Rip looked startled. “Whaddaya mean? You’re some kind of—I mean, you’re official?”
Diaz ignored that. “Stay in a hotel. Don’t speak to your wife; you’re too emotional. Don’t spook her into running. If she runs, I’ll have to go after her.”
Rip had seen what happened to someone Diaz went after, and he shuddered.
Diaz ignored him after that, putting Milla in the passenger seat of her SUV and then driving off without speaking again. Rip stared after them for a moment, then shuddered again. He got behind the wheel of his car and sat there for a minute, different scenarios running through his mind and none of them pleasant. He thought of Susanna. Then he bowed his head against the steering wheel and cried.
There was such a storm of emotions roiling through Milla that she couldn’t pin one down long enough to examine it. There were both relief and regret, triumph and sorrow, shame and grim satisfaction. She leaned her head back and watched the streetlights loom and then recede in a dizzying parade. The dash clock said the time was only eleven P.M.; she had thought surely it was almost dawn.
Tonight she had seen in action what she’d always sensed about Diaz, from the very first moment he’d knocked her down and threatened to snap her neck. The destruction he was capable of was truly frightening—and yet she wasn’t frightened. He had taken those aspects of his own character and molded them into a weapon to be used against the enemy, the dregs of society who ignored its laws and wreaked their own destruction. He won by being even more brutal, even more ruthless. What he didn’t do was turn that force against those he perceived as innocent. Ever. She felt safer with him than she’d have felt sitting in the middle of a police station.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“Helping me.” She didn’t know if she could have finished it without him. When Pavón started spewing his poison, Diaz had simply put his hand over Milla’s and together they’d pulled the trigger; his hand had steadied hers, his finger had added its strength to hers. She was ashamed that she hadn’t been able to do it herself, and yet so relieved that she hadn’t had to.
“You’d have done it,” he said with cool confidence. “I just didn’t want you to hear any more of what the bastard had to say.”
“Do you think he was lying?” She squeezed her eyes together, because his filthy words had spread cold horror through her heart.
“He didn’t know what happened to any of the babies; he just wanted to say something to hurt you.”
And he’d succeeded, all too well.
They reached her home and a touch of a button raised the garage door; he slotted the Toyota inside before the door had finished lifting, and had it lowered again almost before Milla could get out of her seat belt and open the door. She dug out her keys and unlocked the door from the garage into the kitchen, stepping inside and turning on the lights.
He whirled her against the refrigerator, his hands hard on her waist. Startled, she dropped her purse and keys to the floor and looked up at his set face and narrowed savage eyes. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said with clenched teeth.
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Those moments when Pavón’s pistol had been trained directly at her head had been long and terrifying.
“I stayed in the—” she began, but he cut her off with a kiss that was wild and hungry and deep. He lifted her onto her toes and pressed in hard against her, grinding his erection into the softness of her mound. She yielded immediately to that outraged male aggression, wrapping her arms around him and transforming it into sheer lust. He moved one hand to the waistband of her jeans and unsnapped them, dragged down the zipper, then thrust his hand inside her panties and curled his fingers up into her while his palm rode her clitoris. She bucked under the lash of abrupt desire, growing wet around his fingers, hugging them with her body.
He took her there, shucking her out of her jeans and dropping his own, then bending her over the kitchen table. Milla clutched the edge of the table to brace herself against his hard thrusts, pushing back to take all of him. He reached around and under to fondle her, his talented fingers wringing a fast orgasm from her. Then he simply gripped her hips and pumped into her until he began coming, slumping over her as he jerked and thrust. He shuddered with completion, his mouth hot on the back of her neck. “God,” he muttered indistinctly, “when I saw him with that pistol in your face—”
“I had one in his, too.”
“Would that make you any less dead if he’d pulled the trigger?” He bit her shoulder, then gently pulled out of her and turned her around. He buried his fingers in her hair, holding her head as he sank into a kiss as hungry and devouring as if they hadn’t just made love. She gripped his wrists and let that steely strength wrap around her, soaking it up and using it to bolster her own. There was so much still to be done . . . tomorrow. She would spend the rest of the night just being with her lover.
Tomorrow she would go to New Mexico. Only part of her mission had been accomplished. She still had to find her son.
24
In the night, while she drowsed with her head on his shoulder and one arm draped across his stomach, he said absently, “I think I should tell you something.”
She woke enough to murmur, “What?”
“True’s my half brother.”
She sat straight up in bed. “What?”
“Get back down here,” he said, tugging her down into place once more on his shoulder.
“Neither of you go out of your way to broadcast the relationship, do you?” she demanded sarcastically.
“He hates my guts and I hate his. That’s the relationship.”
“So he knew exactly who you were and where to find you when I first asked!”
“No. He’s never known where to find me.”
Wow. They were really close, weren’t they? “You have the same mother, obviously.”
