Milla’s jaw set and she stared blindly across the night-darkened cemetery. She couldn’t let herself think that he might not be alive, so instead she imagined that he was living a normal, happy life, that he’d been found or bought or adopted by people who loved him and were taking good care of him.
That was the theory, anyway, that he’d been stolen and sold to an illegal adoption ring that provided black-market babies to people in the States and Canada who wanted to adopt. These people had no idea the children they’d adopted had been stolen, that families had been devastated and parents left bereft. She tried to believe that. She tried to comfort herself by imagining Justin playing, growing, laughing. The not knowing for certain what had happened to him was the worst, and anything was better than thinking he was dead.
So many of the stolen babies did die. They were stuffed into car trunks to be smuggled across the border, and if the heat killed eight out of ten, well, the ten hadn’t cost anything but effort, and the two remaining ones could be sold for ten, twenty thousand dollars each, maybe even more, depending on who wanted a baby and how much they could afford. The Federales had tried to comfort her by telling her that extra care would be taken with Justin because he was blond and blue-eyed, and therefore worth more. Oddly, it was a comfort, though her heart ached for the tiny Hispanic babies who wouldn’t receive that extra care because they were dark.
But what if—what if he was one of the unlucky ones? Did the bastards who trafficked in stolen babies and ruptured lives even take the time to bury their tiny victims? Or did they just toss them in a ditch somewhere, to be eaten by—
No. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t let the gruesome thought finish forming in her mind. If she did, then she would lose control, and that was the one thing she absolutely couldn’t do right now. If the tip played out and someone actually showed up at this secret rendezvous, she had to be ready.
Scanning the cemetery once more, she picked out her destination tombstone, one heavier and more ornate than the others, with a nice thick base that would completely conceal her if she was lying down. She got down on her stomach and belly-crawled the rest of the way, lying prone and positioning herself behind the tombstone so that she was at a slight angle and could easily move her head just a little to the right and see the entire width of the church, as well as down the right side of it. Now all she had to do was wait.
The minute hand on her watch crawled around. The hour hand moved to eleven, then past. Finally, at eleven thirty-five, she heard the sound of a car engine. She was immediately alert, though she knew it could just be a farmer heading home from the cantina. She watched closely, but there was no flash of headlights, just the sound of the engine growing closer and closer.
The dark hulk of a car turned at the far back corner of the church, and crawled to a stop about a third of the way down.
Milla drew a deep breath and tried to control the sudden leap of her heart. Most of the time these tips led to nothing but a wild-goose chase, but this time the geese were actually within reach. With any luck, she was about to get her hands on Diaz.
3
With the scope she could see there were two men in the car, and her heart sank. Obviously others were supposed to join them, unless the meeting consisted of the two men sitting in the car talking to each other, which she doubted. She studied the two in the weird green light of the scope, but they remained in the car and she couldn’t get a good look at their features.
She hoped Brian followed the same reasoning that she had and stayed in place. She hadn’t spotted him, though she had looked. Wherever he’d hidden himself, he had done a good job of it.
The minutes ticked past, and she still didn’t see Brian. Good. He thought the same thing she did, that someone else would be arriving soon.
Almost ten minutes later, she heard another car engine. The vehicle pulled slightly past the church, then backed into the narrow lane so it was trunk to trunk with the other car.
Two men got out of the second car. The doors on the first car opened, and those two men got out as well.
Milla trained her scope on the newcomers as they approached, facing her. The driver was a tall, thin mestizo, his black hair worn long and slicked back in a ponytail. The passenger was somewhat shorter, stockier. The moment she focused on him, her blood ran cold.
For ten years she’d tracked the bastard. The day Justin had been stolen was mostly a blurred horror in her mind; the days afterward, as she fought for her life in the tiny rural clinic, were lost forever. But in the strange way time had of sometimes standing still, she had a few perfect, freeze-frame memories of the attack, and especially the face of the man who had wrenched Justin from her arms.
She wouldn’t recognize her little boy now, but the man who had taken him . . . she’d recognize him anywhere. She clearly remembered the sensation of his eyeball popping under her digging, clawing fingernails, remembered the bloody furrows she had raked down his left cheek. She had maimed him, marked him, and she was viciously glad. No matter how the bastard aged, she would always know him by the damage she had done to his face.
After ten years, he was walking straight toward her. His left eye socket was empty, the lid scarred and twisted. Two deep lines were clawed straight down his face.
It was him.
She could barely breathe. Her lungs ached; her throat ached; her vision blurred with rage.
Don’t move if there are more than two of them, she’d told Brian. He was smart; no way would he figure just the two of them could handle four men, all of whom were possibly, probably, armed.
But the bastard was here, right in front of her. She’d known this could happen, and still the force of her reaction was so violent it almost blinded her. Red mist swam in her vision, and there was a roaring in her ears.
