Finders/Keepers: An Allie Krycek Thriller
Date: 2020-07-17 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Thriller
Description: IF SHE'S LOOKING FOR YOU, YOU'RE ALREADY IN TROUBLE. Every year, tens of thousands of young girls go missing around the world. Some go voluntarily, but others are taken against their will and forced into a life worse than death. When a teenager vanishes and the authorities have given up, her mother asks Allie Krycek for help. For Allie, it's not just another bad guy to take down. This one hits too close to home. Maybe a little too close. Years ago, Allie's own little sister vanished, and she couldn't do anything to stop it. This time, things are different. This time, things will be different.
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press
Rights: Copyright 2016 Sam Sisavath. All rights reserved.

Finders/Keepers

An Allie Krycek Thriller

Sam Sisavath

Contents

Copyright

About Finders/Keepers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

From The Author

Also by Sam Sisavath

Copyright © 2016 Sam Sisavath

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Road To Babylon Media LLC
www.roadtobabylon.com

Cover design by Rebecca Frank

Editing by Jennifer Jensen & Wendy Chan

About Finders/Keepers

If she’s looking for you, you’re already in trouble.

Every year, tens of thousands of young girls go missing around the world. Some go voluntarily, but others are taken against their will and forced into a life worse than death.

When a teenager vanishes and the authorities have given up, her mother asks Allie Krycek for help. For Allie, it’s not just another bad guy to take down. This one hits too close to home. Maybe a little too close.

Years ago, Allie’s own little sister vanished, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. This time, things are different. This time, things will be different.

The only things stopping Allie are two seasoned professionals, a hidden criminal organization, and a whole lot of empty miles, with danger around every turn. All she has to do is get to the end of the line…alive.

One

Hank was sixty-two and balding, with a paunch he had probably developed after retiring from the state police, and she was going to have to shoot him. She didn’t want to do it, but there was no other choice. They were watching her. More specifically, he was watching her. One wrong move and she would never make it out of the diner alive. In this case, the “wrong move” was not pulling the trigger.

So Allie shot the ex-cop.

He hadn’t seen her standing in the door that connected the back hallway with the kitchen when he sneaked out of the bathroom. The tail of his well-worn dress shirt was draped unsightly over the back of his waist, and her shot hit him in the thigh. He let out a surprised grunt and stumbled forward a couple of steps before his legs—first the right, where her bullet had hit, then the left—buckled under him.

Despite the extra pounds and years, Hank proved to be surprisingly spry and stuck out both hands to stop his face from slamming into the grime-caked floor. Unfortunately that also meant letting go of the black snub-nose revolver clutched in his right hand, and the gun skidded loudly across the diner.

Stay down. Stay the hell down, she thought, even as Hank looked up, spotted his lost weapon, and made the first signs to crawl toward it—

She fired into the tile about six inches from the side of Hank’s head—heard someone gasp somewhere in the diner—and the old man flinched and stopped moving completely. For now, anyway. Before he could change his mind, Allie hurried forward and shoved her knee into the small of his back. Another almost-annoyed grunt from the ex-cop as she shoved the blunt, cold muzzle of the Sig Sauer P250 against his exposed neck.

“Stay down,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

Hank’s arms went stiff and his eyes stared at the hole she had put into the floor next to his head. Even if he had decided to turn completely around to get a look at her, he would have only seen an all-white cheap party mask with holes for her eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

“Problem?” a voice asked.

She glanced up at the speaker. Black dress slacks, white dress shirt, black blazer, and a plain black tie. Like her, a white mask covered his face as he watched her from across the diner—he’d been watching her since they stepped inside the place—while holding a Glock on two beefy truckers sitting in a booth. Their wallets and whatever money they had in their pockets were spread out on the table. There were also two sets of car keys and, of all things, Magnum condoms.

“No problem,” she said.

“Looks like a problem to me,” a second man in a mask said. He appeared from behind the counter and stepped on Hank’s lost revolver before kicking it under one of the booths across the room. He was dressed identical to the first man, and they could have passed for twins if not for the foot height difference. “Heroes get dead, right?” he said, directing it at her.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No,” she said again.

The second man exchanged a look with the first.

“You wanted pocket change, you got it,” Allie said. “Murder wasn’t on my to-do list today.”

“You already shot him,” the second man said. “Finish it.”

“And I said no.”

The tall man in the suit chuckled, the sound muffled by the mask over his face. “Fine. Grab his phone.”

Allie rifled through Hank’s pockets but came up empty. “He doesn’t have one.”

“Everyone has a cell phone,” the short man in the suit said.

“Not him.”

“Look again.”

“She already looked,” Tall Suit said. “Time to go, anyway. Oh, someone grab me a piece of that pie off the counter, please?” He turned and, using his gun hand, swept the money, car keys, and condoms off the table and into a plastic grocery bag. A second already-tied bag sat on the floor nearby, and he snatched it up.

Shorty made a noise that sounded like a snort in her direction before hurrying back to the counter. “One more minute and we’ll be out of your hair, folks. Everyone remain where you are.” He swiped the tabletop with his arm, sweeping wallets, money, and jewelry into another plastic bag.

Allie stood up from Hank—glimpsed his head turning slightly, trying to spy her face—and hurried out of the hallway. She passed a half dozen men and women, and two kids that couldn’t have been more than six, all either crouched next to their chairs or huddled in their booths with their hands over their heads. One of the kids—a girl—looked up as she passed, big brown eyes full of curiosity.

At the counter, Allie opened the display case with the apple pies, then nodded at the waitress crouched on the other side doing everything possible to stay hidden behind the chipped wood and steel barrier between them.

“Hey,” Allie said.

The waitress ignored her.

“Hey,” Allie said again, louder this time. “I need this to go.”

The waitress reluctantly met her gaze. “What?”

“The pie,” Allie said. “You got a box or something?”

“Con-container?”

“Get it.”

The waitress stood up on slightly wobbly legs and grabbed a plastic see-through container from a shelf and slid it across the counter. Allie put one of the pieces of pie inside and snapped the lid shut. She could feel the woman watching her the entire time, probably trying to remember everything about her: the black leather jacket; her long, black hair in a ponytail; the gun in her hand…

“Spoon,” Allie said.

“What?” the waitress said. Her name tag read: Rita.

“I need a spoon, Rita.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” Shorty snapped. He was already at the door, with Tall Suit outside, moving through the parking lot.

Allie ignored him and said to the waitress, “Spoon, Rita.”

“Spoon,” Rita repeated, and turned left, then right, before finding the shelf with the utensils. She grabbed one of the spoons and held it out to Allie, as if she were afraid it might burn her hand if she didn’t get rid of it fast enough.

Allie took it. “Thanks.”

“O-okay,” Rita said.

Allie nodded toward the back hallway, where Hank would be if she could see him over the counter. “Get him something to stop the bleeding when we’re gone.”

Rita nodded nervously.

Allie walked at a fast clip across the diner, passing scared couples and families doing their best not to look up at her. A couple of the men did sneak a look, including one of the two truckers in the booth. She glanced toward the back, at Hank. He was still on the floor staring after her. Blood pooled under his right leg, but if he was in pain, he was doing a very good job of not letting it show.

“Took your sweet time,” Shorty said, holding the door open for her.

“The man wanted pie,” she said, and stepped out into the parking lot.

Tall Suit was already in the front passenger seat of the white Nissan waiting for them. Allie climbed into the back while Shorty slipped in behind the wheel, throwing his plastic bag, already tied at the handles, over his shoulder and into the backseat with her. It landed with a thump against the pile next to Allie, where she had deposited her own bundle alongside Tall Suit’s. There were more than just wallets and money in the bags; there were also all the cell phones they had taken from the diner’s patrons.

“Any day now,” Tall Suit said.

The diner’s customers were slowly starting to get up from the floor, a few of them rushing over to where Hank lay in the back hallway. Allie saw Rita, the waitress, putting a towel against Hank’s leg, and she had to fight against her own sigh of relief. If nothing else, they wouldn’t be able to add murder to her list of crimes.

Right. Because shooting an ex-cop in the process of an armed robbery of a diner full of innocent people isn’t already going to get you life—or close—in prison.

“Hold your horses,” Shorty was saying in the front seat as he slipped on his seatbelt. “Driving protocol, dude. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to drive once or twice.”

“But you’re so good at it,” Tall Suit said.

“Flattery will only get you in my pants.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Your loss.”

Shorty finally reversed out of the gravel parking lot before turning onto the interstate road. Allie glanced out the rear windshield and back at the diner, watching as more people began running around inside the building. She wondered how long it would take them to realize no one had a cell phone and that the only two landlines had been cut.

She turned back around and settled in her seat, then stripped off the mask. She sucked in fresh air and ran gloved hands through her hair. Like the past few hours, wide-open farmland blurred by on both sides of them, with only the massive mountain peaks in the distance to break the monotony. At least they had left the gray and dry desert behind, and her hair thanked her for the change of scenery.

Not that her appearance was something she was worried about at the moment. No, there were more important things to occupy her mind as she watched the endless parade of green fields and red barns. Traffic consisted of the occasional family in a minivan, RV, or obvious rentals, with semis hauling everything from car parts to other cars to food dominating the lanes on both sides of them.

After a few minutes of silence and only the wind banging against her windows for company, Allie remembered the pie in her lap.

“Reese,” she said, and leaned forward between the two front seats with the plastic container and the spoon on top of it.

The man in the front passenger seat took the box from her, glancing briefly up at the rearview mirror as he did so. It was just a moment—maybe not even half a second—as they locked eyes. She wished she could have said she had become used to the way he scrutinized her—after all, he had been doing it since she climbed into the car—but it still managed to unnerve her.

“Thanks,” Reese said.

“Why apple pie?” she asked.

“When in Rome…”

“Apple pies aren’t actually that common with American meals.”

“No?”

She shook her head.

Reese opened the case and cut out a piece with the spoon. “Dwight told me everyone ate apple pie in America.”

Dwight grinned. “I haven’t had apple pie in years. Not since college. And that was just once.”

“So you lied?” Reese said. Allie couldn’t tell if he was genuinely hurt or playing along.

“I didn’t know you were so gullible,” Dwight said, and reached down and turned on the radio. Country music filled the car. Something about a horse…

“It’s called trust, Dwight.”

“Call it whatever you want, dude. Still makes you a dumbass.”

Reese ignored him and ate another piece. “You did good back there,” he said. It was meant for her, even though he hadn’t turned around when he said it.

“You sound surprised,” Allie said.

He shrugged. “You never know how people will react their first time in a pressure situation.”

“This is hardly my first time.”

“First time with us seeing you in action.”

“She should have shot the old fart,” Dwight said. “He was probably a cop.”

“He was in his sixties,” Allie said.

“So?”

“How many sixty-year-old cops do you know?”

“Out here in boondocksville? A fuck lot, that’s how many.”

“Even if he were a cop, that’s an even better reason not to kill him.”

“She’s got a point,” Reese said.

“And shooting him in the leg is better?” Dwight said.

Reese chuckled. “Dwight’s got a point too.”

“Like I said, I’m not adding a dead body to my list of crimes today just to make you two happy,” Allie said.

“We’ll see about that,” Dwight said.

She didn’t respond, and eventually Dwight began to slow down before turning off the interstate and into a wooded area. A rusted-over sign with “RV Park”-something stenciled across it flashed by to their right, and the road was bumpy as soon as they turned onto it. Dwight slowed down again as he entered what once upon a time was a park, but the grounds had since been swallowed up by grass and foliage, making it almost indistinguishable from the surrounding woods.

A white semitrailer, no different than all the ones she had been seeing since they hit the road, loomed in front of them next to a Ford four-door. It would have been easy to think the vehicles had been abandoned here, but Allie knew better.

Two men appeared out from behind the trees to their left as they approached. She spied bulges along the men’s jackets—barely noticeable if you weren’t looking for them or didn’t know what they meant.

Dwight parked a good twenty yards behind the semi, and they climbed out just in time to hear the wail of police sirens in the distance. Still very far off, but getting closer.

“That was smart, taking their cell phones,” Allie said to Reese.

“It wasn’t our first time, either,” Reese said.

“So you’re the brains of this operation.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“Kiss my ass,” Dwight said, and walked on ahead of them.

Reese led her to the sedan while the two men who had stepped out of the woods joined Dwight at the back of the semi.

“The old man in the diner,” Reese said. “Juliet would have gone for the back of the head.”

“I’m not Juliet,” Allie said.

“No, you’re not.”

At the Ford now, she narrowed her eyes across the roof at him. “If you still have any doubts about me, maybe we should put it out there now, Reese. Otherwise, you’re just wasting both of our time.”

“Doubts?” He shrugged. “I always have doubts. But Juliet recommended you…”

“Yeah, she did.”

“Then again, people make mistakes. Even Juliet.”

“Then you should take it up with her.”

He nodded. “I’ll do that, first chance I get.”

A loud clang! from nearby, as Dwight threw open the semi’s back doors with the help of the two men.

“Why are they opening the trailer here?” she asked.

“Just to make sure the assets made it to us fully intact,” Reese said. “Wouldn’t want to get blamed for damaged goods on delivery, right?”

It took Allie a few seconds to make out the small, round faces peering out of the darkness inside the parked transport at Dwight and the other two. They were seemingly drawn forward by the blinding sunlight like moths to a flame, slowly and (justifiably) afraid of what awaited them.

God help what I’m about to do, Allie thought, her fingers making fists at her sides.

Two

“Did they use to call you Lou back when you were a lieutenant?” the pretty girl with the red lipstick asked.

Hank Pritchard would have smiled if only he could ignore the throbbing pain coming from his right thigh. The sensation was similar to that of someone shoving a hot poker through his flesh and then dropping a boulder the size of a house on top of it.

“Yeah, some of them,” he said.

“I knew it,” the young woman said. “Saw it on TV. Figured it was the same with cops everywhere.”

She was blonde and beautiful, and twenty years ago (Who are you kidding, old man? More like thirty years ago) he would have flirted with her, told her the green of her eyes reminded him of a beautiful jade ornament he once saw while he was traveling around East Asia during his Army days.

“He going to live, Mary?” a voice asked.

Hank glanced up at John Miller. Thirty-five, handsome, and not at all out of shape. His suit was tailored, and there wasn’t a speck of dirt on his dress shoes despite the gravel parking lot he would have had to walk through just to reach the diner.

“He’ll be fine,” the pretty girl, Mary, said.

She stood up and pulled the surgical gloves off her hands. For someone wearing drab black paramedic clothes, she still managed to cut a fine figure, and Hank once again wished he was much, much younger. Mary was five-five, but she only went up to the bottom of Miller’s chin. He towered over her and literally looked down at Hank.

“He looks terrible,” Miller said.

“Feels like twins are trying to push their way through my leg,” Hank said.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mary said and rolled her eyes. “She clipped you. You’re lucky.”

Right. Lucky. That’s one way to look at it.

“You need me for anything else?” Mary asked Miller.

“You done with him?” Miller asked.

“Nothing else I can do here. He needs to go to the hospital and get it properly sutured. But for now, those bandages should keep him from bleeding to death. Not that he was really in any danger of that. Like I said, he’s real lucky.”

“Then I guess you’re done.”

Mary looked back at Hank. “See you around, Lou.”

I wish, he thought, and managed a half-smile. “Thanks, doc.”

“Not quite there yet.” She smiled back (Be still my heart) before leaving him with Miller.

Hank looked down at his leg dangling over one of the booths at the back of Ben’s Diner. There was a lot of blood over the parts of his pants that Mary had cut away to get to his wound and bandage it. The diner had almost entirely emptied out except for the three of them, with four or five people still in the parking lot with some of the uniformed state troopers that weren’t busy taking witnesses to the hospital.

“Wrong place, wrong time, huh?” Miller said.

Hank turned back to him. “Story of my life. Did you find my .32?”

“Uh huh.” Miller pulled an evidence bag out of his blazer pocket. The snub nose was inside. “What were you doing with it?”

“I got a permit, kid.”

“No, I mean, what were you doing at Ben’s carrying it?”

“I carry it everywhere. Hence the permit. Can I have it back?”

“Did you fire it?”

“No.”

Miller handed it back to him and Hank shoved the gun, still in the bag, into his pocket. “We’ve processed it, so no harm in letting you have it back.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Miller ignored the sarcasm, said, “So what were you doing here when it happened?”

“What do you think I was doing here? It’s a diner. I came here to dine.”

Miller pursed a smile, and Hank thought, What’s the matter, kid? The old fart’s giving you a hard time? Well, tough shit.

“You were in the bathroom when it went down?” Miller asked.

“I was taking a leak, yeah.”

“What happened then?”

“Don’t you already have enough statements from the other witnesses?”

“I do, but I also have an ex-cop at my disposal, and I’m banking on his version of the story being more thorough, more helpful.”

Hank grinned back at Miller.

Flattery will get you into an old man’s good graces, you little shit.

“I was in the bathroom when they came in,” Hank said. “No one fired a shot—at least, not yet—but there was plenty of screaming. From them, from the customers, and I think Rita, too.”

“Rita’s one of the waitresses?”

“Uh huh. Anyway. I bided my time while they cleaned out the place. First they collected the cell phones, then the money, wallets, and whatever valuables people had on them. By then I was at the door and could see two of them moving around up front. I thought there were just two of them. My mistake.”

“There were three.”

“Yeah. The woman.”

“Where was she?”

Hank nodded at the kitchen in the back hallway. “Just my luck, never knew she was there until, well,” he said, nodding at his bandaged thigh. “After she shot me, she put her knee on my back and told me not to fucking move.”

“She said those words? ‘Don’t fucking move?’”

“Something to that effect.”

“Have to be specific about everything, Hank; you know that.”

Hank grunted. “Look, kid, I already told one of the troopers everything and you got two bullets for ballistics—the one that went through my leg and the one she put into the floor next to my head. I can come in later and give you another statement if you want, but right now my leg is fucking killin’ me.”

Miller nodded. “I’ll get one of the troopers to take you to the hospital.”

“Who says I’m going to the hospital?”

“You heard what Mary said—”

“She’s just a kid; what does she know?”

“Hank…”

“My leg, my choice,” Hank said, and got up and limped to the door.

He grimaced the whole time, as if someone was stabbing spears into his groin with every single step, but at least his back was to Miller and the little shit couldn’t see how much pain this little show of rebellion was costing him.

Or, at least, he hoped Miller couldn’t see.

“Problem?” one of the men had said.

“No problem,” the woman had answered.

“Looks like a problem to me,” the second one had butted in, before adding, “Heroes get dead, right?”

“No,” the woman responded.

That single word. No. As if she wasn’t afraid of anything.

Of course, she had a gun—the same one she had shot him with, for fuck’s sake—and that was a hell of an equalizer in any situation.

And yet, the way she had responded to the two guys, with no fear whatsoever…

Who the hell are you, lady?

That question bounced around inside Hank’s head for the entire seven miles back to his place. The interstate flew by, along with the occasional squad car going back and forth in front of Ben’s Diner. The nagging question helped to keep his mind off the pulsating pain, though as soon as he pulled his beat-up Bronco into the trailer park and climbed out, it was back with a vengeance.

“You okay, Hank?” a voice asked from behind him.

He looked over at Mrs. Haines sitting on her front porch next door. The woman had all five of her cats sleeping in a semicircle at her feet, which was nothing new, since the animals rarely journeyed beyond the property or Haines herself. Hank used to wonder if it was possible for animals to be as morbidly obese as their human counterparts; he had his answer after meeting Mrs. Haines.

“Fine. Why?” he said, and flashed his best put-on smile.

“You’re limping,” Mrs. Haines said, gesturing with her freshly manicured hand. “Is that blood?”

“Oh yeah, that. Just a little accident.”

“Looks painful.”

“Nothing a little spirit can’t lift.”

“I hear that,” Mrs. Haines said, producing a bottle of Jim Beam from behind her.

