be there in the first place, and withdrawing from the search simply wasn’t an option.
She shook away her retrospective alarm. “I assume the man then followed one of the cars, but he might not have. He might have followed Brian and me. I can’t think of any reason why he would, other than curiosity, but it’s still a possibility. I offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to a cantina full of men, for information leading to Diaz, and this morning a woman calls telling us to stay away from Diaz or die.” She paused. “Does anyone else have anything to add to this hodgepodge?”
No one answered. Joann studied the flow of facts. “I’d say the only anomaly is this guy who assaulted you. Everything else connects. I’d say the one-eyed man is Diaz and someone tried to set him up. When you went into the cantina and made that announcement, he heard about it, obviously figured out you’d been very close to him that night, since you were in the same village at the same time, and he had someone call to warn you off.”
Milla had already formed the same opinion, but not as concisely. Joann had a knack for clarity that made Milla prize her even more.
“It’s obvious someone—my original caller—wants us to find Diaz, for whatever reason. Probably a rivalry, but I don’t care why. All we can do now is wait for him to contact me again.”
That went against the grain. She wanted to scour the area around Guadalupe, even though logic told her it would be a waste of time. She wanted to be actively doing something, anything, instead of waiting around for a call that might not come for days, weeks, if it ever came at all.
The phone rang right then, and a staffer hurried to answer it. After listening for a minute, he looked up and said, “Amber Alert in California, San Clemente area.”