Her muscles were shaking with intensity. She wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands. A small part of her brain knew it was insanity, but almost as if her hand didn’t belong to her, she felt it reaching for the pistol in her pocket, and she began to rise.
She never even made it to her knees. Something hard and heavy hit her in the middle of the back and smashed her to the ground, smothering all movement. Several things happened simultaneously, so fast she had no time to react. Legs hooked around her legs and held them tight, a hand clamped over her mouth and jerked her head back, and an iron-hard arm locked around her throat. In what felt like a fraction of a second, she was immobilized.
“Move or make a sound, and I’ll snap your neck.”
The voice was cold and menacing, the words spoken so low she could barely hear them, but she understood them perfectly. The arm cutting off her oxygen was plain enough on its own. She was pinned to the ground, unable even to bring her hands up to defend herself.
Dizzily she tried to think. Was this a scout, maybe, sent ahead to make certain the meeting place was unobserved? But if it was, he would have seen Brian, too, and common sense would have dictated he take out Brian first. Maybe he had. Maybe Brian was lying dead on the other side of the cemetery, his throat cut or his neck broken. But if this was a scout, why had he told her not to make any noise?
He couldn’t be with the four men. Whatever his interest was in the meeting, he was there for his own reasons. So maybe Brian was still alive, and maybe, if she was very still, she’d make it through with her spinal cord still intact.
She couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred and she managed a small gasp. The arm around her throat loosened the tiniest fraction, but it was enough for her to drag in some air.
Her head was arched back at such an angle she could see the four men only out of the corners of her eyes, and without the night-vision scope she couldn’t make out details. They had opened the trunks on both cars, and two of them now were dragging something out of the trunk of the second car and transferring it to the other trunk.
The rock in her pocket was digging into the sensitive area where her leg joined her hip. Her breasts were flattened painfully into the dirt, a
nd her back ached from her neck being so forcefully arched. There was no softness in the man’s weight bearing down on her, no give; he felt like iron. In this position the side of his face was pressed to her head, but though she could feel his chest moving in slow, even breaths—the bastard wasn’t the least bit winded or nervous—there was no movement of air on her skin as he exhaled. It was creepy, as if he weren’t quite human.
He wasn’t paying any attention to her. Now that he had her subdued, he was completely focused on the four men behind the church.
With whatever transaction they had made completed, they were getting back into their respective cars. The man who had stolen Justin was leaving. After ten years she’d finally found him, and now he was getting away. She strained upward against the man holding her, her entire body tightening in protest, and he pressed harder on her throat with his arm. When her vision blurred again, she went limp in despair, a sob convulsing in her chest. In this position she was as helpless as a turtle on its back.
The second car slowly pulled away, turned the corner, and disappeared. The first car began reversing down the narrow lane. The man holding her suddenly lifted his weight and flipped her over on her back. “Take a nap,” he growled, and his fingers pressed hard on the base of her neck.
She tried to struggle, but she was already oxygen-deprived and teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. He leaned over her, a black, featureless weight oozing menace, and the world went blank.
She came to lying propped against Brian’s knee, while he anxiously patted her face, her shoulder, her arm. “Milla? Milla! Wake up!”
“I’m awake,” she mumbled, the words slurred. “Nap.”
“Nap? You took a nap?” Disbelief made his voice get louder.
She fought to gather her scattered wits, but she felt as if she were underwater, every movement an effort. “No. Man—jumped me.”
“What? Shit!” Brian’s head came up and he glared around him. “They must have had a lookout that we didn’t spot.”
Slowly she heaved her weight off his knee and sat up. Her entire body ached, as if she’d been slammed to the ground. Oh, wait—she had been.
“No, he wasn’t one of them.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me he’d break my neck if I made a sound.” And he’d come close to doing it anyway, if the way her throat felt was any measure of his intent.
“Why would he do that, unless—”
“—he was watching them, too,” Milla finished, when Brian broke off the sentence as he worked through the logic.
“But why jump you? We were just watching. He could have stayed where he was and we’d never have known.”
Anguish tore through her as she remembered how close she’d been to the man who’d taken Justin. She closed her eyes. “I was about to do something stupid.”
“Like what? You don’t do stupid things.”
“One of the men in the second car—the passenger—is the one who stole Justin.”
Brian drew in a long breath, then blew it out. “Shit. Damn.” He was silent a moment. “I guess you were going to go for him, huh? Even though there were four of them?”
Her silence was answer enough. She pulled off her baseball cap and ran her hands through her matted curls. “I’ve dreamed of seeing him again. I’ve thought of it for ten years, imagined getting my hands on him. I was going to choke answers out of him, if I died doing it.”
“And you would have; all four of them were packing, in case you didn’t notice.”
She hadn’t; after seeing the face that had haunted her dreams for a decade, she hadn’t noticed anything else. Evidently the guy who’d jumped her had inadvertently saved her life.