Hank grinned, wondering if she ever fed any of that to her kitties. Probably not. Ol’ Jim was a lot more expensive per bottle than all those cans of tuna she had stacked up in the pantry inside her place.

He fished out his keys and let himself into his home, slamming the door behind him. He struggled to the back, stopping only to grab a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey, then sat down on his bed and twisted open the lid. The whiskey burned its way down his throat and settled in his gut, and he welcomed the warmth spreading across his belly and, eventually, down to his legs.

Like most days, Hank fell asleep satiated.

“Stay down.”

His eyes fluttered open. The lids were heavy, like they always were when he woke up from a whiskey spree, and it took a moment before he could adjust to the brightness filling up his home. Shit, he’d forgotten to pull the curtains closed again.

Outside, someone was revving their engines, the noise like a sledgehammer working against the back of his skull. Probably that dumbass Jackson kid and his motorcycle. Hank swore one of these days he was going to sneak over there and take that thing apart in the middle of the night.

Hank struggled out of bed but made the mistake of putting too much weight on both legs, and it was all he could do not to howl from the pain.

Sonofabitch.

He finally made his way to the shower and stepped inside, thought about taking off his clothes first, but decided what the hell, his pants were already ruined and his shirt had blood on it already, which meant he was going to get rid of them anyway. He could probably clean the shirt, but that would require a trip to the Laundromat in town, and who the hell had time for that?

“Stay down.”

Would he have gotten up (crawled) for the gun if she hadn’t said that? Maybe. It wasn’t really what she said but the way she had said it, as if she were doing him a favor trying to keep him alive. Or maybe that was just his imagination. In his vast experience with criminals, armed robbers were rarely that kindhearted.

He remembered turning his head and sneaking a look up at her, for all the good it had done. Like the two guys robbing Ben’s with her, she had on a white mask. Nothing fancy—one of those cheap plastic accessories you could get just about anywhere, with a rubber band at the back to hold it in place. She had long, black hair, was slightly taller than average height, and was wearing slacks, a shirt, and a leather jacket. All black.

And gloves. All three robbers had worn gloves.

They’re taking the cell phones, he remembered thinking when he peeked out of the bathroom door and saw them collecting the devices around the establishment.

That was a smart move on their part. Most strong-arm robbers weren’t that clever or didn’t have the foresight to think about what was going to happen after they left, but these had. Taking the phones meant no one could call the cops as soon as they left the diner. And that was exactly how it had happened. After their car, a white Nissan, took off, everyone had scrambled to find a phone. It took someone pulling into the parking lot about ten minutes later before they could even dial 911.

Smart. Real smart.

He recalled their back and forth conversation while he was lying on the floor. They didn’t trust one another. Or, at least, the men didn’t fully trust the woman, and vice versa. So what were they doing robbing a diner together? They clearly weren’t longtime partners, except maybe for the two men, and even that was doubtful—

His accent.

Hank turned off the shower and stumbled outside. He bypassed the bath towel and grabbed his phone from the kitchen counter, slumping into the seat. He dialed the number from memory and hoped they hadn’t changed it since he retired—

“State Police,” a voice answered. “Where may I direct your call?”

“Detective John Miller,” Hank said into the phone.

“What is this in regards to?”

“The robbery at Ben’s Diner.”

“Hold, please.”

Hank did his best to ignore the spots of blood dripping down his leg from his bandaged thigh. At least the pain had lessened. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the adrenaline or from the hot spray—

“Detective Miller,” a voice said through the phone.

“Miller,” Hank said, “it’s me.”

“Me who?”

He sighed. Was the little punk messing with him? If he was, Hank wasn’t going to give Mister Perfect the satisfaction—

“Hello?” Miller said. “Who is this?”

He really doesn’t remember me.

“Hank Pritchard,” he said into the phone.

“Oh, Hank,” Miller said. “You okay? I followed up, and they told me you never checked into the hospital—”

“I’m fine. But listen to me; I thought of something.”

“About the robbery?”

“Yes.”

“Let me get a pen and paper…”

“He’s a Brit,” Hank said. He practically blurted it out.

“What?” Miller said. “Who?”

“One of the guys that robbed the place. The one in charge. Or I’m pretty sure he was the one in charge. He seemed to be calling the shots.”

“Okay. How do you know he’s British?”

“His accent.”

“He had an accent?”

“Damn straight.”

“No one said anything about an accent in their statements…”

“Because he’s good, and he’s probably been around the world enough times that it’s not readily noticeable anymore. It took me just now to remember it. I’m telling you, Miller, the guy’s British. Or he was.”

“Was?”

“It’s a weak accent, but it’s there. He hasn’t completely gotten rid of it.”

“Okay, so he’s a limey,” Miller said. “Or he used to be?”

“You can’t just stop being a Brit, but you can lose the accent.”

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it. That’s good to know, I guess.”

“You guess? That’s it?”

Miller didn’t say anything right away. Hank thought he could hear the little punk actually sighing, as if he were doing Hank a big favor even just talking to him on the phone.

“Well?” Hank said.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Hank,” Miller said. “Okay, you’re certain he’s from across the pond—or used to be at some point—even though no one else at the diner heard any accents. I’m going to put that in the notes as a possibility, even though I’m not sure how that helps us catch them.”

“You add it to the profile. Three people. Two men and one woman. One of the men has a slight accent. He’s almost lost it, but it’s still there if you listen closely enough. It’ll narrow down the search.”

“We’ll definitely do that,” Miller said, though there was a lack of conviction in his voice that made Hank grind his teeth just loudly enough that the detective heard it. “You okay, Hank? You don’t sound so good. Maybe you should get some rest and call me again tomorrow when you think of something else.”

You mean “something else more useful?”

“Yeah, okay,” Hank said, and before Miller could say anything else, he hung up the phone.

He sat still for a moment, hands on the dusty oak table that his wife had bought years ago from a garage sale, determined to put it in the RV they would eventually buy when he retired and they drove around the country doing whatever it was that old married couples did. Instead, Hank ended up putting it in this used manufactured home parked barely fifteen miles from the house they had spent so many good years in together.

He was literally sitting in his own liquids, water dripping off his head and soaked clothes onto the carpeted floor. The little rivulets of red coming from his thigh looked more pink now, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it to the floor, then gingerly went to work on his pants, grimacing every time he ventured too close to the bandaged thigh. He finally got the pants off and flung it away, but it didn’t get very far (Damn, was he getting weaker, too?) and watched it land in a pile next to the shirt.

Hank found himself staring at his wet clothes. He was tired and didn’t move. He didn’t want to move. And there was something—

What the hell is that?

There was something sticking out of one of his pant pockets—the sharp corner of a white piece of…something. Hank bent down and picked the still-wet pants off the floor and stuck his hand into its pocket.

He rummaged around, found it, and pulled it out.

It was a folded piece of paper—one of those slips the waitresses used to jot down orders at Ben’s Diner. This one was for a cheeseburger (with extra pickles), diet soda, and a side of fries. There was no reason it should have been in his pocket. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to order before his bladder forced him to visit the bathroom first, and then the robbery had happened—

So how the hell had it gotten into his pocket? Did someone…put it there?

He flipped the piece of paper over and saw a phone number scribbled on the empty white spaces in blue ink. The numbers were slightly distorted because of the water and heat from the shower he had taken, but there was still enough intact that he could make out all ten digits. He didn’t recognize the area code; it wasn’t a local number.

“Grab his phone,” the Brit had said.

“He doesn’t have one,” the woman answered after going through his pockets.

She had gone through his pockets. While she was doing that, it wouldn’t have taken much for her to leave something behind—like a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

But why would she do that? That was the part that didn’t make any sense. Why would you put a piece of paper with a phone number in the pocket of the guy you just shot?

Then again, she had also refused to finish him off, and even argued with the other two over it.

What the hell is going on here?

He stared at the phone, then at the piece of paper in his hand…then back at the phone.

He didn’t move or act for the next five minutes.

Finally, Hank picked the old receiver off the cradle and punched in the numbers. He swallowed, then cleared his throat, then spent the next few seconds waiting for the number to connect, going through a few hundred scenarios about what he was going to say when someone finally picked up—

“Hello?” a female voice answered on the other end.

“Um, hello,” Hank said.

“Who is this?” the woman (girl?) asked.

“Someone, uh, gave me your number.”

The girl (Hank was sure of that now) didn’t answer right away. But she didn’t hang up on him either, because he could hear breathing on the other end. Was that because she was nervous? Suspicious? Maybe both. And where exactly was she? Hank had called a lot of numbers in his life, but he still couldn’t recall the area code he had just punched in.

“You still there?” Hank said, if just to be sure. Who knows? He was getting old, and weren’t eyesight and hearing the first things to go—

“Is she okay?” the girl asked.

“Who?” he was going to say, but stopped himself in time. The girl was looking for information and was clearly just as uncertain about him as he was about her, so the last thing he wanted was to spook her. Right now, she was his only link as to what had happened at Ben’s and to the woman who had shot him.

“I can’t say,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I can’t say too much over the phone. We should meet in person. It’ll be, uh, safer that way.”

The girl hesitated.

Shit. Did he just blow it? He had stammered a bit there at the end. Did the girl catch it? Did she know he was talking out of his ass? And the thing about not being able to say too much over the phone. Who did he think he was, James fucking Bond?

Maybe he should have called Miller and given the number to him. The state police had a lot more resources on hand. Hell, they could have just punched the number into a computer and come up with a name—

“Okay,” the girl finally said. “You have a pen?”

Fuck me, Hank thought.

Three

“So this is why I’m here,” Allie said. “Why Juliet was here before me.”

Reese nodded. “We’ve found, through trial and error, that they respond better when there’s a woman around. Most of them aren’t inclined to cause trouble, but there’s always a rebel or two in the midst. It’s really just an emergency option—a just in case. Chances are we won’t need you for most of the trip, but it’s better to have you here when we do than not.”

“What exactly am I supposed to do?”

“For now, just keep them calm. Get them to trust you, in case a situation arises later where you’ll be needed. The more cooperative they are now, the easier it’ll be for all of us. And them.” He looked closely at her when he added, “Didn’t Juliet tell you?”

“Not in so many words. But she didn’t tell me you’d make me rob a diner full of people just to see if I could do it, either.”

He smiled. “We had to be sure you had it in you.”

“And are you?”

“The bags of money in the trunk say yes.”

She stared at the door and didn’t move. There were no locks on it, nothing to keep anyone from coming out if they so chose. Except, of course, all the big bad men waiting on this side of the door.

And right now, she was one of those “big bad men.”

“As Dwight would say, it’s not rocket science,” Reese said next to her. “Be…motherly.”

“Motherly,” she repeated.

“It’s the presence of another woman that counts. After all the testosterone they’ve encountered so far, you’ll be a breath of fresh air. Get them to trust you. It shouldn’t be too hard. Reassure them that everything’s fine.”

“So lie, then.”

“Yes, but maybe don’t say that.”

She took a breath (and hoped he didn’t see) before reaching for the lever when he put a hand on her arm. In the two to three seconds after his fingers tightened around her wrist, Allie had to battle every instinct to reach for the Sig Sauer holstered behind her.

She looked over at him instead and matched his intense gaze. He was taller than her, so she had to tilt her head slightly upward to see his eyes. “What?” she said, injecting just the right amount of annoyance into her voice.

“Don’t tell them anything. About us, why they’re here, and more importantly, where we’re going. The less they know, the more pliable they’ll be. Best-case scenario, remember?”

“Got it.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“In you go, then.”

He removed his hand, and she jerked the lever open and stepped inside before he could say another word.

The room smelled of sweat and urine—and, most of all, fear—despite the ventilation and two high windows that were open to allow sunlight and fresh air inside. There was a single squiggly eco-friendly light bulb in the center, and it was just enough to highlight the frightened faces looking back at her—or, at least, the ones who had managed to overcome their terror to look at all. The rest either had their heads turned so that they faced the walls or were leaning into each other’s shoulders.

It took every ounce of willpower Allie had not to turn around and leave the room and shoot every single man outside. The only reason she didn’t was because it wouldn’t have done any good…except lead to her death. And for the occupants of this room, her blaze of glory moment would just be another horrifying ordeal for them to survive.

Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan!

There was nothing inside to make them more comfortable—there was no furniture or even padding on the hard, heavily scratched concrete floor, though it was probably better than where they had been just three hours ago, in the back of the semi. The girl closest to her flinched when something heavy banged! outside the room. A car door slammed, and voices (all male) drifted through the thin slit under the door. The windows might have offered some semblance of hope in the beginning, but the girls would have figured out pretty quickly that they were too high to even reach, much less escape through.

They were staring at her—the most courageous among them and the ones that didn’t care anymore. Their faces were dirty, clothes just as filthy and soiled. They were barefoot, and long hair (almost all of them had long hair) hung from their oval-shaped faces like veils of spaghetti strings, hiding their eyes from her.

Her stomach churned and a sickness washed over her, and the small voice inside her gut had grown louder, yelling at her to Get them out of here! What are you waiting for? Get these poor souls out of here!

But she couldn’t, because she wouldn’t have made it out of the building alive with one of them, never mind all of them. There were too many men and too many guns outside the room, and more out there watching the roads into the place.

No. Her salvation—their salvation—lay ahead of them, farther up the road. All she had to do was stick to the plan, and that meant keeping herself, and them, alive until then.

God, I think I’m going to be sick.

She looked back at the door, at the black shadows moving back and forth across the small slit at the bottom. Someone shouted orders, and people scrambled to obey. The smell of grease and spilled oil threatened to (mercifully) overwhelm the hopelessness inside the room with her.

“Help us,” a small voice said.

She turned around and concentrated on the speaker. The girl was small, or maybe she was just thin from malnutrition. Allie couldn’t imagine how long she had been trapped on this nightmarish trip. Not just her, but all of them.

She gritted her teeth.

Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan!

“Please,” the girl said, whispering the heavily-accented word as if she was afraid the men outside would overhear. She wore a single one-piece dress with flower patterns; it had once been yellow and white but was now mostly yellow and brown.

“I will,” Allie said. “That’s why I’m here. To help.”

The girl looked back at her with large, confused dark eyes. She was tan, like the others in the room, or maybe that was just dirt and grease. Allie counted at least twenty other figures huddled in the darkness, but there might have been one or two that had managed to somehow squeeze into the corners. Reese, no doubt, would know the exact number.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Allie said. “We’re going to stay here for a while; then we’re going to leave. I’ll bring you food and water, and I’ll take care of you. No one’s going to hurt you. I promise. Do you understand? I promise.”

“Help us,” the girl said again. “Please.”

“I will,” Allie said, and smiled. Or tried to. It was the best she could do, and just the effort made her want to vomit. “What’s your name?”

The girl hesitated.

“My name’s Alice,” Allie said, and this lie came through easily. It helped that she had chosen an alias close to her real name. “What’s yours?”

“Sara,” the girl said. “Help us, Alice.”

“I will. I promise.”

Something that looked almost like hope flickered across the girl’s face, but it quickly vanished when the door behind them banged! open and two men Allie didn’t recognize entered the room. One of them was carrying two milk jugs, except there was water inside and the labels had been stripped away from heavy use. The second man was carrying a plain brown box with stacks of wrapped items inside.

“Reese says to get them to eat up,” one of the men said.

They put the water and box—filled with wrapped sandwiches, she saw now—on the floor next to her, then left without another word, slamming the door after them.

The girls began shuffling (hesitantly) forward, even the ones that had previously hidden themselves in the back. They could smell the food, and even Sara, who had retreated into the shadows at the men’s sudden appearance, leaned back into the light.

“Get them to trust you, in case a situation arises later where you’ll be needed. The more cooperative they are now, the easier it’ll be for all of us. And them.”

She pursed her lips into another forced smile and took out one of the sandwiches, holding it out to Sara. The girl looked at it, then at her, and Allie could almost see the cogs turning inside her head, measuring the risks and rewards of accepting the offer. She might have appeared small and weak, and the face might be dirty, but there was real intelligence between those big dark eyes.

“It’s okay, take it,” Allie said. “I’m here to help.”

When Sara still didn’t move to take the sandwich—and the others also kept back and followed her lead—Allie unwrapped it, broke off a small corner, and ate it. The turkey slices were dry, possibly even past their expiration date, and the white bread was too hard.

Sara watched Allie swallow, then, making her decision, reached out and took the sandwich from her. The girl took a big bite, swallowed it down, then turned around and shouted at the others in Spanish. Allie stood up and backed away as they rushed over, most of them going for the food, but a couple went for the water. They ripped the paper wrappers off—there were exactly twenty-three of them—and devoured the hard bread and dry turkey. In between bites, they took turns drinking from the jugs.

I’m going to hell. Whatever happens, if I survive this, I’m going straight to hell…

Allie turned and walked to the door when someone said, “Alice.”

She stopped and looked back.

Sara was wiping her hands on her dress and smiling at her. “Thank you, Alice,” she said in accented English.

Allie smiled back, said, “You’re welcome,” then quickly grabbed the lever and stepped outside before the girl could see the terrible truth on her face.

She hadn’t closed the door completely when a male voice said, “Sounds like things went well.”

She forced the anger and disgust down, shoving them deep into the part of her where she needed to hide them, because right now those emotions were liabilities that she couldn’t afford.

Stick to the plan!

“I wouldn’t know; it’s my first time, remember?” she said, looking over at Reese leaning against the wall next to her. He was reading her face, and for just an instant she was afraid he might be able to see her deception.

“Well, no one’s screaming or banging on the door, so I’d say that’s a very good sign,” he said.

She turned away from him, from those sharp, scrutinizing eyes, and took in the vehicles inside the warehouse instead. The place had been converted into a garage, with the semitrailer that had brought the girls parked in the middle as men worked on its engine and refueled it. They had already changed the tires and repainted the sides—it was now red and black instead of all-white. Even the cab didn’t look the same. They had done a complete makeover in less than a couple of hours.

The two guards from the park were moving around outside the building, their weapons still well-hidden inside their jackets. She guessed submachine guns by the shapes. A single paved road led to the front doors of the warehouse while hurricane fencing surrounded them. She couldn’t see the interstate anywhere, even though she knew it was close by.

“You told them to bring in the food and water while I was inside so the girls would connect them to me,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Reese shrugged, but didn’t confirm or deny.

“Why are you only just feeding them once a day?” she asked.

“It’s not by choice. I had to convince our employers just to give the girls this much. They wanted to give them just water for the entire trip, have them starved by the time they reach their destination.”

“They’ll be so grateful for the food they’ll forget they were stolen from their homes and families, is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“What happens if they don’t all make it to their destination?”

“That’s why we’re here, Alice. To make sure they do. Keeping them fit is someone else’s problem.”

“Are they all from Mexico?”

“They came through Mexico, but there are a lot of South Americans. Colombia, Venezuela, as far as Argentina.” He paused briefly, then, “They aren’t all stolen from their homes and families. Some were sold. There are a lot of desperate people out there, and youth and beauty are still prized commodities.”

Allie was grateful for the thick smell of spilled oil and grease around them, anything to force away the memories of the room behind her, of Sara and the others gorging themselves on stale sandwiches, grateful for just a bite, for a splash of humanity…

“You haven’t told me who we’re working for,” Allie said.

“Didn’t you ask Juliet before you agreed to be her replacement?” Reese asked.

“I did, but she didn’t know.”

“And you took the job anyway…”

“The money was too good to pass up.”

“And that’s how it’s supposed to be. We’re all just freelance contractors, Alice. It’s better not to know everything. Safer that way, for all parties involved.”

“But you know who they are?”

“Only because Dwight and I have worked for them long enough to have earned their trust. Or as much trust as you can earn with people who sell little girls like they’re canned goods, anyway. Do you know why Juliet doesn’t know who they are?”

“She never asked…”

“That’s right. And she was smart not to. She didn’t want to know about a lot of other things, too, so I never told her. She came, did her job, and left with a nice payday. Be like Juliet, Alice; knowledge is not your friend.”