“Had. She’s dead. But, yeah. He was around five, I guess, when she left him and her husband and went to Mexico with my father. She had me, she left my father, she found another guy.”
“But she took you with her when she left him.”
“For a while, until I was about ten. Then she sent me to live with him. I doubt they were ever married, and now that I think of it, unless True’s father divorced her before I was born, my last name might legally be Gallagher.” He sounded only mildly interested, and she knew he’d never go to the trouble of looking up the legal documents to find out.
“Why does he hate you? Does he even know you?”
“We’ve met,” he said briefly. “As for hating me, his mother left him for my father. Then when she left my father, she took me along. She didn’t take True when she left his father. Old-fashioned resentment, I guess. And I’m half Mexican. He hates Mexicans, period.”
She had never picked up on any prejudice from True, but that would be something he kept hidden, wouldn’t it? Especially in El Paso. He was a man intent on climbing as high as he could go, and it wasn’t smart to offend the people who would help him along the way.
“What happens now? Shouldn’t you tell whoever you deal with”—she waved a hand to indicate the universe—“about Susanna and True?”
“I did that as soon as I talked to Enrique Guerrero. They’re being watched to make certain they don’t try to leave the country. As for gathering the hard evidence, I leave that to the other guys. They have the crime labs, the forensics experts. Normally I just find people for them; I don’t get involved in the crime solving.”
She felt flat. Perhaps she’d watched too many crime dramas on television, but she wanted a big showdown, with violence and a full confession and True being led away in handcuffs. Played out this way, she wouldn’t even get to ask him the question that burned in her mind: Why? She couldn’t go near him now, not without tipping him off, because there was no way she could act normally around him, and she probably wouldn’t be allowed to see him later.
She didn’t care about his confession, abo
ut the careful gathering of evidence. She wanted to see him staked out the way Pavón had been staked out. She wanted him to suffer the way she had suffered. She wondered what it said about her as a person that she wasn’t suffering agonies of the conscience about Pavón, but she wasn’t. She was glad he was dead. She was glad she’d been involved.
“Tomorrow I’ll try to find this woman in New Mexico,” she said, changing the subject because she couldn’t let herself focus on True right now. Her job wasn’t finished. “She’s the next link in the chain. She knows which birth certificates are false.”
“Adoption papers are usually sealed. In these cases, you can bet they are. It’s a dead-end road.”
She shook her head. “I can’t accept that. I still haven’t found my son, so I have to keep trying. Finding the people who took him—that was just part of it, the smallest part.”
Diaz fell silent, his hand rubbing up and down her bare back. Milla breathed in his scent and warmth, and felt comforted, strengthened by this short lull before she once again had to throw herself into what seemed like a never-ending effort. She nestled closer against him, feeling herself lapse back into sleep, and this time he let her.
He was gone when she woke in the morning. She sat up in bed and stared in bewilderment at the empty space beside her. He was gone. He wasn’t just downstairs making coffee, or in the bathroom; she could sense that the condo was empty except for herself.
She got out of bed and looked around for a note, but of course there wasn’t one. His communication skills were rusty, to say the least. Or rather, he communicated just fine when he wanted to, but a lot of times he simply didn’t feel the need. She tried his cell phone number. The irritating voice said the customer was not available, meaning he didn’t have the damn thing turned on. She growled in frustration.
Thinking about his cell phone reminded her of her nonworking one. She had to do something about it today before she went to New Mexico. She put on coffee and got out her atlas to locate the town where Pavón had said the woman falsified the birth certificates. It was located exactly where it needed to be to make getting to it from El Paso difficult. She glanced at the clock; the travel agency wasn’t open yet. Depending on what the airline schedules were, she might well be able to get there faster by driving. “Fast” was a comparative term, of course. The earliest she could get there was probably late afternoon. Even if she did fly, she would have to either go to Roswell, rent a car, and drive north, or go to Albuquerque and drive east.
She had waited ten years. If she didn’t find the woman today, she’d find her tomorrow.
As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. When the travel agency opened, she learned there were no direct flights to Albuquerque or Roswell at the time she needed, on any airline. Of course. The next direct flight with an available seat was late afternoon. She’d have to either spend the night in Albuquerque and get an early start the next morning, or drive across lonely, unknown territory at night, not knowing if this little town even had a motel where she could stay.
Or she could forget about flying and drive. It was a hefty distance but still easily done in one day, if she’d been able to get an early start. By the time she could get away today, though, she’d be able to get to Roswell before dark—barely—then spend the night there and finish the trip tomorrow morning. The decision was a no-brainer.
Rip called her as she was packing for the short trip. “Are you okay?” he asked in a subdued voice.
“I’m fine.” She was; she hadn’t had nightmares, hadn’t dreamed at all that she could recall. “How about you?”
“Exhausted. I can’t believe last night actually happened. Is there . . . will there be any repercussions?”