Groaning, she got to her feet. The blanket she’d had draped over her was lying a few feet away, and she retrieved it. The night-vision scope had rolled against the base of the adjacent tombstone. The pistol that had been in her pocket, however, was gone. Her assailant must have taken it.
The headache she’d had earlier was back with sickening force, pounding in her temples, and she felt slightly nauseated. “Let’s go home,” she said tiredly. She’d come so close, but achieved nothing. The bitterness of it was an ashy taste in her mouth.
Silently they made their way back to the truck. As they passed the cantina, fury rose in her again and impulsively she turned, shoving the door open so hard it banged against the wall. Rough, startled faces turned toward her, hazy in the dim light of the smoke-filled little room.
She didn’t step inside. Instead she said, in the Spanish she’d honed over the years, “My name is Milla Edge. I work for Finders in El Paso. I will pay ten thousand American dollars to anyone who can tell me how to find Diaz.”
There had to be a million Diazes in Mexico, but judging from the sudden stillness of the men in the cantina, they all knew who she meant. Rewards had been offered before, of course; ten years ago, there had been one for any information about the kidnapping of Justin Boone. She also regularly handed out bribes, mordidas, and paid what seemed like a small army of informants. Announcing a reward in a dingy little cantina in a tiny village probably wouldn’t produce any different results, but at least she felt as if she was doing something. The man who’d destroyed her life ten years ago had just been here in this village, behind the church, and “Diaz” was the only possibility she had for his name. A stab in the dark sometimes brought blood.
Women weren’t welcome in Mexican cantinas unless they were prostitutes. One of the men began to get to his feet, and Brian stepped up close behind her, making his imposing presence known. “Let’s go,” he said, taking her arm, and the force of his grip said he wasn’t kidding.
She climbed into the disreputable truck and Brian got in behind her. The motor fired as soon as he turned the key, and they were already in motion when two of the cantina’s patrons stepped to the door and watched them drive away.
“What was that for?” Brian demanded hotly. “You always tell us not to take chances, then you walk into a cantina? That’s just asking for trouble.”
“I didn’t go inside.” She rubbed her forehead and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. The sight of him—after all these years . . .” Her voice thickened and she swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she said again, staring through the duct-taped windshield into the night.
Having said his piece, Brian didn’t keep on nagging at her. He concentrated on his driving, on the lookout for potholes, cows, and people driving without headlights.
Milla’s nails dug into her palms. Ten years had passed since she’d seen his evil face. She hoped they had been long, miserable years for him, though there was no way they could have been as long and as miserable as they’d been for her. She hoped he suffered from some medical condition that was incurable and hideously painful, but nonfatal. She wanted him to live a horrible existence, but she didn’t want him to die. Not yet. Not until she got the information she needed from him, and found Justin. Then she would gladly kill him herself. He had destroyed her, so why shouldn’t she destroy him in return?
The years ticked themselves down in her mind, like a countdown.
Ten years ago, Justin had been stolen from her.
Nine years ago, David divorced her. She couldn’t blame him. Losing a child put so much stress and strain on the parents that marriages often dissolved. In their case, David hadn’t just lost his son, he’d also lost his wife. From the time she’d regained consciousness after being stabbed, her every thought, her life, had focused on finding Justin. There simply hadn’t been anything left in her for David.
Eight years ago, while following yet another lead that had produced no information about Justin, she had recovered a stolen baby. The infant had been more dead than alive at the time, but had survived, and Milla had found some comfort for herself in seeing the mother’s hysterical joy on having the child returned. She herself didn’t have a happy ending, but perhaps she could produce happy endings for others.
Seven year
s ago, she had organized Finders. It was a group, some paid employees but mostly volunteers, who mobilized to hunt missing children, whether they were simply lost or had been stolen. Police departments across the country were underfunded and understaffed, and they simply didn’t have the time or manpower to adequately devote to the problem. The difference between finding a lost child dead or alive sometimes boiled down to how many bodies could be brought into the search. Milla was good at mobilizing. Thanks to her high visibility after Justin’s kidnapping, she was also very good at fund-raising.
Six years ago, David had remarried. It hurt more than she could have imagined. Part of her resented that he had rebuilt his life without her, without Justin, but for the most part she simply hurt. She’d loved David so much. She still loved him, though their time for being in love had ended the day Justin was stolen. David was, simply, the best man she’d ever known. Everyone handled grief differently, and David had handled his by throwing himself into his work, by saving lives that would otherwise have been lost. He’d had the practice of medicine to get him through the pain. And Milla had continued her unrelenting search for her son.
Five years ago, Finders had accepted its first missing persons case. They didn’t just search for lost children now, they would look for anyone who was lost. The pain of those left behind, wondering what had happened, was too great for her to ignore.
Four years ago, David and his new wife had had a child. Milla had been agonized when she heard his wife was pregnant. What if it was a boy, another son? It was small of her and she knew it, but she didn’t think she could bear it if David’s child was a boy. To her immeasurable relief, they’d had a daughter. And Milla kept looking for her own child.