“Ignorance is bliss, is that it?”

“In this case, yes. The truth is, you work for Dwight and me. And we work for them. That’s all you need to know.”

“What if something happens? What if we get separated and I need to contact them?”

“You don’t. Ever. There’s a reason all communications go through us. Through me, specifically. Your job—your only job—is to keep the girls cooperative until we deliver them. Nothing more, nothing less. When we get paid, you get paid, and not a second before. It’s the same for all of these guys. Besides,” Reese continued, “what’s that old saying? Curiosity killed the cat? Do yourself a favor and don’t be so curious, Alice. Do your job and go home and be glad, because this will, in all likelihood, be the easiest money you’ll ever make. You’ll thank me when this is over.”

Allie clenched her teeth but didn’t say anything.

Four

He couldn’t go meet the girl while both his legs were feeling as if they were engulfed in flames for some damn reason, so Hank took a quick detour. Kent Whitman’s pharmacy had a small line of people at the front register, but Hank bypassed the woman working behind the counter and went straight to the back.

“What do you want?” Whitman said when Hank pushed his way into the back room. The pharmacist was in the middle of separating stacks of pills.

“I need the good stuff,” Hank said.

“What ‘good stuff?’”

“You know what good stuff.” Hank pointed at his right leg, though of course Whitman couldn’t see anything through his pants. He had re-bandaged the wound the best he could while Diane’s voice nagged at him to go to the hospital and get it properly looked at.

Whitman didn’t even glance down at Hank’s leg and instead returned to his work. “I’m not giving you anything without a prescription.”

“Ain’t got time for that.”

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

“Someone shot me.”

“Someone shot you?” The pharmacist looked back at him. “Jesus Christ, Hank. I thought you were retired?”

“I am, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still get shot. Now you going to give me the good stuff, or not?”

“No,” Whitman said, and shook his head for emphasis.

Hank sighed and leaned on the counter, staring at Whitman. “Eight years ago, you came to me asking for help…”

Whitman didn’t let him finish. “Okay, okay. Jesus Christ, how long you going to hang that one over me?”

Whenever I need something from you, Hank thought, but said, “This is the last time.”

“Yeah, right,” Whitman said, but he abandoned his work and headed farther into the back. “Wait here.”

Hank leaned against the counter and wondered what Diane would say about him blackmailing one of their oldest friends.

I did it for a good reason, sweetheart.

Well, mostly.

And he could be wrong—and it was likely all in his head—but Hank swore the pain had started to lessen in both legs almost right away.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, old-timer.

The address the girl gave him was for a motel along the interstate in the neighboring state, and it took Hank over three hours to reach her. He spent that time mulling over everything he knew about the robbery at the diner—which wasn’t very much, when he really thought about it—and how much of a bad idea this was. Hank was glad he didn’t carry a cell phone, otherwise he wasn’t sure if he could fight the temptation to call Miller and tell him everything. The lack of a phone, as well as a general dislike of the young turd, helped Hank to keep on course.

By the time he pulled into the motel parking lot, the sun had begun to dip in the horizon and the establishment’s glowing neon sign had flickered to life in the background. From the number of vehicles, the rooms were only half full today, most occupied around the central hub where the manager’s office was located. The room the girl gave him was for the next-to-last door on the east side.

Hank parked in front of the room and sat behind the wheel of the Bronco, staring out his dirt-covered windshield, trying to convince himself he wasn’t just being a stupid old man who still craved action.

Go back home. This is one mystery you don’t need to solve.

What would Diane say?

He sighed and stuck his keys into his jacket pocket and climbed out of the truck, and was happy when his legs didn’t buckle or send streams of pain through his body as soon as he put pressure on them. Maybe it was the long drive that had numbed the wound or the pills Whitman had given him. The “good stuff,” after all, was called that for a reason.

“This is it; no more,” Whitman had said when he handed them over.

“Yeah, sure,” Hank had said, doing his very best to avoid his friend’s eyes.

He jingled his keys in his left coat pocket while rubbing the well-worn walnut grip of the snub nose in the right. It was a good thing he had asked for it back from Miller. He hadn’t brought any extra rounds, but Hank figured if he needed more than six bullets to deal with a little girl (He wondered how old she was. Ten? Twelve? Nineteen?), then he was already in trouble anyway.

He sucked in some of the nice, chilly air and walked to Room 23, but he hadn’t reached the concrete sidewalk that separated the rooms from the parking lot when the door opened and a small, thin figure looked out at him. She had one hand on the doorknob and the other in her jacket pocket.

“You’re late,” the girl said.

Am I? Oh, right; that side trip to Kent’s.

“Sorry,” he said. “I had to go see some guy—”

Hank froze at the sight of the creature emerging out of the dark interior of the motel room.

Wolf! his mind screamed before he realized how dumb that was (What would a wolf be doing inside a motel with a girl?). Even so, it took a few seconds before he could properly identify the beast as a large dog covered almost entirely in white fur with brown patches to break up the monotony. He had never been much of a dog person, so Hank had no idea what kind of breed the animal was. Though it looked huge to him at first blush, that was probably because it was standing next to the small girl. So what did that make the dog? Average size? Just slightly bigger?

“Is he dangerous?” Hank asked.

“Only to the right people,” the girl said.

Hank stared at her, not quite sure what to make of that last statement.

“Relax; he’s a pussycat,” the girl said, maybe seeing the doubt on his face.

But the way she had said it, with almost a slight smirk, made Hank not entirely believe her.

“Come on in,” she said.

Hank took a step forward, waiting for the dog to bare its teeth or show some form of aggression. Instead, the animal simply looked back at him, almost curious about what he was going to do next.

That makes two of us, buddy.

“You got a name?” he asked the girl.

“Uh huh,” she nodded.

He grinned. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen—maybe sixteen—but there was a world-weariness about her. He also made a mental note of how she kept her right hand inside her jacket pocket the entire time.

What’s she got in there?

She stood back, holding the door open with one hand, and he entered, but only because the dog had turned and wandered back inside. He walked across the carpeted floor, looking the modestly-decorated room over. Nothing fancy—a bed, a bathroom at the end, a heavy (and cheap) dresser to his right, and a TV hanging off the wall above it. The bed was a queen and looked lived in, and there was luggage on the floor next to the nightstand. More than one. Two, to be exact. He didn’t see a phone anywhere, though, which made him wonder how he had talked to the girl earlier. Did they even still have phones in motel rooms?

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours,” he said.

“Lucy.”

“Nice to meet you, Lucy.”

“We’ll see about that.”

The dog was lying on its stomach in the back hallway, large brown eyes watching him the entire time. He wondered how long it would take that thing to leap up and clamp what were probably very sharp teeth around his neck. Hank was hoping to not find out anytime soon. It might not have been an actual wolf, but fangs were still fangs.

“Turn around, mister,” the girl said.

Hank did—and sighed.

So that’s what she had in that pocket.

She had a gun in her right hand, and it was pointed at him. He didn’t like the way she held it—casually, next to her hip, as if she had done it many times before. It was one of the smaller model Glock semiautomatics, maybe a G306, which was popular with women for protection. It was officially a subcompact pistol, but there was nothing “sub” or “compact” about the ten .45 rounds it carried.

“Kid, look—”

“Take your hand out of your pockets,” she said, cutting him off. “Slowly.”

He did—first his left hand, then his right.

“What’s inside your right pocket?” she asked.

“A gun.”

“Your left?”

“Car keys.”

“Take the keys out first.”

He did. “Now the gun?”

She nodded. “Now the gun.”

He took it out by the handle—slowly, without any sudden movements. He didn’t see it, but he thought he might have heard the dog behind him moving closer. He could have made sure by turning his head to look, but he didn’t because that would have meant taking his eyes off the gun.

Christ, I hope that dog doesn’t try to bite my balls off.

“Relax, Apollo,” the girl said.

“Apollo?” Hank said.

“The dog. He doesn’t like men with guns.”

“What about little girls with guns?”

“I’m sixteen. Hardly little.”

“Younger than me.”

“Mister, dirt is younger than you.”

Hank chuckled. Despite everything, he was starting to really like her.

“Put the gun on the bed, please,” the girl said.

“At least you said please,” Hank said, and did as she instructed, then stepped back.

He finally risked a quick glance over his shoulder, and sure enough the mutt was on its feet and, somehow, some way, had crept up until it was on all fours, standing barely three feet behind him. He almost did a double take but was too afraid any quick movements might set the animal off.

Fucking ninja dog, or something.

He looked back at the girl instead. She had walked over and picked up his gun, then put it in the nightstand drawer next to the bed and closed it.

“Now what?” he asked.

“How did you get my number?”

Her gun was hanging at her side—and, more importantly, no longer pointed at him—which made him breathe easier. The last thing he wanted was to get shot. Again.

“The answer’s in my back pocket,” he said.

“Get it,” she said. Then, before he could move, “Slowly.”

He reached back and pulled out the folded piece of paper. It had torn slightly from being soaked in water but was still mostly in one piece. He held it out to her and she walked over, took it, then retreated just as quickly. She was maintaining enough space between them that Hank wasn’t sure he could cover them and go for the gun before she fired. Or, hell, before the dog took him from behind first. He could feel the animal moving around back there, even if he had to fight every instinct to check a second time.

Stay back, you stupid dog. You leave me alone, and I’ll do the same. Deal?

The girl, Lucy, opened the paper and looked down at it before glancing back up at Hank. “It’s her handwriting. Her sevens always look too much like her ones.”

“Her?”

She ignored his question and said instead, “Why did she give this to you?”

“I don’t have any clue, kid. She put it in my pocket after she shot me.”

“She shot you?”

He nodded and saw the girl’s mind working.

“There was a robbery earlier today, at a diner,” Hank began.

“I saw it on TV. Three people robbed some place called Benny’s?”

“Ben’s.”

“Same difference.” Then, “So she shot you?”

“I guess I didn’t really give her much of a choice.”

“She clipped you. You’re lucky,” Mary the EMT had said when she was bandaging him up earlier today.

Maybe it wasn’t luck, after all, now that he thought about it. Maybe it was the only way she could have stopped him without killing him. He remembered the argument she’d had with the other two, including the Brit, the one Hank was sure was the leader of the pack.

“What does that mean?” the girl asked. “You didn’t give her any choice?”

“I had a gun, and there were two of them.”

“Are you saying she saved your life?”

“I guess that’s one way to put it. Though I can’t figure out why she would put your phone number in my pocket.”

Apparently he wasn’t the only person trying to figure that one out. The girl cocked her head slightly to the side, her eyes glued on him.

“What are you, some kind of cop?” she asked. Then, before he could answer, “Or ex-cop?”

“How’d you know?”

“Well, you’re old.”

Hank grunted. He was liking this kid more and more. If nothing else, he’d never have to tread lightly around her or worry she was bullshitting him. His Diane was like that; it was one of the (Many, so many) reasons why he missed her so damn much.

“Yeah, I was a statey for a while,” he said.

“Statey?”

“State police, kid.”

“Oh.” She walked back to the nightstand and opened the drawer and pulled out some kind of tablet, using her thumb to turn it on. “What’s your full name?”

“Hank Pritchard.”

“Hank, like Hank Hill?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s a famous dad. Sold propane for a living.”

“Yeah, I guess. Like Hank Hill.”

She sat down on the side of the bed, put the tablet in her lap, and typed on it with one hand, using all five fingers. Hank didn’t know how the hell she did that while keeping the gun in her right hand, but then he’d always been a two-fingered typist. It was one of the curses of not owning a computer, a tablet, or a cell phone, though back when he was in the department he did have a ten-year-old desktop—

“You were a lieutenant,” the girl said, looking back up at him. Hank glimpsed his picture (or, at least, an old version of him) in uniform on her tablet’s screen. “Retired six years ago. Why?”

“I got old,” he said. “Is that my state police file?”

“Yes,” she said, and put the tablet down, slipping the Glock into her jacket pocket.

She had put the gun away so quickly, without any preamble whatsoever, that it actually took him a few seconds to realize he was no longer in danger of being shot, accidentally or otherwise. Of course, there was still the dog behind him…

“I’m sorry about the gun and everything,” the girl said, “but I had to be careful.”

“What’s going on here, kid? You wanna tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, and more importantly, why some woman I’ve never met slipped your number into my pocket while she was holding up a diner?”

“My guess is Allie recognized your face,” Lucy said. She looked down at his picture again. “You still look like your file. Well, mostly. Allie’s really good at collating information. It’s like some kind of superpower that she has. Before we came here, she did extensive research on everything, including local and state law enforcement in the area. I bet she recognized you right away.”

“So my next question is, who is Allie?”

“I guess you could say she’s my unofficial guardian.” She nodded at the dog behind Hank. “Apollo belongs to her. He’s been in a real funk since she left.”

Hank glanced back at the dog a second time and was surprised to see that it was almost right behind him. Jesus, damn! How’d the beast get so close to him without him even noticing?

He shook his head (Damn dog’s going to give me a heart attack) and looked back at Lucy. “So you wanna fill me in? What are you and your, uh, unofficial guardian doing out here? And why are you in this motel room while she’s running around in my state, robbing diners?”

Lucy didn’t answer right away but continued to stare at him, as if she could figure him out if she looked long and hard enough. Hank wanted to tell her he wasn’t that complicated, but he gave the kid her time.

Or ten seconds, anyway.

Finally, he said, “Kid, you gotta give me some answers. I took a big chance coming here and not handing that phone number over to the stateys. What the hell is going on?”

“She’s looking for a girl name Faith,” Lucy said. “Everything she’s doing out there right now is to find her.”

Five

Do it. Take them both out now, then rescue the girls. Faith might not even be there, but these girls are here, now. Sara, the others, they need your help. They need your help now. You know this is the right thing to do. So do it already.

But she didn’t do it.

She couldn’t, no matter how much she wanted to. Besides the fact that she had promised a mother she would do everything in her power to find her daughter, dead or alive, the logistics were all wrong.

At the moment she had the advantage, sitting in the backseat of the Ford with Dwight and Reese vulnerable in front of her. It wouldn’t have taken very much to draw the Sig Sauer and shoot Reese in the back of the head, then force Dwight at gunpoint off the road before finishing him off. But then what about the semitrailer?

The big rig was trailing about a hundred yards behind them at the moment. There was another vehicle, a van, farther back down the road, keeping an eye on the semi’s rear. It too was leaving a generous space to give the impression they weren’t together, with two-way radios used to keep in touch from time to time.

That was three vehicles to deal with, not to mention the difficulty of getting a semitrailer to stop. She couldn’t think of any ways to do that from the backseat of the Ford. There was the radio, which she could take after disposing of Reese, but the other drivers had been taking orders from Reese—and only Reese—all this time, so would they really obey Dwight’s or her instructions? Maybe, maybe not.

Reese. He was a problem. The biggest obstacle for her by far. He was the brains of the operation. That much was obvious. Which meant Reese had to go first.

So what was stopping her from acting?

Everything. Even if she could successfully kill Reese and Dwight agreed to force the semi off the road, there was still the matter of the two bodyguards in the back and the submachine guns underneath their jackets. She had dealt with multiple opponents before—some just as, if not more so, heavily armed—but never with more than twenty terrified girls stuck in the middle. As far as she knew, the trailer wasn’t bulletproof, and all it would take was one stray bullet…

“Someone’s got a lot on her mind,” Dwight was saying. She looked over and saw him staring at her in the rearview mirror. “What’s got you all Jack Handey back there?”

“Jack what?” she said.

“Jack Handey. That voiceover guy from Saturday Night Live.”

She shook her head.

“No one watches the classics anymore,” Dwight said.

“I’m just trying to figure out how you two hooked up,” Allie lied.

“Why, you don’t think we look like twins? We look more like twins than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.”

“He watches way too much TV,” Reese said, turning around in his seat to glance back at her. “Keeps trying to get me to watch with him.”

“This guy reads,” Dwight snorted. “I’ve never met anyone who actually reads as an adult.”

Reese grinned at her, as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?” and Allie forced a mercy smile back his way.

“So how did you two meet?” she asked.

“You tell her,” Dwight said.

“We were put together during a job in Panama a few years back,” Reese said. “Back then we were both working for the same organization, but we’d been considering going freelance—individually, mind you—for some time. Moneywise, there’s no comparison. You can make as much as you want working for yourself.”

She wasn’t surprised it was all about the money to them. It had been to Juliet, too. Or, at least, that’s what the woman had told her. Allie had taken everything she’d said with suspicion. It wasn’t hard to do, considering the other woman’s history.

She looked back at the rear windshield now, at the semitrailer behind them. Just a small dot, but its black and red paint job made it easy to pick out from the traffic, including all the other semis moving back and forth around them.

“You never told us where you know Juliet from,” Reese said.

“Same as you two; we’ve crossed paths in the past, and when she couldn’t take the job, she called me,” Allie said. The lie came easily; and it should, since she had rehearsed it numerous times in her head. “She’s taking twenty percent of my share.”

“Twenty percent for doing nothing?” Dwight chuckled before glancing over at Reese. “Maybe I hitched my ride to the wrong trailer.”

“I know you don’t mean that,” Reese said.

“You don’t think so?”

“We’ve been through too much together.”

“Yeah, well, I bet Juliet wouldn’t let me do all the driving.”

“But you’re a very good driver, Dwight.”

Dwight smirked. “Do you even know how to drive? I mean, you do know we drive on the right side of the road here, right?”

Reese smiled. “So I’ve been told.”

Listening to them bicker back and forth as if they were on a Sunday drive and not escorting young girls to a destination that might be worse than death made her want to gag. More than that, it made her want to reach for the P250 and end it all right here and now. Even if she couldn’t save the girls, whatever happened to them out here in the open roads had to be better than the life waiting for them at the end of it.

She hadn’t realized how much she had talked herself into acting until the radio on the dashboard squawked, and she reflexively froze just as one of her fingers made contact with the grip of the pistol holstered behind her back.

“Leader, looks like we may have a problem,” a male voice said through the radio. She recognized it as belonging to one of the two men in the van at the back of their caravan.

Reese picked up the radio from the dashboard and keyed it. “What kind of problem?”

“I got a state trooper behind me.”

“What’s he doing?”

“I think he’s following me. He’s moving pretty fast…”

“Maintain your speed and let him pass.”

“Gotcha—” He stopped in mid-sentence, then said, “Shit, I think he’s slowing down to match my speed.”

“Stay calm, Vanguard,” Reese said.

Vanguard was the codename for the minivan. The semitrailer was called Nest because, she assumed, of the little “chicks” being transported. It was all perfectly (and nauseatingly) logical.

“What’s going on?” Dwight asked, looking over.

Reese shook his head.

“Trouble?” a new voice said through the radio.

“Maintain your speed, Nest,” Reese said.

“Roger that.”

“Vanguard, what’s the trooper doing now?” Reese said into the radio.

“I don’t have a clue,” Vanguard said. Then, less than two seconds later, “Crap.”

“Status.”

“He just lit me up.”

“Fuck me,” Dwight said.

Reese sighed and seemed to take a moment to collect himself.

“What should we do?” Vanguard asked.

“Pull over,” Reese said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Pull over?” Dwight said. “That’s the last thing he should be doing.”

“Chances are the trooper’s already punched his license plate into his database and called in a description of the vehicle,” Reese said. “The plate will run fine; it’s legit, so there’s no reason to panic.” He keyed the radio: “Nest, there’s a rest stop coming up in three miles. Pull into it and wait for us.”

“Understood,” Nest answered.

“Vanguard, go radio silent.”

“Going silent,” Vanguard said, and Allie detected a noticeable quiver in the man’s voice for the first time. He might not have been scared, but he was definitely spooked.

“Now what?” Dwight asked.

“Slow down,” Reese said. “Let Nest past us by, then make a U-turn.”