The way Rip saw it, he had participated in a murder. Milla’s view was more like Diaz’s: it had been an execution. Considering what Diaz’s job was, doing pretty much what he’d done last night—though maybe without the questioning session first—she doubted there would even be an investigation. “No, I don’t think so. You’re safe.” She would have gone into greater detail, but she was mindful of saying too much over a telephone. Rip was being careful, too; with Susanna’s example of saying too much in a nonprivate situation, he knew what a mistake that could be.
“I spent the night in a hotel, then got my partner to cover for me today. Good thing my schedule was light, huh? I just couldn’t—she would probably make an effort to track me down at the hospital, since I didn’t go home last night. I can’t talk to her right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
Poor Rip. His life had been torn apart, his marriage of twenty years was shot, his view of the world turned upside down. But he was soldiering on, because that was what most people did.
Milla made a fast decision. If no one from Finders was available to go with her today—she had no idea if anyone had returned last night or this morning—then she’d ask Rip. That would get him far away from Susanna, give him time to get his composure back. Though after last night, he might refuse to go anywhere with Milla ever again, and if so she couldn’t blame him.
She’d prefer to take someone from Finders, though, so she wanted to check out the situation there before she asked him. “How can I reach you today?”
He gave her his cell phone number, plus his hotel and room number. He didn’t intend to check out of the hotel today, but he was going home after he was certain Susanna had left, to get some clothes and toiletries.
After hanging up with him, she called the office. Olivia answered the phone, sounding dragged out. “I’m functional,” she said when Milla asked. “But I’m weak and I still don’t feel great. I talked to Debra and she’s still puking her guts out.”
“How are we looking today?”
“Joann’s search is still going on. It isn’t looking good for the kid; this is the fourth day. Brian will be home about six tonight.”
“What happened there?”
“Bad outcome.”
Milla sighed; she didn’t ask the details. “I’m driving to Roswell this afternoon, spending the night there. I have another lead on Justin, the woman who supposedly falsified the birth certificates so the babies could be adopted.”
“That’s great!” Olivia said, her tone perking up. “Who’s going with you?”
“I’ll ask a friend to go, since we’re still so understaffed. Rip Kosper. I don’t know if he’ll be willing, but he and Susanna are having trouble and he may want to get away.”
“Oh, no,” Olivia said. Most of the staff knew Rip and Susanna, since they’d been Milla’s friends for years and Susanna often called Finders to talk to Milla. Now that she knew why Susanna had stayed in such close touch, Milla wanted to scream with rage.
She told Olivia about her cell phone situation; then after hanging up she called Rip and explained her plans to him, asking if he wanted to go.
“Let me call my partner,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Of course he had to clear it, she thought. He had a medical practice; he couldn’t just leave whenever he wanted. But the day was not getting off to a fast start; it was grinding along, ignoring her impatience.
She turned in her cell phone, and found that since the phone was out of warranty, the repairs would cost almost as much as a new phone, so she bought a new one and extra battery packs, plus the home and car rechargers. Doing so, for one reason and another, took over an hour. The need to be on her way ate at her, demanding she hurry, and there was nothing she could do about the situation.
As soon as she was in her Toyota, she plugged in the phone to charge the battery and also to use the car’s power to call Diaz again. He still wasn’t available. She wanted to wring his neck. Why couldn’t he have left her a damn note?
Rip called; he’d cleared things with his partner and taken off the rest of the week. He could leave anytime she was ready.
Deep twilight had fallen by the time they drove into Roswell, and Milla felt as if she’d been nibbled to death by ducks. The entire day had been filled with dela
ys and irritations, and Diaz still wasn’t answering his phone. She and Rip checked into a motel, went for supper at a steakhouse, then returned to their separate rooms and turned in for the night.
They left Roswell early the next morning, heading north. Rip was quieter than usual, lost in his thoughts. He’d left a message with Susanna’s office that he was going out of town and wouldn’t be back for a couple of days; then he’d turned off his phone.
The country they were heading into was dry, but not desert. The morning was cool and clear, and didn’t get a lot warmer as the day progressed. She lost her cell phone service, which wasn’t surprising considering the emptiness around them. New Mexico was a big, beautiful state with fewer than two million people living in it, but the vast majority of them were grouped around the cities. This section averaged something like two people per square mile, which didn’t mean each square mile had two people in it. In fact, she saw many square miles that had zero population. She was glad she hadn’t done this trip the night before.
The small town where the county seat was located had a population of around three thousand. The courthouse was a small adobe building, with the sheriff’s department occupying an adjacent adobe building. Milla’s first step was to find out if the woman, Ellin Daugette, still worked at the courthouse in the probate office.
The probate office was the first door on the right, and when they approached the counter a smiling, overweight woman with an improbable shade of red hair came over and said, “May I help you?” Her name tag said she was Ellin Daugette, and Milla had to grip the edge of the counter.
“My name is Milla Boone,” she said, using the name she always used when on a search. “This is Rip Kosper. May we speak privately with you?”