Dwight took his foot off the accelerator. Allie twisted in her seat and watched as the red and black semitrailer caught up to them, then moved over to the next lane before passing them by. A man with a red beard and a beat-up ball cap in the front passenger seat of the big rig’s cab gave their car a nod out his window just before the large vehicle overtook them.

The Ford slowed down further, Dwight watching the oncoming traffic, before making a quick (and very illegal) U-turn. He hit the gas and they shot back down the road.

“Slow down,” Reese said. “I just want to see what’s happening, not draw the cop’s attention.”

Dwight took his foot off the gas until they were barely doing three miles over the speed limit.

“This went to shit fast,” Dwight said quietly, almost to himself.

“Nothing’s gone anywhere yet,” Reese said.

Reese, Allie noted, had remained impossibly calm. She marveled at the man’s control and at the same time reminded herself that if she ever had to pick who to shoot first, it would have to be Reese. She didn’t ever want to end up in a gunfight with this man.

“How are we going to handle this?” she asked.

“Without a firefight, if at all possible,” Reese said.

“That’s the trick, isn’t it?”

“Indeed.”

“Not exactly part of my job description…”

“Hopefully we won’t have to expand your duties,” Reese said.

As the familiar flashing of red and blue lights came into view about half a mile in front of them, Allie couldn’t decide if she was glad or petrified by the turn of events. Did she want this to happen? Was this the best thing to happen, or the worst? On the one hand, being out here alone among wolves was terrifying despite everything she had been through and done, and the prospect of having allies was exhilarating. But if they were stopped here, if she was forced to show her hand, all her plans to rescue Faith would go up in smoke and she would have to start all over again…

Sara. Think about Sara and the others. If you can save them here, now…

She wrapped her fingers around the grip of her gun and mentally readied herself for what was coming next, what she would have to do. She focused on the back of Reese’s head, in front and slightly to the right of her, just barely visible behind the front passenger seat’s headrest.

One to the back of the head. Whatever you do, take Reese first. Take Reese first.

“Easy does it,” Reese was saying from the front seat as they neared the police lights. “Don’t attract any unnecessary attention.”

The state trooper’s squad car was parked behind Vanguard’s van, both of them idling at the shoulder of the road as Dwight drove the Ford past them. She spotted two troopers still sitting inside their vehicle, and the last thing Allie saw was the slightly anxious face of Vanguard’s driver, standing outside the van, the driver-side door open behind him, as he looked back at them as they drove by and kept going.

“Go for one more mile, then turn back,” Reese said.

“And then what?” Dwight asked.

“We’ll play it by ear—”

The very familiar pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire crackled behind them. Allie heard them clear as day even with the windows rolled up, and so did Dwight and Reese.

“Well, fuck,” Dwight said.

“Oh well,” Reese said.

Dwight slammed on the brake and spun the steering wheel in the same fluid motion and had them turned around and flying back up the interstate in less time than it took her to see the trees blurring by outside her window. It might have looked like reckless driving to an outsider, but Allie knew better. There was, she now understood, a reason why Dwight always drove.

Allie drew the P250 and put it in her lap, while Reese did the same with his Glock just before he turned around in his seat and looked back at her. “This time, shoot to kill, understand?”

She nodded back, praying that none of the fear and doubt showed on her face. She must have succeeded, because Reese turned back around without another word. She relaxed her grip on the gun. Not too much, just enough that she could feel blood circulating through her digits again.

The van and state trooper’s vehicle came up on them faster this time because of Dwight’s speed. Vanguard’s drivers stood alertly (panicked?) on the side of the road, gripping MP5Ks that dangled from slings over their shoulders. Both men, their faces flushed with adrenaline, looked over as the Ford neared before skidding to a stop in the middle of the road next to them.

Reese had already begun to power down his window even before the Ford stopped moving, and he looked out and said to the two men with that (How is he doing that?) calm voice of his, “Get back in your vehicle, and let’s go.”

The two men nodded and ran back to the van.

There were no signs of the troopers, but when she saw the multiple jagged lines of holes painted across the windshield of the squad car, she didn’t have to wonder about where their occupants were or what shape they were in.

Dwight stepped on the gas and they were moving up the road again, as if nothing had happened. She looked around them, grateful for the lack of cars along all four lanes at the moment, because no witnesses meant no more casualties.

Except for those two bastards in the squad car.

Allie had to remind herself that she couldn’t have done anything to save them, not in the backseat of the Ford with Dwight and Reese. But knowing it and accepting what had happened were two different things, and she felt a tightness in her gut as the Ford continued to pick up speed.

She twisted in her seat and looked out the rear windshield, spotting Vanguard as it quickly caught up to them. Too quickly. “They’re coming up too fast.”

“Jacked up on adrenaline,” Dwight said.

Reese picked up the radio from the dashboard and said into it, “Vanguard, slow down. You’re too close.”

Vanguard didn’t respond over the two-way, but the vehicle started drifting back.

“Well, this is a mess,” Dwight said, and she thought he sounded slightly amused (?). “They’re not going to be happy.”

“That’s why there are contingency plans in place,” Reese said.

“Still, they’re going to be pissed about this.”

They, Allie thought. Who is they?

“It happens,” Reese said.

“Spare me the Zen bullshit,” Dwight said.

“You should try it sometime, partner.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it going to take?”

“Happy thoughts.”

“Was that a joke?” Dwight said. “Shit. Two years together, and that must be the first joke you’ve ever told.”

“You just haven’t been paying attention,” Reese said before keying the radio and saying into it, “Nest, come in.”

He didn’t have to wait long for a response: “What happened?”

Reese ignored the question and said, “Pull out of the rest stop and proceed to the alternate route.”

“What happened back there?” Nest asked again.

“Get going now,” Reese said, raising his voice slightly—not out of impatience, she realized, but rather just to remind the man on the other end of the radio who was in charge.

It worked, and Nest said, “Understood.”

“What about us?” the man from the van asked through the radio. He sounded excited, maybe even out of breath.

Definitely jacked up on adrenaline.

“You’re compromised,” Reese said. “If you stay with us, you’ll endanger the whole job. Ditch your vehicle and find another one, then proceed to the backup location and wait for further instructions.”

The two men known as Vanguard didn’t respond right away.

“Do you understand,” Reese said.

“Understood,” Vanguard finally answered.

“We’ll be in touch through the secondary method. Until then, destroy this radio and wipe your phones. You are now officially persona non grata.”

“What about our cut?”

“You’ll receive payment as usual. Nothing’s changed. As far as we’re concerned, you did your job.”

“Roger that,” Vanguard said, sounding relieved that time.

“They fucked up their job is more like it,” Dwight said when Reese put the radio back on the dashboard.

“Yes, well, they don’t have to know that,” Reese said.

The familiar sight of the black and red semitrailer appeared in front of them, slowing down just enough for Dwight to drive past and eventually take the lead once again.

It felt like a very long time before she saw one, two—three state troopers flash by on the opposite lane. They were already moving at high speeds, and she suspected the only thing keeping them from going even faster were civilian vehicles that didn’t get out of their way fast enough despite their blaring sirens and flashing lights.

She followed the speeding cruisers through the rear windshield, their red and green lights vanishing one by one over a hump in the road.

Jesus, this got bad real fast.

The semi was easily visible behind them, the height of its cab looming over a station wagon moving between their vehicles. She told herself that as long as she kept Nest in sight, she could still save Sara and the others and at the same time find and rescue Faith on the other side of this nightmare.

And all she had to do to accomplish both those things was be lucky.

Be really, really lucky…

Six

“Her name’s Faith,” Lucy said, showing him a sixteen-year-old teen on the tablet. It was a high school picture, and the girl, blonde with blue eyes, had a big, bright smile on her face as she posed. “She went missing about two years ago when she was seventeen, along with her boyfriend, during a cross-country trip to visit some colleges in the east. They found the boyfriend a few weeks later, in a shallow grave about a mile from where their car was eventually located.”

Lucy swiped at the screen and Faith’s image was replaced with a body partially covered in dirt, surrounded by shrubbery. It looked like a boy, but it could have been anything given its decomposing state. Hank had seen bodies before, but the state of this one still made him physically flinch.

“There was a big manhunt,” Lucy continued. “Local, state, even the FBI. Faith is a pretty girl, and white, and she got plenty of media coverage. But it never lasts. Sooner or later, the media finds another pretty girl to focus on. Two years later and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who even remembers there was a big brouhaha over her.”

“I was already off the force by then,” Hank said. “But I don’t remember seeing it on the news.”

“She didn’t go missing in your state, lieutenant. There was some national news coverage, but you’d have to be a diehard cable news crime watcher to even have glimpsed it. I looked at the old footage; it was basically a minute here, a minute there, nothing that would have stuck in anyone’s mind.”

Hank nodded. He knew all about how fickle the media could be when it came to crime. People who didn’t work in law enforcement never really understood just how much went on that no one cared about, whether because the victims weren’t interesting enough, weren’t pretty enough, or, in many cases, hadn’t been born white enough.

He took a moment and opened the Coke he’d gotten from the vending machine outside and took a sip, balancing the bottom of the can on top of the chair he was straddling. The girl sat on the bed with the tablet while the dog lay on his stomach, chin resting on the dirty motel carpet. The animal looked bored, which Hank preferred over those big brown eyes watching him every second he was inside the room. As hard as it was to believe, Apollo actually seemed to respond to the lack of tension by lowering his guard.

Dog’s smarter than most people I’ve dealt with.

“So that’s what Allie and I are doing all the way out here,” Lucy said. “We’ve been looking for Faith for the last eleven months. Trust me, we wouldn’t be here otherwise. No offense, but there’s not exactly a lot to do around here.”

“None taken,” Hank said. “So, this Faith girl. She’s a friend of you two?”

“No, we don’t know her.”

“Friend of the family?”

“No. Her mom just asked us for help.”

“So she’s paying you…”

Lucy shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. We’re helping her because she asked us to, and because we can.”

Hank didn’t respond right away. Yes, he understood what the sixteen-year-old girl was telling him, but he didn’t really understand it. In his experience, people didn’t pack up their lives and check into a seedy motel in the middle of nowhere just to help out a perfect stranger. And they certainly didn’t invest eleven months of their lives doing it.

Lucy was smiling at the confused look on his face. “We’re kind of independently wealthy. Well, Allie is, anyway. We don’t need the money.”

“How ‘kind of’”—he used air quotes—“independently wealthy are we talking about?”

“Enough that we can get information we’re not supposed to have.”

“Like my police records.”

“Uh huh,” the girl nodded. “And a lot of other things.”

“And the two of you are out here looking for a girl that went missing two years ago? What makes you think she’s even still alive?”

“Because Allie found her.”

“You said that before. How?”

“Allie’s very good at finding people. She once spent ten years tracking one person. I guess you could say she’s honed her skills even more since. It helps that she has money to spend this time, where before she had to dig for every scrap of it herself. Makes things even easier.”

“Still, two years is a long time, kid. I’ve been out there. People go missing all the time. Sometimes on purpose, other times not. They don’t usually show back up two years later.”

“Allie’s sure enough that she did what she did.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

Lucy picked up the tablet again, and Hank watched her fingers dancing across the screen. He barely knew how to peck at his old computer keyboard back when he had one, but to see the kid tap-tap-tapping up a storm reminded Hank just how old he was.

Way too old to be in a motel room with a kid and a dog, that’s for damn sure. What if someone shows up? How am I going to explain this?

Lucy finished and held up the tablet showing a picture of a blonde woman in slacks and a black jacket standing in the street. He could tell she was pretty, as if she had just stepped out of a photo shoot even though the shot was clearly taken from a distance and without the woman’s knowledge. There were buildings with Spanish writing in the background.

“This is Juliet,” Lucy said. “Or, it was Juliet three months ago.”

She flicked at the screen, then held it up again. The same woman, except this time she was wearing a black-and-white striped uniform. The glamour was gone, replaced by unkempt hair and angry, hard eyes.

“This is Juliet three weeks ago,” Lucy said.

“What happened to her?”

“She’s in a Mexican prison. I guess looking good isn’t a priority down there.” She put the tablet down. “Allie found a link between Juliet and Faith; then it took her a month to track the woman down.”

“In prison?”

“Well, she wasn’t in prison at the time.”

Lucy smiled, and Hank thought, Oh man, do I really want to hear what’s coming next?

“How did she end up in prison?” he asked anyway.

“Allie needed leverage. Some way to get Juliet to cooperate. So one day, while Juliet was staying at a four-star hotel in Mexico City, a drug-sniffing dog found a backpack full of heroin in her room.”

“She framed the woman?”

“Yes,” Lucy said without hesitation.

“Jesus Christ.” Hank stood up and began pacing the room. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” the girl said, and he thought she might have rolled her eyes at him behind his back. “Juliet is no saint. She’s been helping bad guys smuggle girls back and forth across the Texas-Mexico border. The woman is a real bitch.”

“And you have proof of that? Her criminal activities?”

“Of course.”

Hank calmed down and looked back at the girl, saw the confidence in her face, the look of someone who was one-hundred percent certain they were on the side of the angels. He didn’t want to tell her that he’d encountered plenty of people who had thought that way, except the evidence proved them wrong.

“Go on,” he said.

“After she was incarcerated, Allie visited Juliet and told her what happened, why she was just convicted of smuggling drugs and was never going to get out until she was an old lady. If she got out at all.”

“You’re serious…”

“As a stroke,” the girl said. Then, without missing a beat: “Why do you think Allie is out there right now traveling with two assholes while there’s a semitrailer hauling more girls to a place where everything they are, everything they will be, will be stripped from them now and forever?” The girl’s face grew dark. “Juliet put her in touch with them. Told them she was an old friend who could be trusted to replace her while she dealt with…personal issues.”

“They don’t know she’s in jail.”

“Not a clue. These gigs are always last-minute affairs—a day, maybe two days of lead time, which is why they always work with the same groups of people. They needed someone to replace Juliet, and Juliet recommended Allie. Or Alice, as they know her. Allie had to wait almost a month and a half for that call to finally come in, but she can be very patient.”

“And somehow all of this led your friend to robbing Ben’s Diner?”

“I don’t know what happened there,” Lucy said. “Maybe it was some kind of test. I don’t know for sure. But she recognized you from her research. Like I said, you don’t really look all that different.”

“Bigger,” he said, rubbing his gut.

“Just a tad,” she said, and pinched her fingers together.

He grunted and walked to the window, then looked out at the parking lot outside. He could see Lucy’s reflection in the glass, watching him closely from the bed, maybe trying to decide if she could trust him with the rest of her secrets. It was a good question, because Hank wasn’t sure he wanted to know the rest of it.

Oh, who are you kidding, old man. You didn’t come here to grab a can of Coke. You want this.

You miss it. Admit it. You miss the action.

Hank knew all about slavery rings. Too much, in fact. It was a disgusting and brutal trade, the kind where girls—the younger the better—were treated like chattel, passed from place to place, criminal to criminal. Someone like Faith—a blue-eyed, blonde all-American girl—would fetch a better price than most, and for a longer period. But would she last two years?

“Tell me the rest,” Hank said. “How does Allie plan on locating Faith?”

“By getting to the end of the line,” Lucy said.

“The end of what line?”

“Where the girls are being transported to. Finding the people behind all of this. And if that doesn’t work out…” Lucy shrugged. “I think Allie is playing most of it by ear. She’s pretty good at improvising.”

“It’s a dangerous game she’s playing. Ben’s Diner, these two guys she’s riding around with…”

“Trust me, lieutenant, you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know. Allie more than anyone.”

“Which leads me back here. Why did she give me your phone number?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “Maybe she thought you could help.”

“Help how?”

“You’re a former police lieutenant, right?”

“State police lieutenant, yeah.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, one’s state—” He stopped and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. Why would she think I can help?”

“I don’t know, but Allie doesn’t do anything without a reason. If she gave you my number, that means she wanted you to contact me.”

“She read my files, so she would already know I’m retired.”

“That’s a given, yeah.”

“Meaning…what, exactly?”

“I don’t know. We never discussed bringing someone else into this. It was always just going to be the two of us. I guess when she saw you out there, she took advantage of it. So you’re right; she definitely gave you my number for a reason.”

Hank narrowed his eyes at the darkening parking lot outside. No matter how many times he rolled the question around in his head, the answers didn’t come. Why did Allie send him here? Why did she think he could help them? Or was there another reason he wasn’t seeing?

“Maybe the fact you’re retired is why,” Lucy said.

He looked back at her. “I don’t understand…”

“I mean, cops have rules, right?”

“I’m not constricted by procedure anymore, if that’s what you mean.”

“Is that a good thing?”

He shrugged. “It depends on what she expects from me. Cops have a lot of paperwork to file, hoops to jump through, before they can even take a fart. It’s a real pain in the ass, and one of the reasons I don’t miss the job. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad news?”

“I don’t have a badge anymore. All I got is that snub nose in the nightstand drawer. I don’t have people to answer to, yeah, but it also means I don’t have anyone who answers to me either, you understand?”

She nodded, and he thought she might have looked a little disappointed. Oh, who was he kidding. She looked a lot disappointed.

“So what does all of this mean?” she asked.

“I have no idea, kid,” Hank said. “I don’t even know where your friend is—and neither do you—so I don’t know how she expects me to help her in the first place. For all we know, she might have just sent me here to babysit you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I can take care of myself. Besides, Apollo is here.”

“He’s just a dog…”

Lucy smiled at him.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. Then, “You said we don’t even know where she is right now, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I think I might know.” The girl stood up and walked over to him with the tablet. “One of my jobs is to monitor all the local and national news feeds. I saw this one earlier today before you showed up.”

Lucy pushed a small box on the tablet that widened by itself until it filled the whole screen. It was a video feed of a newscast showing the remains of a state trooper cruiser parked on the side of the interstate. Its front windshield was covered in holes, and Hank could make out blood on the front seat upholstery. Uniformed troopers were barricading the scene even as vehicles continued to flash across the TV camera on both sides.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

“Someone killed two state troopers earlier during what the news is calling a routine traffic stop,” Lucy said.

“And you think Allie has something to do with this?”

“I don’t think she shot them, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Kid, she shot me.”

“She clipped you,” Lucy said. “Trust me, if Allie shot to kill, you’d be dead right now. She didn’t do this, but look at that damage.”

“Automatic weapons fire.”

“Yeah. Who would carry that kind of firepower around and shoot up a state trooper car with it?”

“People who can’t afford to be stopped or questioned.”

Lucy nodded. “I think so, too.” She put the tablet away under her arm. “So now we know Allie’s last known location, along with the direction she’s headed.”

“That’s something, I guess,” Hank said. “Still doesn’t tell us where she is right now, or where she’s going. Or what she thinks I can do to help her.”

“I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, either,” Lucy said, “but she didn’t have to give you my number. And yet, from what you told me, she took a big risk doing it. She wouldn’t have done that without a reason.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yes, I do.”

“How?”

“I know Allie.”

Hank didn’t reply. He looked out at the darkness instead.

Somewhere out there, two of his brothers were dead. They weren’t his brothers by blood, but that didn’t matter when you wore the same uniform. He wondered if he knew them or their families. Cops tended to breed cops; it was either a storied tradition or a vicious cycle, depending on your perspective, and it wasn’t unusual to have the kid of someone retired show up and assume the old man’s locker.

He glanced over at the small girl standing next to him. She barely came up to his chin, but she looked so much older than the first time he saw her standing at the motel door, greeting him.

“What is she, an ex-cop?” Hank asked.

“Who?”

“Allie.”

Lucy seemed almost amused by the question. “No.”

“Ex-military? Some kind of ex-government spook?”

“No, nothing like that. She’s just someone who cares.”

“Kid, you don’t do the things she’s doing if you’re just a civilian who just happens to care too much. Even if you are independently wealthy like you’re telling me she is. Bruce Wayne in the comic books, sure, but people like that don’t exist in real life.”

The girl smiled back at him.

“What?” he said.

“I’m just shocked you know who Bruce Wayne is.”

“Batman’s been around, kid. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are things out there older than me.”

“You’re right,” Lucy said, “that is hard to believe.”

He grunted. “Smart ass.”

Seven

The alternate plan took them to an old drive-in movie theater, surrounded by thick woods, about half a mile off the interstate. The place hadn’t seen a customer in years—maybe decades—and weeds had begun breaking through the concrete parking lot, or at least the parts that she could see as their car’s headlights swept across them. It was dark when they pulled up next to a lone, abandoned building in the middle of the place and stopped in front of a sign that was missing all of its letters.

They climbed out of the Ford, leftover debris crunching under Allie’s shoes. She looked over at the semitrailer as it rumbled loudly through the driveway that connected the clearing to the road. She couldn’t make out the interstate beyond the thick trees, but the staccato blinking of headlights on the other side was hard to miss. They were, for all intents and purposes, hidden from the world back here, which was the reason Reese had chosen it as his backup location. It was a perfect spot to regroup.

“How long are we staying here?” she asked as they watched the semitrailer’s headlights splashing across them as it neared.

“We need new transportation, along with a new Vanguard,” Reese said.

“He’s being his usual paranoid self,” Dwight said. “We don’t need new transportation. They’re looking for a white van. Full stop. There’s nothing that ties us to the shooting.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Reese said. “There’s no point in risking it.”

“This job’s already taking too long…”

“Something that’s worth doing is worth doing right, my friend. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”

“Among other things,” Dwight grunted, but didn’t continue the argument.

Reese walked forward and waved at the approaching semi, then directed it to a spot nearby. As she watched the big rig come to a lurching stop, she couldn’t help but think about Sara and the other girls crammed inside the vehicle’s narrow metal walls.

Not yet, not yet…

Reese jogged over to the semi, climbed up the step outside the passenger-side door, and leaned in through the window. He said something to the driver, who shut off the engine and turned off the bright headlights.

“What about the girls?” she asked Dwight, who had remained behind at the Ford with her. Was that on purpose, she wondered, to keep an eye on her?

“They’ve been riding around back there for four days now,” Dwight said. “A few more extra hours won’t make any difference.”

You think so? I’d like to shove your ass in there and see how you like it after four days.

Reese had walked back to them. “I need to call in, let them know we’re going to be delayed.”

“You gonna tell them about the shooting?” Dwight asked.

“I have to. Start lying now, and we won’t be able to stop.”

“They won’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, but it is what it is.”

“I know exactly what they’re going to tell you: ‘Push on through; don’t wait for replacements.’”

“And I’ll tell them what I’m telling you: It’s all under control, as long as everyone stays calm.”

Dwight smirked and said to her, “If you haven’t grasped it yet, ol’ Reese here’s a stickler for caution. You would think the guy used to be a CPA or something in a previous life.”

Reese ignored his partner and put some space between them before taking out a cell phone from his pocket. Allie didn’t move and was hoping to hear something—maybe some details about who they were—but Dwight ruined that, too.

“Need you inside the trailer, Alice in Wonderland,” the man said, holding out a Maglite he had retrieved from the Ford’s glove compartment.

“Why?” she asked.

“To do your job and make sure the girls are okay.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

He shrugged. “I don’t, but they pay us by the head. And a busted one just doesn’t pay nearly as much.”

Asshole, she thought, but took the flashlight and headed for the trailer.

The two men in the semi had climbed out of the cab and were milling around. They both wore jackets, and despite the semidarkness, with only small pools of light emanating from the Ford and semi’s ceiling lights, she could just make out the shapes of pistols in holsters behind their backs.

“I need to open the trailer,” Allie told them.

They met her halfway, one of them fishing out a key ring from his pocket. Allie flicked the flashlight on and off to check it, then stood back and waited as the two men unlocked the twin doors—

“Hey!” a male voice shouted, coming from behind them.

The two men froze and looked back at her, but Allie was too busy turning around just as a lone figure emerged out of the shadows from across the parking lot. A flashlight bounced up and down in front of the man, and Allie quickly turned hers off and pocketed it, then let her right hand drop to her side.

“What are you guys doing here?” the figure shouted as he picked up his pace toward them.

Allie glanced back at the two men. They were still clinging to the door handles, as if unsure what to do. “Leave it,” she said.

They let go of the doors and stepped away, but she noticed they had left the lock unlatched. All it would take was for someone on the other side to give a push and the doors would swing open. Sara was a small girl and weak from the “four days on the road,” but all it would take was one or two more of the other girls to lend a hand…

No, she thought, looking back across the parking lot. Not yet.

Besides, there was just one man, and he could have been anyone from a cop to an unarmed civilian. Either way, he wasn’t going to be very much help to her against Dwight and Reese and the two behind her.

Not yet. Not yet…

“You’re not supposed to be here!” the figure shouted.

Neither Dwight nor Reese had answered the man. Reese had casually put away the phone he had been talking into and walked around the Ford while Dwight remained standing next to the driver-side door. They were just twenty yards from her, but she thought she could make out Dwight’s body stiffening noticeably at the sight of the lone approaching figure.

Reese was the exact opposite. The man remained calm and she thought, Jesus Christ, he must have ice water in his veins. Either that, or he’s some kind of goddamn tin man robot.

“Hello!” Reese shouted back, though he probably didn’t have to because the stranger was less than thirty yards from them now. A beam of light hit Reese in the face and he flinched a bit, but he managed to smile through it anyway. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re the one trespassing on private property; you tell me,” the man said.

She could make out a shock of white hair on a long, lanky body. The man was wearing black (or was that blue?) slacks and an equally dark windbreaker. There was some kind of embroidery on his shoulder, but it didn’t look like any law-enforcement shield she’d ever seen. As he stepped into the Ford’s ring of lights, she could just make out the word Security stenciled across his jacket’s left breast pocket.

“We’re just parking for a while, to rest a little,” Reese said. The security guard walked right up to him, no doubt drawn to Reese because he was the only one speaking (probably just as Reese had planned, too). “It’s been a long trip, and everyone was tired.”

The guard shined his flashlight on the Ford, then at Dwight, who squinted and looked away. Dwight’s right hand, Allie saw, didn’t drift away from his hip. Like the rest of them, including her, Dwight had a gun holstered behind his waist. It was the most effective way to hide a weapon from a curious pair of undiscerning eyeballs, like now.

The security guard’s light finally made its way to Allie, then the two men behind her, before resting on the side of the black and red trailer.

“All of you together?” the guard asked. He had turned in her direction, and in doing so gave her a good look at the belt around his waist—he had a radio on one hip and a revolver on the other.

So he wasn’t unarmed after all, which made the odds slightly better. Slightly, but not by a whole lot. However she wanted to look at it, it was still two guns against four, and what were the chances the stranger wasn’t going to react badly when he saw her drawing her sidearm?

Not yet. Not yet…

“Yep, we’re together,” Reese was saying to the guard.

“What’s in the trailer?” the man asked.

“Furniture.”

“You guys movers or something?”

“Just those two,” Reese said, nodding at the big rig’s drivers. Then, without missing a beat, “We didn’t know this was private property.”

“You didn’t see the sign across the entrance?”

“Afraid not. If we had, we wouldn’t have thought it was okay to park here for the night.”

Reese wasn’t lying. She hadn’t seen any signs, a gate, or anything that would indicate this was private property when they turned into the entrance, either.

“Dammit, kids must have stolen it again,” the security guard said. “They’ve been getting drunk inside the building,” he said, indicating the empty structure next to them. “We found everything from beer cans to half-smoked joints to used condoms in there. That’s why we’re here now, to keep an eye on the place. Owners have big plans for the area; they want to put up some kind of strip mall or something. Last thing they want is some stupid kids to OD or drink themselves to death on the property.”

Even as the man was talking, Allie saw the recognition flashing across Reese’s face: The security guard had said we. Which meant he wasn’t alone.

Maybe…

“We had no idea,” Reese said. “Sounds like a real headache.”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” the security guard said with more than a little hint of pride. “But you folks still have to move on. Can’t have people using this place as a rest stop, you understand.”

“I completely understand, but would it be okay if we stayed here for just a few more hours?”

“Sorry, no can do. Like I said, private property.”

“One hour—”

“No, sorry,” the man said, cutting Reese off. His voice rose slightly when he added, “You guys gotta go, or we’ll have to report you. Owners are real strict about this, and that means we gotta be, too.”

Reese and Dwight exchanged a wordless glance. It was very brief—not even a second as far as she could tell—but it was apparently all they needed.

Oh, dammit.

“You guys have to go,” the guard said again. He had casually switched the flashlight over to his left hand while resting his right palm on the grip of his holstered revolver. It wasn’t a very subtle move, an attempt at intimidation if she had ever seen one, and Allie thought, You have no idea what you’re up against, you poor bastard.

“Are you sure we can’t talk about this?” Reese asked.

“Sorry. I’d let you stay as long as you needed if it was up to me, but it’s not.”

“We understand,” Reese said.

He held out his right hand—for a handshake—and took a step toward the guard, and at the very same instant she glimpsed Dwight reaching behind his back.

No, no, not again.

Allie started reaching for her gun, praying the two men behind her didn’t take that as an indication to do the same. If she could grab a brief moment of surprise, maybe—just maybe—she could find a way to save the security guard and herself, and then Sara and the girls. She might have laughed out loud at the odds against her accomplishing any of those things if she took even a second to actually think about it, but thank God she didn’t have the luxury at the moment—

Bright headlights came out of nowhere and washed over Reese and the guard before it moved over to the Ford and Dwight, who winced at the sudden brightness and turned his body to protect not just his eyes, but also the sight of the gun still in its holster behind him. Allie gripped the Sig Sauer at her back but didn’t draw it, even if her chest tightened.

She turned toward the source of the lights—a golf cart, its motor whirring in the darkness—gliding smoothly across the parking lot floor toward them. The security guard with white hair glanced over his shoulder before turning and waving.

Reinforcements?

She looked back at Reese and Dwight and saw another quick exchange between the two men before Dwight casually brought his right (gun) hand out from behind his back. Allie did the same thing, then glanced over at the two men behind her. They hadn’t moved from their spots, and their hands remained exposed at their sides.

Allie looked back at the approaching golf cart and saw a single head bobbing behind the steering wheel. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, not that it mattered. It was one more gun, which meant the odds had improved significantly.

Or had they?

They were security guards. What were the chances either one of them were ex-law enforcement and had any experience? What were the odds they could stand up against Reese and Dwight in a gunfight? Both Reese and Dwight were killers. Reese, in particular, was going to be a handful.

Kill him first. Then Dwight. Then…the two behind you.

She was wrong. The odds weren’t any better. As soon as she shot Reese or Dwight, the two behind her would open up…on her. Could she really count on the two security guards to back her up? Maybe, maybe not. The only thing the guard standing in front of her right now knew for certain was that she was a part of Reese’s group. To him, she wasn’t a potential ally. To him, she would just be a stranger with a gun.

Not yet. Not yet…

The decision was easier for her to stomach because Reese and Dwight weren’t going to act. If there had been just the one guard, they wouldn’t have hesitated. But with two, and potentially more out there somewhere…

“I guess we should get going,” Reese was saying to the guard. “We’ve got a lot of miles ahead of us.”

“Sorry about this,” the guard said, and Allie thought he actually did sound sympathetic. He had also removed his palm from his gun. “But you know how it is—what the bosses say, goes.”

“No worries,” Reese said, and turned around and nodded at Dwight, then over at her.

Dwight climbed into the Ford as Allie walked over.

“Sorry, miss,” the older man said to her. “I would if I could.”

Then we’d probably both be dead, and God knows who else.

She gave the man a half-smile then climbed into the backseat.

In front of her, Reese closed his car door and glanced up at the rearview mirror. “You good?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

Dwight started the car and turned them around using all of the empty parking lot space, then pointed the sedan back toward the way they had come. Both Dwight and Reese checked their side mirrors the entire time to make sure the semi, which took longer to get moving, not to mention turn, was still behind them. It wasn’t until they were back on the interstate and moving with the flow of traffic that Allie finally allowed herself to breathe a little easier.

Reese picked up the radio from the dashboard and said into it, “Nest, start distancing yourself, but keep us in sight the entire time.”

“Roger that,” Nest answered through the radio.

Reese put the radio back on the dashboard, and they drove in silence for a while.

Ten seconds, then twenty, before Dwight finally said, “What the hell was that about? That place was good when I scouted it a month ago. There wasn’t any damn security on the premises back then.”

“A lot of things can change in a month,” Reese said.

“Fucking kids.”

“Uh huh.”

“So what now?”

“These moments are why I put in all those backup plans that you never think are necessary, partner.”

Dwight grunted. “Yeah, yeah. Save the told you so’s for later, will you?”

“Remember you said that,” Reese said. He had taken out his phone—it was a cheap burner, Allie saw—and was punching in some numbers from memory. He waited a moment before speaking into it: “Where are you now?” He listened, then, “Change of plans. Proceed to the second alternate route.”

Dwight snorted when Reese put the phone away. “We’re gonna run out of alternate routes pretty soon.”

“When that happens, we’ll make up new ones.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I couldn’t tell.” Reese turned in his seat to look back at her. “You’re being very quiet back there.”

“I’m just the den mother, remember?” Allie said. “You guys are the brain trust. I’ll leave all the squawking to the two of you.”

“How are the girls?”

“I never got the chance to check up on them.”

“There’ll be other opportunities. We still have a long road ahead of us. A lot of miles.”

“The security guard back there…”

“What about him?”

“You were going to kill him.”

Reese shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“Like with the state troopers?”

“That, on the other hand, could have been avoided if Vanguard had kept their cool.”

“This is what we get for working with locals,” Dwight said. “Worthless shits.” Then, grinning at her in the rearview mirror, “No offense.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” she said.

Dwight chortled, and Reese smiled.

“Tell me something: Is it always this dramatic?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Reese said. “Usually it’s pretty boring. Pick up, drive, and deliver. Today’s been an exception.”

“Must be the company,” Dwight said. “Maybe you’re just bad luck, Alice in Wonderland. Maybe Juliet sent us a dud.”

“I guess you should take it up with her,” Allie said.

“Where is she, by the way?”

“Last I heard, she was in Mexico.”

“Maybe we should give her a call,” Dwight said. Then, looking over at Reese, “What do you think?”

“I think Alice proved herself back at the diner,” Reese said. “And she’s done very well since, under very trying circumstances.”

“Bull chips. She should have shot that old guy in the back of the head, not give him that paper cut in the leg.”

“When did you become so bloodthirsty?”

“Since this job started going off the rails, that’s when.”

“We’re doing fine. A couple of hiccups here and there were bound to catch up to us. The law of averages, partner. You didn’t think it was going to be easy peasy forever, did you?”

“Easy peasy?” Allie said.

Reese glanced back at her and grinned. “What? That’s not something you guys say?”

“It is, but it sounded strange coming from you. You barely have an accent, by the way.”

“I worked hard to get rid of it.”

“Where are you from originally?”

“What is this, the dating game?” Dwight asked.

Reese ignored him, and said to her, “Southeast London. A charming little district called Peckham.”

“I heard it was a real piece of shit,” Dwight said.

“Only to tourists.” Back to her: “But I haven’t been home for some time. That’s one reason for the lack of an accent; the other is that I’ve tried very hard to get rid of it. I’m impressed you noticed. Most people don’t.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Dwight said. “He can still be a real snobby British motherfucker when he wants to be.”

“Thank you, Dwight.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I figured,” Dwight said.

Eight

“Jesus, Hank, why aren’t you at the hospital?” Jane Mayer said. Her early thirty-something face looked at least ten years older since the last time he saw her a few months ago. It might have just been because he was looking at a pixilated version of Jane on the tablet’s screen, but Hank was sure that wasn’t the only reason.

“I don’t need a hospital,” Hank said, and thought, Kent Whitman already gave me the good stuff, but of course he didn’t say that part out loud.

“Since when did you get a cell phone?” Jane asked.

“I didn’t. I’m just, uh, borrowing someone’s…phone, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“It’s like a tablet or something.”

He looked over at Lucy, sitting on the other side of the bed where Jane couldn’t see her. The sixteen-year-old nodded in affirmation and gave him an almost pitying smile.

Hank smirked back at her before returning to Jane’s furrowed face on the small screen. He wasn’t quite sure how far he should hold the device from his face since it was hard to make out his own features in the even smaller box-within-a-box at the lower right corner. Whose bright idea was it to let the caller see himself while talking?

“Hank Pritchard with a tablet,” Jane said onscreen. “As I live and breathe.”

“I’m not a Luddite, kid. Well, not entirely.”

Jane smiled. “No one’s called me kid in a long time.”

“Yeah, well, ten years from now, or twenty years from now, I’ll still be a lot older than you.”

“Thank God. Now what do you want?”

“This afternoon’s shooting…”

“Jesus, that was bad,” Jane said, and ran her hands over her face. “You heard about that, huh?”

“Hard not to; it’s all over the news.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be. Worse thing to happen to us since, well, you know.”

Hank nodded. Oh, he knew, all right. It was one of the reasons he was sitting in a motel with a sixteen-year-old kid and not on the other side of this phone call.

“What about it?” Jane asked.

“Where are you guys on that?”

“Hank, what are you asking me?”

“I just wanna know what you guys have on the shooters.”

“How did you know there was more than one shooter?”

“You mean there were?”

She nodded before glancing over her shoulder as if she were afraid of being overheard. Jane was sitting in her car in a parking lot, and by the angle of her face he guessed she had her phone resting on the dashboard pointed back at her. He recognized the background, and given the time of day, it wasn’t hard to surmise she was outside the main building. How many times had he parked at that exact spot?

“Two,” Jane said, looking back at the screen.

“What happened?”

“They were stopped for a speeding violation. Nothing major. They pulled over to the side, and while the troopers were getting information on their onboard computer, they were killed. Nine millimeter rounds. There were so many holes in the front windshield that we don’t know how the whole thing didn’t collapse in on itself. Both men were killed on the spot.”

“Suspects?”

“We don’t have any. Right now we’re busy setting up roadblocks, checking vans and even regular sedans, in case they might have switched vehicles.” She shook her head. “But we’re searching blind, Hank. The troopers only had information on a white van but nothing on the drivers before they were killed.”

“What did you find on the car?”

“That’s where things get weird.”

“Weird how?”

“The tag came back registered to a Gloria Donovan from two states away. The problem with that is, Mrs. Donovan is seventy-nine years old and living in a group home, and she has no idea she bought a used van nine months ago.”

“Identity theft?”

“Looks that way. Someone got a hold of her personal information, name, and Social Security Number. That’s why the license plate didn’t trip any warning flags when they were initially spotted. The troopers never saw it coming.”

“Did I know them, Jane? The men who died?”

Jane shook her head. “They came on the job after you left, Hank.”

He nodded, but instead of relief, it left more questions. Just because the men had entered the force after he retired didn’t mean he didn’t know them. He might have known their brothers, or fathers…

Jane was leaning slightly forward, as if she was trying to get a better look at him on the other side of the screen. “Hank, I have to ask, what’s going on? Is this just curiosity? And where exactly are you right now? That looks like a motel room…”

He felt a flush of pride. Besides knowing he could trust her, Hank had another reason for contacting her and not someone else: A little (Okay, a big part) of him wanted to stick it to John “Mr. Perfect” Miller.

“How did you know I’m at a motel?” he asked.

“The ugly curtains, the bare wall… Who’s there with you? You keep glancing over at them.”

Dammit; I forgot she can see me, too.

“Jane, I need to tell you something,” he said, “but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone where it came from.”

“Hank…”

“No ifs, ands, or buts, Jane. Promise me, or I’m hanging up right now,” he said, wondering if you could actually “hang up” on someone through a tablet. How did phone calls even work on this thing anyway?

“Hank, you called me, remember?” Jane said.

“I know that, kid. I have information that might help you with the case, but if you’re not going to—”

“What kind of information?”

“Promise me, and I’ll tell you.”

Jane sighed. “Hank, you do know that I’m a detective with CID now, right? That it’s been a while since you bossed me around as a trooper? The shooting’s got us all on edge. The commissioner’s stuck on the phone with the governor’s office, and every detective and chief is fanning across the state. We’re pulling everyone from every section into this one, even the commercial enforcement guys. This is bad, Hank. Real bad. So you need to really think hard about what you’re asking me, because if you have something that can help us catch these motherfuckers…”

“Kid, I don’t know who they are,” Hank said.

He kept his voice calm and even, doing everything possible to let his sincerity come through. Diane would call it his “fatherly face,” except they’d never had kids so it was anyone’s guess if he was doing it right. But he could see it on Jane’s face and hear it in her voice that she was wired. It didn’t surprise him at all. State troopers didn’t die very often, and it was unheard of to have two killed in the same day in the same action.

“That’s the honest truth,” he continued. “But I have some information that could be useful.”

“You want to stay in the dark, is that it?”

“That’s exactly it,” he nodded.

“Okay. We’ll just call you my unnamed CI.”

“That’ll work.”

“So, let’s hear it. Why are you in a motel room this time of night, and am I going to regret asking that question?”

“Someone told me to come here, and I don’t know, maybe?”

“Who told you to go there?”

“You heard about the robbery at Ben’s Diner earlier today?”

“Are you kidding? Everyone was already going all-in on that one when the troopers got killed. That was the reason they pulled the shooters over in the first place. They had orders to stop any suspicious vehicles, and unfortunately for them two guys in a van with out-of-state plates stuck out.” She paused for a moment before leaning forward again. “Wait, are you saying the two things are connected?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus…”

She already knew about him being shot, so he told her about Allie Krycek (though he never said her name and only called her “one of the robbers,” and didn’t mention she was the one who had shot him) slipping him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He finished by telling her about the motel and meeting with “the robber’s colleague,” who informed him about the human-trafficking operation currently moving across the state.

“Oh, fuck me,” Jane said when he was finished. “Are you sure about this?”

“Trust me, I didn’t want to believe it either, but it’s true. You need to have everyone looking for more than just the van.”

“A semitrailer hauling kids from South America?”

“Among other places.”

“But you don’t know what it looks like…”

“No. I just know it’s out there somewhere.”

“Hank, you know as well as I do that’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of semis go through our state every day. Listen,” she said, turning her head slightly before looking back at him. “Did you hear that? That’s three more passing in less than three seconds. We can’t just randomly pull every one of them over. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”

“You’ve already set up roadblocks, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but we haven’t been looking for semis, just the van.”

“It’s time to expand your search, then.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, Hank, they’re going to ask me why should they expand the stop-and-search to every big rig going through the state, and I won’t have an answer for them.”

Shit, he thought, because she was right. The commanders weren’t going to put more men on the roadblocks to search semis without a damn good reason, and all he had was…

He glanced over at Lucy again, watching him back from across the bed. He couldn’t see the dog Apollo, but it was there somewhere lying next to her feet like a good guard dog. The animal rarely strayed from the girl, as if it had been ordered to stick close to her at all times.

He looked back at Jane. “You’ll have to convince them.”

“Hank, we’re talking about shuffling around a lot of manpower here. I can’t just tell them it’s because some unnamed CI said so. I’m not high up enough on the totem pole to have that kind of pull yet. You know how this bureaucracy works.”

“You gotta try anyway, Jane. Talk to whoever you have to—sweet talk them, bribe them, hell, blackmail them, if that’s what it takes. But you have to get it done.”

She sighed before pursing a smile at him. “Is that how you got things done in the old days, old-timer?”

He smiled back at her. “Mostly the second and third part, rarely the first.” He got serious again, adding, “Can you do it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll try. If you’re right, and there are kids being smuggled across our state, then fuck it, I’ll make as much noise as I need to. Even if it means backing up traffic into the next ten states.”

Hank beamed with pride. He didn’t know what to say, but he could no more stop the big grin breaking out across his mug than he could push back the hands of time.

Jane saw it and laughed. “I’ll probably get demoted for this if we don’t find anything, you know that, right? If I’m lucky. Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up back in uniform, fetching coffee and checking for hookers at truck stops.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with working for a living, kid.”

“Yeah, but I really, really like coming to work in a suit.”

“Thank you,” Hank said, putting as much meaning as he could muster into those two very simple words.

“When this is over, let’s get together for some drinks again, huh? Maybe dinner too, this time. Your liver could use a break. Plus, Andy misses you.”

“That sounds good, kid. That sounds really good.”

“I’ll call you back when I get the chance, or if I have anything. Can I call you on this number?”

He checked with Lucy, and the girl nodded.

“Apparently, yes,” he said.

“Who is that with you?” Jane asked. “Does he have a name?”

“Later,” Hank said. “Go get ’em, kid. You can do this. I have faith in you.”

Jane sighed. “I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. I’ll see you around, old timer.”

The screen flicked to black, and it was just his big, old face staring back at him, except this time on the entire screen.

Hank handed the tablet back to Lucy. “She’ll do what she can, and if anyone can get it done, it’s Jane.”

“Do you trust her?” Lucy asked.

“With my life.”

Lucy nodded. “Who’s Andy?”

“Her daughter. Ten years old. You two could be friends.”

The girl made a face. “I’m sixteen. Do you really see me hanging out with a ten-year-old?”

“You could do worse.” He picked up the now-warm can of Coke from the nightstand and took a sip. “What now?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I guess we wait for Allie to contact us.”

“Can you get in touch with her?”

Lucy shook her head. “We decided it would be too dangerous to keep an open channel between us. Allie’s trained me a lot over the last year, but I’ll never be as ready for any of this the way she was her first time.”

“Can you at least tell me what kind of training Allie had?”

“Let’s just say she can take care of herself.”

“You do realize that I know more people at the state police than just Jane? That I could ask any one of them to look into you and your friend?”

Lucy grinned at him.

“What?” Hank said, slightly annoyed.

“Nothing,” Lucy said. The girl stood up from the bed, said, “Come on, boy,” and walked to the door, with Apollo trotting anxiously alongside her.

“Where are you guys going?” Hank asked after them.

“Outside. Apollo’s been cooped up in here all day. I need to get him some exercise.”

“It’s dark out there, kid.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark, lieutenant.”

“Maybe you should be.”

The girl opened the door, then looked back and gave him another one of those grins that told him she knew something he didn’t before she turned around and slipped outside, the dog already a rocket of white fur under the parking lot lights.

“Weird kid,” Hank said to the empty room.

Nine

“Babysitting never used to be this hard,” Dwight said. “You know how many hiccups we’ve had since we started this gig?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Allie asked.

“One. A big ol’ once-o. You wanna guess when that was?”

She didn’t bother replying this time and instead unzipped her jacket halfway down to let the cool air in. It felt good to be outside again, maybe because she had spent too much of the day locked inside a car with two men she wanted to kill so badly.

“Tonight,” Dwight said, and smiled at her, though there was little charm in it. “I told him we should have gone with someone else—maybe even skip the mother hen this time—but he insisted Juliet’s recommendation could be trusted. It’s a weakness of his; Reese can sometimes be too loyal for his own good.”

“And here I thought loyalty was a good thing.”

“Not in this business, Alice in Wonderland. In this business, loyalty gets you screwed in the front and back.”

“Sounds painful.”

“It is, believe me.”

“Are we talking from personal experience here?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What exactly have I done that makes you think I shouldn’t be trusted, Dwight?”

“Besides the fact I’ve never seen or heard of you until you slipped into our car?”

“Besides that.”

He shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

“Are you worried I’m going to try to take Reese from you?”

“I don’t fuck the guy, I just work with him.”

“Hey, what the two of you do between the sheets is your business.”

He grunted but otherwise didn’t take her bait.

She kept her eyes fixed forward, even though it was difficult to ignore his presence leaning against the side of the car next to her. There were just the two of them at the moment, and she ran the odds through her head for the fifth time in as many minutes: If she went for the holstered gun behind her back right now, could he react in time? At this range, it would take a miracle to miss Dwight’s big head.

Bright headlights washed over her as another semitrailer pulled into the truck stop and went in search of an empty spot among the well-lit gas pumps. They were far enough from the bright lights at the center of the wide-open parking lot that they could have passed for Peeping Toms watching the rest of the world go about their business.

It wasn’t hard to pick out Reese as he emerged from the main store next to the pumps. He was the only tall man in a black suit and black tie, and he stood out among the truckers in jeans and weary travelers stopping for some gas and food. He dodged the fleet of parked vehicles and jogged his way back to them, slipping in and out of the bright pools of light. New cars were entering the lot, while others left, every other minute.

The black and red semi, with Sara and the others inside, was parked thirty yards to her right, nestled among truckers who had decided to shut down for the night. The vehicle and its contents were so close and yet so far away.

You should have saved them back at the drive-in movie. You blew your best chance.

Maybe she had, and maybe she didn’t. She was only sure of one thing at the moment: She was still alive, and so were Sara and the other girls, and her chances of locating Faith remained in play. It was still a long shot—when had it been anything but?—but a long shot was better than no shot at all.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Reese finally reached them, swinging a plastic bag in one hand. He was breathing noticeably hard from the long jog across the parking lot.

“Listen to you, all out of breath,” Dwight said.

“We should have parked closer,” Reese said.

“No, you just need to work out more.”

“That too.”

Reese dug out a wrapped sandwich and bottle of water and handed them to Allie. He took out another sandwich and bottle for himself before surrendering the rest of the bag to Dwight, who put it on the hood and fished out a large can of Red Bull.

She took one bite from her sandwich, decided she liked the chicken salad, and took another one. She was swallowing when a station wagon entered the lot, and as it drove past her, Allie saw a bored teenage girl in the back staring out at her, and suddenly the sandwich didn’t taste nearly as good anymore. She forced the piece she’d already bitten off down anyway, but she might as well be swallowing rocks.

“Not good?” Reese asked.

He had leaned against the car next to her, taking Dwight’s place after the other man had wandered off to sit on the hood, facing away from them.

“It wouldn’t have been my first choice,” she said.

“Should have come inside with me and picked for yourself.”

“What else is on the menu?”

“Too many to list. It’s not a bad setup, actually. The diner next door is packed.”

It’s not the food, it’s the company, she thought, but said, “Chicken salad’s fine,” and took a third bite and forced it down, too.

Reese unwrapped his Sloppy Joe and took a big chomp, then smiled blissfully. “Good stuff. I don’t think I’ve found it anywhere outside the States. Could be wrong on that front, of course. It’s not like I’ve been everywhere.”

“I don’t know how you can eat that slop,” Dwight said. He was sniffing the air, not bothering to turn around.

“What’s more American than Sloppy Joes?” Reese said as a chunk of ground beef and strips of onion fell from the buns—not that he seemed to notice. Instead, he took another huge bite.

“What about the girls?” she asked. “You wanted me to check on them earlier.”

“Not here,” Reese said. He wiped at his mouth with a napkin. “Too many people. Too many cameras. You can check on them when we’re swapping vehicles later.”

“Which is when, exactly?”

“We’re in uncharted territory, which unfortunately means things will happen when they happen.” He took out his cell phone and placed it on the hood between them. “Until then, we’ll push on ahead to the alternate location. If we’re fortunate, the new Vanguard will beat us there with new vehicles.”

“But they’re late.”

“They’re late,” he nodded. “They shouldn’t be, but they are.”

“This night just keeps getting better and better,” Dwight said from the front of the car.

“We’ve dealt with problems before.”

“Not shoot-two-troopers-dead problems.”

“Yes, well, what’s that you like to say? If it were easy, then anyone could do it.”

Dwight harrumphed but didn’t say anything.

Reese went back to finishing his Sloppy Joe and wiping his fingers on the napkin while she did her best to ignore the aroma of beef and onions coming from him. Dwight seemed content to drink his Red Bull and stare off at nothing in particular on the other side of the car. Allie was grateful for the silence, with the only noises coming from the vehicles entering and leaving the truck stop around them—

A buzzing sound coming from the vibrating phone on the hood of the car next to her ruined all of that.

Reese picked up the phone and answered it without bothering to look at the number. “Yes.” He listened for a moment, then said, “That’s unfortunate.”

Dwight hopped off the hood and looked expectantly over, but didn’t interrupt.

“All right. Keep me updated,” Reese said, and put the phone back into his jacket pocket.

“Let me guess: More hiccups?” Dwight asked.

“It would appear so,” Reese said. He opened his bottle of water and took a slow, measured drink. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose while he searched for the right words to explain the call or if the man really was just that unflappable despite what had just been, apparently, more bad news.

“Well, what the fuck did they say?” Dwight said impatiently. “Are they coming or not?”

“They are…eventually,” Reese said. “The state police started putting up road blocks along the interstate. They’re searching for Vanguard’s van and, apparently, also focusing on semitrailers now. It looks like they’re going to be delayed for an unspecified amount of time.”

Lucy.

It had to be. Somehow, Lucy had convinced someone in the state police to add hauling trucks to their searches. The only way she would be able to achieve that was…

Hank Pritchard.

What other explanation was there? Who else could get law enforcement to expand their search? Someone had to have informed them, and there were only two people who knew—she and Lucy. Allie didn’t think the teenager had a chance in hell of convincing the authorities, especially over the phone. But someone like Pritchard, who had a history with them…

It had been a long shot (So what else is new today?) when she had quickly scribbled the number onto an order slip and sneaked it into the retired statey’s pocket while she was searching him for a cell phone. But she’d be damned if it hadn’t paid off. Hank Pritchard wasn’t just an ex-trooper; he had a long and distinguished career until his retirement six years ago. Even so, she hadn’t counted on anything coming from it and had all but assumed there was an injured old man out there somewhere trying to figure out why someone had slipped a phone number into his pocket.

So what else were Hank and Lucy doing right now? Even more importantly, how was she going to use all of this to her advantage?

Allie sneaked a look at the red and black semitrailer partially hidden in shadows next to them. It hadn’t moved since the last time she looked, and it wouldn’t until Reese made a decision about how to proceed.

Hold on, Sara. Hold on just a little longer…

“When it rains shit, it pours poop,” Dwight was saying.

“Colorful,” Reese said. He crumpled up his sandwich wrapper and flicked it into the bag sitting on the hood behind him.

Jesus Christ, he’s calm.

“So I guess this means the authorities know what we have in there,” Dwight said, jerking his head at the semi.

“That seems likely.”

“That means it won’t be long before they know, too.”

“Again, very likely, yes.”

Allie didn’t have to ask who “they” were. Dwight and Reese were talking about their employers. The men behind all of this. The men who would have the information she needed to find Faith. At least, that was her hope, because if there wasn’t, then it would mean all of this would be for nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

She looked over at the semi and tried to imagine Sara and the twenty-two others in there, huddled in the darkness, already hungry after their last (and only) meal earlier today. She glanced down at the half-eaten sandwich in her hand and wanted to vomit it all back up.

What to do, what to do?

Sara and the others were here, right now. Meanwhile, Faith might be at the other side of this trip.

Might. Might.

She had promised the girl’s mother. She had given her word.

But one was here, and one was (maybe) out there, somewhere. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t one that was here, it was twenty-three lost, stolen souls.

You know what you have to do, don’t you?

So do it.

No more excuses. No more excuses…

“Gonna get real tricky from here on out,” Dwight was saying, his voice bringing her back to the shadowy edge of the truck stop parking lot. “Not that it wasn’t real tricky already, mind you, but it just got much, much trickier.”

“We can handle it,” Reese said.

“Not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point is, this was supposed to be an easy gig. In and out. Collect money at the end of the rainbow. Head to Vegas. Get a high-priced escort and a suite, and if all goes well, blow the whole thing at the tables. You know, the usual.”

Reese smiled. “That’s not my usual.”

“I mean the usual for someone who knows how to have a good time. You were automatically exempted.”

“Good to know.” He looked over at her. “You’re being very quiet, Alice.”

“I have to go to the ladies’ room,” Allie said.

Dwight chuckled. “Sounds like one of your plans, Reese. Full of piss and shit.”

Reese ignored his partner and said to her, “So go.”

She looked over at Dwight, expecting him to protest, but he only shrugged back at her. “What, you want me to hold your hand while you do your business?”

“If you insist.”

“Ask nicely, and I might think about it.”

“Maybe next time,” she said, and pushed off the car and began walking away.

“Promises, promises,” Dwight said after her.

She could feel eyes on her—maybe Reese’s, maybe Dwight’s, maybe both of them. She kept moving, forcing her legs to stride at a normal pace—one after another after another. Every part of her being wanted to pick up her speed; after that, it wouldn’t be difficult to transition into a jog before finally slipping into a fast run toward the bright lights.

“Alice,” Reese called from behind her.

She stopped and looked back at him.

“Grab me an extra bottle of water, would you?” he said.

“Anything else, master?”

He smiled. “No, that’ll do for now. Thanks much.”

“What about you?” she asked Dwight.

“Another Red Bull wouldn’t hurt,” Dwight said.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

She turned around and resumed walking toward the lights.

Keep walking, girl. That’s it. You’re doing fine. Now just pretend like your insides aren’t so twisted into knots that you can barely breathe and you’re either about to save twenty-three little girls or get them all killed, along with yourself in the process.

Yeah, no pressure.

Ten

“Allie Krycek,” Jane said over the phone. “That’s how you spell her last name? K-r-y-c-e-k?”

“That’s what the kid says,” Hank said.

He did his best to keep the phone as close to his ear as possible without actually letting the device touch him. There were things—sticky, discolored things—smeared on the receiver that Hank would rather not think about, much less let come into contact with his skin. It wasn’t as if he was afraid of ruining his looks—hell, he was beyond that these days—but he wasn’t stupid, either.

If the motel manager noticed how carefully Hank was being with the phone, he didn’t show it, or care. Of course, getting a ten-dollar spot to use a landline that was covered in God only knew what was probably the best deal he’d made while manning the motel.

“Then I don’t have a lot on her,” Jane said.

“How’s that possible?” Hank asked.

“I looked, lieutenant. I ran her name through every database we’re connected to, and she comes out pretty clean.”

“No criminal records?”

“Not a one.”

“Military service?”

“Unless she changed her name, then nothing there, either. Did she change her name?”

“The kid says no.”

“Maybe she lied.”

“Maybe. I’ve just barely met her, so I don’t know what she’s capable of yet.”

There were voices on the other side of the connection, doors constantly opening and closing, and a general buzz of activity that never seemed to ebb for even a second. All those things told him that Jane was back in the office and not out there running the roadblocks. Which made sense. Jane was a detective now, not a uniformed trooper. She’d be more valuable coordinating the action from headquarters.

That feeling of pride bubbled to the surface again, and Hank smiled dumbly across at the manager, who gave him a weird look before returning his attention to the game show playing on a TV in the corner of the room.

“So what did you manage to dig up on her?” he said into the phone.

“There is something odd about her records,” Jane said.

“Odd how?”

“She shows up from the time she was born to when she moves out to southern California for school, followed by graduation. After that, there’s a lot of temp work and some waitressing gigs. A few more stable ones every now and then, but they never last. Her tax returns indicate she kept changing jobs. Either she had a really rough time holding onto them, or she was only taking jobs where she could leave at a moment’s notice. You know what the pattern suggests to me?”

“What’s that?”

“That she’s an actor or a singer.”

“The Allie Krycek the kid’s telling me about isn’t an actor or a singer.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I’m seeing here. Entertainer types. They do temp jobs where they can leave to go on auditions or take work as the opportunity comes up.”

“Okay, so this is all after graduation?”

“Uh huh.”

“That happens,” he said. “Kids don’t know what to do even with a pigskin. They sometimes wander around looking for themselves or some other abstract shit.”

“I would agree with that assessment, except about five years ago the woman pretty much vanishes.”

“How does someone just vanish?”

“Good question. The IRS seemed to lose track of her and there are no more city, state, or government records of her anywhere. It’s as if someone just took a magic eraser and wiped everything away that has to do with Allie Krycek, starting five years ago.”

“We’re kind of independently wealthy,” Lucy had told him. “Well, Allie is, anyway. We don’t need the money.” And when he asked how wealthy, the girl had answered, “Enough that we can get information we’re not supposed to have.”

Hank wondered if being “independently wealthy” meant Allie Krycek could hire the same people who got her information she wasn’t supposed to have to also erase information she didn’t want others to find on her.

Must be nice to have cash lying around.

“Lieutenant, you still there?” Jane asked.

“I’m here.”

“That’s all I have on Krycek. Sorry.”

“Did she have a sister?”

“She did, but she passed.”

“So it’s not Lucy?”

“You said Lucy was sixteen?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Well, does she look sixteen?”

Hank thought about it, then said, “I think so, yeah.”

“Then she’s not the sister. The girl I’m looking at died over a decade ago, when she was nineteen. Her story’s all on paper.”

“What did you find on her?”

“Her name was Carmen, and she was abducted while on a cross-country road trip by someone called the Roadside Killer. Ever heard of him?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Not really. He did most of his work up north, never got close to us. Some national news coverage, but nothing that stuck. You know how it goes. Anyway, he killed the little sister and a few others.”

“How is Krycek involved?”

“I don’t think she was. Or, at least, I don’t see any involvement by her in any of the files. I guess you could call the states where this happened and ask them. I don’t have time to do that right now, Hank.”

“Maybe I’ll do that later.” He let the information roll around in his head for a moment before saying into the phone, “What about the kid? Lucy?”

“There is no Lucy Krycek. Are you sure her last name’s Krycek?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know.”

“She never told me her last name.”

“I can’t really do much with just a first name, Hank. You know that. Can you at least get me a picture of her? I could run that through the system.”

“I don’t think she’s going to let me take a picture just so I can do a background check on her.”

“Then my hands are tied on the kid.”

“It was a Hail Mary pass anyway,” Hank said. “So what’s going on with the roadblocks?”

“Slow, and dull, and uneventful,” Jane said. “We haven’t come up with anything, and adding semitrailers to the search has just about shut everything down to a crawl. Hank, there are a lot of those bastards running around out there. I was thinking about getting them to expand it, start going into the truck stops, but they’re already looking at me funny, and I can’t keep telling them I’m getting tips from a CI. But I was thinking, what if you let me tell them it’s you…?”

“That’s going to hurt your cause more than help it, Jane,” he said, and just saying it caused his blood to boil.

“It might still be worth a shot,” Jane said.

He wasn’t sure if she was saying that for his benefit or if she really believed it. But how could she? She knew, more than anyone, the situation in which he had left the job. It hadn’t been pretty, and it certainly as hell hadn’t been voluntary.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You’ve worked too hard to get this far, kid. Don’t blow it by getting my stink anywhere close to you. Don’t tell them it was me.”

She sighed, and he thought he could even hear her frustration through the line. That, again, made him smile with pride.

“I gotta go, Hank,” Jane said. “They’re waving me to the office.”

“Did something pop?”

“I don’t know, but everyone’s converging. I’ll talk to you soon!” she said, and hung up on him.

Hank pulled the phone away and stared at it. The desire to be there, in the thick of all of the chaos, made him grind his teeth.

Christ, he missed it. After all these years, after all the endless boozing sessions where he cursed everyone involved in his exit from the job, he still missed it in every part of his bones.

“You done?” the manager asked from the other side of the counter.

“Yeah,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Kent Whitman’s good stuff was starting to wear off, so Hank had to double the dose. It worked like a charm, and he barely had a limp as he walked. The downside was that adding an extra pill made him drowsier faster. Of course, it probably didn’t help that it was just an hour before ten, which was about an hour later than his usual bedtime these days. Oh, who was he kidding? He didn’t have anything as respectable as a curfew; it almost always depended on whether he had found himself a nice full bottle to accompany him or not.

Still, the headlights of oncoming vehicles from the other side of the road seemed to be growing in size and he was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be normal. The steering wheel was slightly heavier than he remembered, and although he wasn’t aware of it, the Bronco kept picking up speed and he had to keep telling himself to ease his foot off the pedal.

“You okay?” Lucy asked from the front passenger seat. Her head was tilted slightly, and it was obvious she’d been observing him for some time now without him being aware of it. The kid was either very sly or he was just not paying attention.

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“You look kind of weird.”

“Weird? Weird how?”

“I don’t know. Like you’re falling asleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, and picked up the new can of soda from the cup holder between them, then took a long drink. The taste was disgusting, but at least it was packing enough sugar to perk him up some. “It’s not going to poop in my truck, is it?”

The “it” was the dog, squatting in the backseat behind them. The big mutt seemed to know he was talking about it and actually looked in his direction for a few seconds before turning his attention back to the outside world of flashing white headlights and red taillights. The idea of a dog in his Bronco, without a leash—or hell, without anything for it to sit on, for that matter—made him a little uncomfortable, but the girl wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

“Apollo’s way more well-mannered than most people,” she said. “He lived in the city with Allie in her small apartment for years.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t drop a big one back there.”

“Nice image,” Lucy said and rolled her eyes.

He chuckled. “I’m just saying…”

“I didn’t know old people say that.”

“What?”

“‘I’m just saying.’ I thought that was a kid thing.”

“How old do you think I am, Lucy?”

“Old enough,” she said.

He grinned, because he didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t like she was wrong. He was old…enough.

Hank looked up at the rearview mirror at the dog. “What kind of breed is it, anyway?”

“You need to stop calling Apollo an ‘it,” Lucy said, sounding very annoyed with him.

He smiled. “My mistake. Him. He. What kind of breed is he?”

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t it ever occur to you to find out?”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, what does it matter what kind of breed Apollo is? He’s a dog. He’s Apollo. That’s all that matters.”

“Where’d Allie find it—him.”

“He was living in the woods with some hunters. Allie never said, but I don’t think they treated him very well. Probably made him do a lot of bad things. Don’t let his puppy dog appearance fool you, though; Apollo’s way more dangerous than he looks.”

“Puppy dog appearance?”

“Doesn’t he look like a puppy?”

“Uh, no.”

He gave the dog another look. Apollo didn’t have any “puppy dog appearance” about him, but then again, it also didn’t look too dangerous right now either, unlike the first time he saw the animal.

I guess they were right; never judge a book by its cover. Or a dog.

“I haven’t seen any roadblocks so far,” Lucy said. “I thought your buddies were stopping cars all across the state?”

“You won’t see them because we haven’t crossed the state line yet. And given the direction where that van was headed, they’ll be setting shop mostly along the west end, not south where we are now.”

“Oh. Makes sense, I guess.” Then, “Thanks for bringing me with you. I was starting to feel useless back there.”

“Well, I couldn’t just let you stay at that motel all by yourself all night.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

“I know, I know, the dog.”

“I don’t know why you don’t like him. He likes you just fine.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, for one, he hasn’t tried to rip your throat out yet, and he’s usually pretty aggressive around people with guns.”

“Oh,” Hank said.

Behind him, the dog continued to perch, as if it was watching for unseen dangers outside the moving Bronco. Hank couldn’t decide if the girl’s stories about the dog ripping people’s throats out was real or just something she made up to toy with him. She was only sixteen years old, but he could tell Lucy had seen and done more than most kids her age. He had suspected that when they first met, and he was one-hundred percent sure of it now.

“You packed pretty light,” Hank said after a while.

She reached into her backpack sitting on the floor and pulled out her tablet. “This is the only thing I need.”

“What’s in the luggage we tossed into the back?”

“Clothes, but those can be replaced.” She tapped the device. “Well, you can replace this, too. Almost everything’s backed up to the cloud anyway.”

“The what?”

She gave him that familiar, almost pitying look. “I’ll explain it to you later. Where are we going anyway?”

That made him smile. “Took you a while to ask.”

“What can I say, I trust you.”

“You do?” he said, not able to hide his surprise.

“Allie did. She gave you my number. If she trusted you enough to do that, that’s good enough for me.”

Hank didn’t know if that should reassure or worry him that a stranger, a woman he didn’t know and hadn’t seen the face of before, trusted him enough to send him to a sixteen-year-old girl staying by herself at a motel in the next state over.

Well, that wasn’t true. Lucy hadn’t been really by herself.

He glanced up at Apollo in the rearview mirror. The animal didn’t look very dangerous, but then you never knew with dogs. He’d seen plenty of examples of how vicious they could be when they or their owners were threatened.

“To answer your question, I’m taking you to my place until Allie makes contact or Jane tells me it’s over,” Hank said.

“Is it nice? Your place?”

“It’s okay.”

“So that’s a no?”

He grunted. “It’ll do, kid.”

“What about neighbors? What will they say when you bring a sixteen-year-old girl home with you in the middle of the night?”

He looked over and saw her grinning mischievously back at him.

“It’s in a park where everyone minds their own business,” he said.

“Wait, you said a park? Like, a trailer park?”

“Well, yeah. I’m staying at a trailer home right now. So what?”

But it’s only temporary, he wanted to add, but didn’t because it would have been a lie. It hadn’t been temporary since four years ago, two years removed from the job and eight years after Diane’s death. Sometimes he wondered what she would say if she could see how he wasted away his days and drank away his nights.

In the front passenger seat, Lucy sighed and said, “I should have stayed at the motel.”

“It’s fine,” Hank said.

“To you, because you’re used to it. But it’s not really fine, is it? An old man living by himself in a trailer park?”

Hank sighed because she was right. It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t fine at all, but when he had a fistful of Wild Turkey in one hand, it was a lot easier to convince himself otherwise.

Eleven

She thanked a big man in a checkered long-sleeve shirt who held the main store door open for her before turning right into the adjoining diner next door. She was already expecting a crowd of people, but she was still surprised by how many there actually were. The noise was so loud she wasn’t sure how the waitresses going and back forth between customers could even hear the orders.

Allie maneuvered her way through the throng of people and slid between the tables, passing the counter and making a beeline for the pay phone at the back. Thank God these places, like the diner earlier today, still had public phones. She stuck her hand into her pocket to make sure she had change. There; just enough for one phone call.

There was no one at the phone as she approached it, which wasn’t surprising. Just about everyone around her either had a cell phone in their hands or on their table within easy reach. Who even used pay phones anymore? She thought about swiping one of the cells—it would be easy with all the activity—but didn’t want to risk it. The last thing she needed was to get into a fight or answer questions.

No, there was a perfectly good phone at the back of the diner, and she was still ten feet away from it when she caught her reflection in a mirror—and at the same time glimpsed a familiar face revealing itself between two men standing near the counter—

Reese, looking around.

Sonofabitch.

She quickly turned left, veering away from the pay phone, and found herself at the hallway entrance into the bathroom. She kept walking, not sure if Reese had spotted her or not, but he had definitely been looking for something.

Don’t kid yourself. He was looking for you.

The question was: Why? Did he suspect her? Had she been unconvincing when she told him she needed to use the bathroom? The man was always watching her, even when she didn’t know it—especially when she didn’t know it. Had she given something away without realizing it during one of those moments?

Dammit.

A woman was pushing her way out of the ladies’ room in front of Allie, and they exchanged a brief nod and smile.

“Excuse me,” Allie said, “do you have a cell phone?”

“My what?” the woman said, reaching reflexively for her purse.

Allie flashed her best smile, hoping it wasn’t too creepy. “Could I borrow your phone? I just need to make a quick call—”

“Sorry,” the woman said, and brushed past her.

“Sorry you don’t have a phone?” Allie said after her.

The woman ignored her and kept going.

Allie sighed. What did she expect? Even if the woman did have her phone in her bag, she wasn’t going to hand it over to some stranger she had just met for less than a second inside a bathroom hallway.

The kindness of strangers, my ass.

Allie turned around and stepped into the bathroom. It was surprisingly clean, with a pair of air freshener dispensers protruding out of the walls. It took her a few seconds to adjust to the overwhelming smell of lilacs while she looked around. All three stalls were currently occupied, so she went to the sink and washed her hands with soap, then spent another minute rewashing them before moving over to the dryers.

She used the long mirror to observe the stalls behind her, biding her time, until finally one of them became available. Allie waited for the woman to wash her own hands, then took her time drying them with a generous amount of paper towels before leaving. Allie stepped inside the empty stall, the last one at the end.

She stood over the toilet and took out the Sig Sauer and checked the magazine, even though the weight of the weapon already confirmed she had a loaded gun. She wanted to be absolutely certain, and having done so, put it back in its holster and considered her options, knowing full well she was going to need the gun for whatever she decided.

Faith.

Sara.

The other twenty-two girls in the back of the rig.

She focused on what she could affect right now, and the choice was obvious. The only thing standing in her way was Reese in the diner and Dwight in the lot. And, of course, the two drivers inside the semi.

Four men. Four armed men.

She didn’t know the two drivers’ history—she didn’t even know their names—but she was certain enough about Reese and Dwight to know that either one, or both of them, were going to be dangerous in a gunfight, especially one where she didn’t have the element of surprise. Which she didn’t at the moment. Not even close.

And there was the diner and store full of travelers and truckers. Innocents. She was in a concealed carry state, so how many of those people had a weapon on them at the moment? Probably not many, and when the bullets started flying she wasn’t going to be able to count on perfect strangers to pitch in. She had learned just a moment ago how unreliable they could be.

But that was assuming shots were even fired. Was there another way? A better way where she didn’t have to put families and people trying to make a living at risk? Maybe there was, but she couldn’t see it right now.

Allie lowered herself to the floor, careful to avoid a small puddle of something down there, and peeked underneath the wall and into the stall next to her. She glimpsed a pair of legs dangling off the toilet, wearing expensive shoes…and the tap-tap-tap of the next occupant playing with a phone.

She picked herself back up and sat down on the toilet, and waited.

Next to her, the tap-tap-tap continued for another minute.

Then two…

Allie thought she might have to wait even longer when the tap-tap-tap finally stopped. The sound of clothes rustling followed, then the toilet flushing.

About damn time.

Allie stood up and quietly unlocked her stall door—but didn’t open it—and drew the P250 and waited. The woman next door didn’t seem to be in any hurry and took her sweet time opening her own door. When Allie finally heard the clack! of the lock sliding out of position, she stepped outside just as the woman was coming out, preoccupied with the smartphone in her hands.

She stepped in front of the woman, who almost bumped into her, but managed to stop in time and lifted her head. She was in her thirties and attractive, even if she did overdo it with the makeup, especially those bright-red lips. If Allie didn’t know better, the woman was either on a date or hoping to get one at the truck stop. She was in the middle of texting when she stopped, then opened her mouth to say something, but Allie clasped her hand over those shiny lips and showed her the gun.

The woman’s eyes expanded at an incredible rate and her body stiffened, but before she could react—minus the already muffled sounds against Allie’s palm—Allie pushed her backward into the stall until the woman stumbled and sat back down on the toilet with a loud thump.

Too loud, and Allie heard the woman in the first stall to her left shuffle her feet in response. Allie waited for the woman to follow through, but there was just a brief rustling of clothing, then silence again.

Allie turned back to Lipstick, who was staring wide-eyed at her. She leaned forward and whispered against the woman’s face, “Relax; I just want to use your phone. Don’t make a sound, okay?”

Lipstick’s head went up and down like a bobblehead.

“Girl to girl,” Allie whispered, “I just want to use the phone, then I’ll leave, and we’ll never see each other again. Sound good?”

Another enthusiastic round of bobbling.

“Good,” Allie said, and pulled back.

The woman, without prompting, held up her phone. Allie removed her hand from Lipstick’s mouth and thought about checking if there were bright-red marks on her palm, but didn’t. She took the proffered smartphone instead.

She thought about calling Lucy but decided against it. The woman in the next stall was being very good about minding her own business, but that might not last if Allie started talking on the phone about men with guns and teenage girls being held in the back of semitrailers. Even if she lowered her voice to whispering level, that might actually be even worse since it would just create even more curiosity.

She brought up the phone’s texting function instead and punched in Lucy’s number, then made sure the sound was muted to silence the swoosh! effect each time the phone sent or received texts. It took Lucy less than ten seconds to answer, then a full minute of back-and-forth between the two of them for Allie to get everything she needed across. It helped that they had developed a texting shorthand that cut down tremendously on unnecessary letters.

Allie had taken a gamble and put her gun away in her front waistband, then took a couple of steps back so Lipstick didn’t get any bright ideas about lunging for it. The entire time she was tapping on the smartphone, Allie kept one eye on the screen and the other on the woman, even though, as it turned out, she didn’t have to. After watching Allie doing nothing but typing for a full minute, the woman started to look a little bored, which brought a slight smile to Allie’s face. A bored hostage was more manageable than one who was worried about not making it through the ordeal. Apparently Allie had been a lot more convincing than she thought.

When she was finished communicating with Lucy, she deleted the messages, then made sure to do the same with Lucy’s number. She holstered the gun and handed Lipstick back her phone. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t leave for five minutes, and don’t tell anyone, okay?”

Lipstick nodded, though by the expression on her face Allie didn’t entirely believe her. But the woman was being smart and agreed anyway. After all, only an idiot argued with someone with a gun. No, you told them everything they wanted to hear. Allie guessed she had a minute, tops, after she left the bathroom before Lipstick followed and told everyone she could grab about what had happened.

Maybe that would be enough time. And if not, well, she’d figure it out when she crossed that bridge. After all, this entire night had been one big, improvised act already. If she hadn’t lost it when Vanguard murdered those troopers, or when Reese and Dwight almost murdered that security guard, what was one more?

She stepped out of the stall and immediately heard the lock clacking into place behind her. That brought out another smile as she wondered if Lipstick actually thought a stall door would be enough if Allie wanted to get back in there. Still, the woman locking herself in was a good sign. That meant she wasn’t planning on coming out anytime soon. Maybe Allie would even get more than just a one minute head start.

Don’t push your luck, girl.

She hurried to the door and stepped outside.

“Man, when you girls go to the bathroom, you really go to the bathroom.”

The sound of his voice surprised her and the hairs on the back of her neck snapped straight, but she exerted every ounce of willpower under her control not to spin around to confront him. Instead, she stopped and turned around calmly, as if she expected him to be there when she came out of the bathroom.

He was leaning casually against the wall at the back of the hallway that separated the men’s and ladies’ bathrooms, his arms folded across his chest. He didn’t quite look impatient, but he was clearly trying to get the point across that he had been there, waiting for her, for a while.

“I hope you remembered to wash your hands,” he smiled.

She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be charming, because there was very little Reese could do or say that she would find charming—except maybe shoot himself and remove one of her problems. That would just leave Dwight and the two in the semi…

“You checking up on me?” she asked. They were close enough that she didn’t have to raise her voice to be heard, even with the din of people in the dining room behind her.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m just ordering some extra food for the road. Looks like we’re going to have a long night ahead of us.”

“I hope you didn’t order a chicken sandwich for me again.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Not enough to eat it twice in a row.”

“Then I guess you better go out there and order something for yourself. That way you can’t complain about it later.”

“You’re paying, right?” she asked, and turned around.

He chuckled behind her. “By the way, meet anyone interesting in the ladies’ room?”

She stopped and looked back at him. “No. Why?”

He was still watching her, this time with that familiar intensity that always unnerved her. “Some woman was telling the waitresses about a weirdo outside the ladies’ room asking people for their phones.”

Bitch, Allie thought, and said, “I must have missed her.”

“Lucky you.”

“Yeah, lucky me.” Then, without missing a beat, “Are we going to stand in the bathroom hallway all night, or what?”

He grinned and was about to say something when one of his jacket pockets buzzed, and he reached inside and took out the same burner phone he’d been using all night. He held out a just one minute finger at her and answered the phone.

Allie nodded, but her eyes shot past him and went to the ladies’ room, expecting the door to swing open and Lipstick to race outside and start screaming about the crazy woman with the gun who had demanded to use her phone at any second.

But the door remained closed, and Allie thought, Maybe she’ll give me all of the five minutes I asked her for after all. Maybe if I’m really lucky, she’ll tack on an additional five minutes.

Yeah, right.

Reese was listening quietly to the phone and hadn’t said a word since he answered it. Maybe it was just the bad lighting in the hallway, but she thought she saw worry lines form on his forehead, which, if her mind wasn’t deceiving her, would be a first.

“All right,” he finally said. Then, sounding almost annoyed (Another first; maybe he’s human after all), “Yeah, I got it.”

He turned off the phone and stared at it for a moment.

“Who was it?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, or even seem to have heard her: “Reese. Who was that?”

He looked up at her and put the phone away. “They’ve been monitoring the news. The shooting, the roadblocks…”

“Who is ‘they?’”

“Our employers.” He pursed his lips. “They want us to cut our losses.”

“Cut our losses?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Get rid of the girls.”

No.

No, no, no, no.

Reese must have seen the stunned look on her face that she was unable (and didn’t want) to stop in time, because he frowned and said, “I’m sorry, Alice.”

“You can’t…”

“What they say goes.”

“They’re just kids…”

“You know the business we’re in. It doesn’t always end well. In fact, it rarely does—”

Click! as the door behind him opened, and the woman with the bright-red lipstick hurried outside, only to freeze in place when she saw Allie standing in the hallway in front of her.

“Oh, lord,” Lipstick said, so softly that Allie almost didn’t hear her.

Reese, standing just slightly beyond the opening bathroom door, was momentarily distracted by the woman’s presence, and he turned in her direction. It was all the opportunity Allie needed, and she reached back, found the holstered Sig, and drew it.

As she expected, Reese caught her sudden flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back to her, saw the gun in her moving right hand, and said, “Wait—”

But she didn’t wait, and shot him, the boom! of her gunshot like thunder, so loud that everyone in the building, including outside in the parking lot, would have heard.

Twelve

They had just crossed the state line when Hank looked over at Lucy, drawn by the relentless tap-tap-tap of her fingers dancing across the tablet’s screen.

“Did Allie finally call back?” he asked.

“No,” the girl said. “I’m just looking over a map of the state again, familiarizing myself with what’s out there. I have to tell you, there’s not much.”

“No, but it’s a quiet place to live. Or, well, it used to be.”

There was some kind of fancy color map on her screen as she scrolled back and forth, then up and down. If he lived another ten years, Hank would never get used to that kind of technology. Maybe he really was just a relic whose time had passed. Maybe the head honchos were right to push him out of the job. And maybe he had no business running around out here with a hole in his leg, trying to help some woman save a bunch of kidnapped kids.

So why did it feel so good?

Hank couldn’t remember another day that had been this exhilarating, and he had barely done anything except talk to the kid and get on the phone with Jane a couple of times. But it wasn’t the action, really, it was just the knowledge that he was back in the thick of it.

Goddamn, he had missed this. He had missed this a lot.

Lucy was leaning back in her seat, and she let out what sounded a lot like a sigh of relief.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“This is the first time Allie and I have been apart for this long for almost a year now. It feels weird.” She glanced back at Apollo. “It feels weird for him, too.”

Apollo, lying with his chin on the backseat, let out a whine of…agreement?

I swear that dog understands everything.

“It’s a hell of a thing she’s doing,” Hank said. “Risking her life for people she doesn’t even know.”

“Someone has to do it. Why not us?”

“Is that her or you talking?”

“Both. I’m the one who introduced Allie to Faith’s mother. We were in the same group…” She stopped, seemed to think about it, then finished with, “We knew each other from this place we used to attend. One day she told me about her daughter and how the cops weren’t doing anything, and I just knew we had to, because we could. And Allie agreed.” The kid looked over at him. “You did it too, right? Back when you were a cop?”

“I guess you could say that, but there’s a big difference. I was paid to do it. It was my job. Allie and you, on the other hand, you guys are doing this because you want to, on your own dime. That’s pretty goddamn impressive, kid. Excuse my French.”

“I don’t think that was French,” she smiled.

He chuckled. “Probably not.” Then, “I’m sure Allie’s fine.”

“I know she is,” Lucy said without hesitation. “She’s probably the toughest woman I know. If it weren’t for her… Well, I owe her a lot.”

“You said before she was your guardian?”

“I remember saying she was my unofficial guardian.”

“Yeah. So what does that mean?”

“Didn’t your cop friend tell you?”

He looked over at her. “What cop friend?”

“When you left the motel room. I saw you go into the manager’s office. I’m assuming you went there to use his phone since you were in there for a while.”

He grunted. “And here I thought I was being clever.”

“Nope.”

He sighed, then said, “She couldn’t find anything on you because she doesn’t know your last name. You wanna fill me in?”

“Nah,” Lucy said.

“Figures. By the way, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“I’m on summer break.”

“Summer came and went months ago.”

“I’m on a long summer break,” Lucy said. “Relax; I’m going back to school. Eventually. I’m not going to drop out or anything. That would be stupid. It’s just that Allie needed my help on this one.”

“What did the school say?”

“They think I moved.”

“So you lied.”

“Well, duh. Otherwise they’d send cops or something to my official guardian’s house.”

“They don’t send cops, kid. They send truant officers.”

“Same difference.”

“I know you’re a tough kid and you have Underdog back there to keep you safe, but didn’t Allie think this might be a little too dangerous for you? She just left you behind at the motel and ran off with two killers.”

“I can take care of myself. Allie’s taught me a few things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Fighting, shooting, evading capture… Those sorts of things.”

“Shooting? She taught you shooting?”

“It’s not that hard.”

“Learning to pull a trigger is the easy part,” Hank said. “It’s the pointing it at a real-life person and then pulling the trigger, that’s where things get more difficult.” He looked down at the backpack crumpled at her feet. “So you know how to use the Glock in there?”

“Yup,” she nodded.

“Have you ever shot anyone with it?”

“Not yet…”

“I hope you never have to, kid.”

Lucy didn’t say anything.

“You haven’t…?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Good,” he nodded. “Good…”

She didn’t reply, and Hank didn’t know what else to say to fill the silence. He had never been particularly good at shooting the breeze with strangers, much less with a sixteen-year-old girl and her dog sitting in the back of his car looking bored. If dogs could be bored, that is.

“What else did she teach you—” he started to ask when the tablet resting on her lap flickered on by itself, the bright LED screen lighting up the Bronco’s dark interior. “Why did it just do that?”

The girl didn’t answer him. She was already too busy leaning over the device and tapping and flicking and stretching things around on the screen. Hank had to drive, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening and having almost no success.

“What is it?” he asked instead. When she still didn’t respond: “Lucy.”

“It’s Allie,” Lucy said. “She just texted me.”

“Texted you? Why didn’t she just call you?”

“I don’t know. I guess she can’t, for whatever reason.” As she talked, Lucy was typing and he kept hearing a swoosh! sound over and over again. “She’s at a truck stop with them.”

“Who is them?”

“The two guys she was with before. And the girls.”

“The girls?”

“The kidnapped girls. In the back of the semitrailer.”

“Jesus Christ. What’s the name—”

“Andy’s Gas N Eats,” Lucy said before he could finish.

“I know that place.”

“Is it far from here?”

“It’s on the other side of the state.”

“So, really far.”

“Yeah. What about the shooters? The ones that killed the troopers?”

Lucy typed briefly, there was a swoosh, then, “She doesn’t know. They separated after the shooting.”

“What else did she say?”

“She wants us to call the police, get them over to the truck stop, and prevent the big rig from leaving with the girls.”

“What about Faith?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s just focusing on saving the girls for now.”

“That’s the right move,” Hank nodded.

“Are you going to call your friend?”

“I don’t carry a cell phone, kid, remember?”

“I know,” Lucy said. She typed something very quickly, and it was followed by another swoosh!

Even Apollo, in the backseat, seemed to understand the urgency of the moment and rose from the seat to watch the two of them, swinging his head left, then right as they took turns talking, or whenever he heard another swoosh coming from Lucy’s tablet.

“Kid,” Hank said urgently.

“I know, I know,” she said before pressing a button. The tablet went into phone mode and dialed a number.

“Who are you calling?” Hank asked.

“Your friend at the state police,” Lucy said.

“Good, good…”

The call connected, and he heard a male voice that definitely wasn’t Jane say, “State Police. Where can I direct your call?”

Lucy had undone her seatbelt and was leaning across the front seats so he could talk into the tablet while still driving. He fought back the urge to tell the kid to put her seatbelt back on and said instead, “I’m looking for Detective Jane Mayer.”

“Detective Mayer isn’t here,” the man said. “Would you like to leave a message—”

“Who is this?”

“Trooper Harrison.”

“Harrison, I want you to get a message to Mayer.”

“Uh, I don’t know where she is, sir. Maybe if you told me who you are, I could get someone to talk to you—”

“The men who shot the troopers this afternoon,” Hank said.

That got Harrison’s full attention and he said, with a noticeable increase in focus this time, “What about them?”

“I know where they are. Andy’s Gas N Eats. Get everyone you have over there now.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I’m Mayer’s CI.”

“I need a name—”

“Harrison!”

“What?”

“Andy’s Gas N Eats!” Hank said, practically shouting now. “Get everyone out there before the murdering fucks that killed your friends get away!”

“Okay, okay,” Trooper Harrison said. “Stay on the line—”

But Hank nodded at Lucy, and she pulled the tablet back and pressed the button to kill the connection.

“Nice,” she said. “I think he might have pissed his pants at the end there.”

Hank grinned, then thought about pouring on the gas to get to Andy’s, but he hadn’t lied to the girl when he said they were on other side of the state. At this rate, it would take them well past midnight just to reach it, and by then everything would be over.

In the backseat, Apollo had moved over to the right-side window to scan the dark trees outside as they continued driving up the interstate. Lucy, next to him, was doing the same thing as the dog—staring outside, as if she could see something (someone) out there.

“She’ll be okay,” Hank said. “Allie, I mean. If she’s even half as well-equipped to deal with all of this as you keep telling me, she should come out of it fine. The cops will get there and corral everyone. I’ll call Jane and tell her about Allie, and I’ll even conveniently forget to tell her that it was Allie who shot me.”

Lucy nodded, still looking out the window. “I’m not worried about Allie. I’m just thinking about what kind of shit those guys she’s stuck with are in.”

“She’s that good?” Hank asked.

“Especially when she’s pushed into a corner.” Lucy looked over and smiled at Hank. “One thing I’ve learned: You want Allie on your side when the chips are down.”

Thirteen

In a perfect world, there would have been police sirens before she shot Reese. Then again, in a perfect world she would be happily married, living in a house in the suburbs while plotting her next brunch with Carmen.

But it wasn’t a perfect world, and there were no police sirens (at least, none that she could hear), and when she shot him, Reese stumbled but he didn’t go down. For some reason, that didn’t surprise her whatsoever. She always knew the man would be hard to kill, that one bullet wouldn’t do it. Maybe two might, but before she could put that theory into practice, he grabbed the woman wearing too much red lipstick by the arm and dragged her in front of him to use her as a human shield. Lipstick was screaming her head off while fumbling wildly with her purse, as if there were some kind of life-saving device in there that would magically transport her to safety. Allie wished that were the case; then she could have finished Reese off.

She saw his eyes instead, zeroing in on her from behind Lipstick, even as his right hand disappeared behind his back in the direction of his holstered sidearm. Allie thought about taking a second shot anyway—going for the head this time, even if she could just barely see it over Lipstick’s left shoulder—but quickly dismissed that idea when she saw the sheer determination in his eyes while blood dripped to the floor between his and his hostage’s feet.

Christ, the man isn’t human.

Screams—this time from multiple people and directions—and stampeding footsteps from the dining room behind her made the decision for her.

She took one, two, then three steps backward before spinning and darting out of the hallway. She instantly collided with a wall of people—men, women, and children—trying to flee the large room. Half of them were pouring out of the diner doors, the other half flooding into the connecting store on the other side.

Allie slipped her gun inside her jacket flap and let herself be carried toward the closest door with the flow of human traffic. A woman holding a young boy by the wrist ran next to her, eyes wide and hair flailing like streamers. The boy glanced at Allie and smiled, oblivious to what was happening. She smiled back, her heart beating faster and faster as she waited for Reese to come out of the hallway behind her and open up.

But he didn’t, and soon the cold night air swarmed her as she stepped outside. The woman with the boy went right while others went left and forward. She hesitated for a moment, got pushed in the back, staggered, and had to right herself and get her bearings.

Now what?

There, across the parking lot—the black and red semitrailer parked in front of the white Ford. Both vehicles looked so far away, and maybe that was because they were. But she knew exactly where to look for them, especially the big rig, which hadn’t moved an inch. She couldn’t make out Dwight in the shadows, but he would be nearby. That is, if he wasn’t already headed toward her in reaction to the chaos.

She stopped thinking about Dwight and focused singularly on the semitrailer. It was the only thing worth a damn right now—stopping it here, now, before it could leave with Sara and the others. She hated to abandon her original mission, but twenty-three lives was twenty-two more than just Faith’s. Maybe, eventually, she could pick up Faith’s trail again, but in the here and now there was only one choice, especially in light of what Reese had said back inside the diner.

“Our employers. They want us to cut our losses.”

She knew exactly what that meant, because to the men behind all of this, Sara and the others were just assets to be used and thrown away. They were just numbers—money, specifically—and not human beings, easy to divorce from.

“Our employers…”

She would find them, one of these days. Sooner or later, she would uncover their identities and she would show up at their front doors. She was good at that—finding people who didn’t want to be found. And the operation was large enough that there would be cracks, soft spots to exploit. And she had time. A lot of time and money.

But that was for later, because right now the only thing that mattered was making sure the black and red semitrailer stayed exactly where it was.

She started moving, then sprinting, then full-on racing across the parking lot, all the while willing the big rig to remain still, to stay there, stay there and don’t you goddamn move—

It came out of nowhere—a powerful hand latching onto her right arm, almost at the elbow, and snapping her out of her stride so suddenly she thought her entire arm might rip off. Allie lost her balance and almost fell down, but by some miracle her shoes managed to find the hard pavement and she spun around, her gun hand coming out from inside her jacket where she had hidden it since exiting the diner.

“What the fuck happened?”

Dwight, standing behind her (How the hell did he get back there?) with his hand on her arm, the two of them surrounded by fleeing truckers and diner employees and civilians alike, the sound of car engines firing up around them forcing Dwight to shout.

She didn’t get a chance to answer him because Dwight saw the gun in her hand and—

She couldn’t finish bringing her gun hand up because of his grip around her elbow, so Allie was forced to swing with her left fist, but she was right-hand dominant and although she’d spent a lot of time strengthening both hands, she didn’t quite have the power in the punch that she would have wanted, something she was woefully aware of as soon as she made contact with his right cheek. His head turned slightly from the blow, but there was zero chance he was going to go down, so instead of (pointlessly) swinging again, she threw her right shoulder at his chest. Dwight was still holding onto her right arm, so he had no defenses when she launched into him.

He stumbled back, letting go of her at the same time he collided with a trucker in a red ball cap that was running past them. The man fell to the hardtop with Dwight on top of him even as more people swerved around them. The trucker might have screamed, but against the chaos of thundering footsteps, shouts, and car engines revving up all across the parking lot, Allie wasn’t even sure she could hear a gunshot—

Dwight, still sitting on top of the shocked trucker, was swinging his hand out from behind his back, somehow having managed to draw his weapon between the time she punched him and when he fell back down.

But Allie already had her gun out, and she lifted it, saw his eyes go wide—at this range, she couldn’t have missed even if she wanted to, and he knew it—when something crashed into her from the side and sent her flying to the parking lot floor. The concrete bit into her flesh despite her clothes, but thank God she had the presence of mind to keep her head up, or else she might have bounced it against the pavement like a bowling ball.

Large, meaty fingers grabbed her right wrist and someone (a man) shouted, “I got ’er! I got the crazy bitch!”

Crazy bitch? she thought, even as she struggled to turn over onto her back, the hand refusing to let go of hers. Worse, there were now two hands on her wrist and one of them was trying to pry her fingers off the gun’s grip.

A man at least a hundred pounds heavier than her was sitting on top of her chest trying to wrestle the gun away, his face contorted in intense concentration, his lips greasy with whatever he had been eating before he fled the diner. He was huge, and his weight on top of her was like a house-size boulder pinning her to the ground, and Allie had no delusions she was going to win this wrestling match.

“I got ’er!” he shouted again. “Someone give me a hand! Hey, someone give me a friggin’ hand!”

You idiot! she thought, and wanted to shout at him but simply didn’t have the strength. Getting blindsided by a man his size had knocked more than just the breath from her; it had dazed her, and being sat on by him afterward hadn’t helped. Her head was still swirling from the shock, and he had already managed to pry two fingers off the Sig Sauer’s grip and was working on the third.

The one bright spot was that absolutely no one had stopped to lend the man the assistance he was shouting for. Everyone kept running, going for their parked cars. She could smell plenty of burning rubber as vehicles continued taking off around them. It made sense, of course, why everyone was fleeing. Who was going to stick around when someone was shooting up the place? It might have just been one gunshot (hers), but she doubted if anyone realized that once the stampede began.

She didn’t care about any of them at the moment. The fact that they were fleeing was good because it meant less possible collateral damage. Right now she had to focus on the fat man on top of her trying to pry her fingers off her gun even while his weight threatened to shut off her ability to do something as simple as breathe.

“Let go!” the man shouted, spittle flying from his mouth and hitting her in the face. “Let go of the gun, you crazy bitch!”

She couldn’t lift herself off the ground far enough to hit him in his bloated face, so Allie went for the next best thing—his groin. It was squatting on her chest, within easy reach, and completely unprotected.

You’re such a cliché, she thought, and swung again with her left fist.

He gulped, cheeks ballooning as if he was going to vomit, before he leaned forward and raised himself slightly off her. Better yet, his grip on her right wrist lessened, which allowed her to jerk her arm, and the gun, away.

Of course she couldn’t just shoot him—he was, after all, just being a (vulgar and sexist pig) Good Samaritan—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t grab him by the shoulders and throw him off her. He offered little resistance and landed face-first on the concrete beside her even as she struggled to her knees.

She expected to find Dwight standing over her, having waited with a smug grin on his face all this time as she struggled with the Good Samaritan. But Dwight was gone and so was the man he had crashed into. There was just a hat where the two of them had been, and as she stared at it, red and green lights splashed across it and the parking lot floor around her.

When she looked up, Allie was surprised to see two squad cars pulling into the truck stop. She recognized their colors. State troopers. Their sirens were blaring so loudly that she couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t heard them until now. She guessed she was concentrating so hard on trying not to lose the gun to the Good Samaritan that the cops could have parked right next to them and she wouldn’t have been aware of it until their tussle was over.

The fact that they were coming in with sirens wailing surprised her, but that quickly gave way to reality—she had fired off a shot in the diner and someone had probably called 911 as a result. That, combined with what she had told Lucy to tell the troopers and someone, somewhere, had put two and two together and decided, as Lucy would say, “shit had gone down.” That meant taking the truck stop quietly and cautiously was no longer possible.

Or she hoped that was the case anyway, and that she wasn’t just dealing with a bunch of idiots who responded to her message like a bunch of Rambos. Either way, the squad cars were tearing through the parking lot only to slam on their brakes as fleeing vehicles blocked their path. Sedans, trucks, and semis were all moving at once, so many that they reminded her of fishes in a pond, each and every one of them heading for the multiple exits.

Block the exits, you idiots! she wanted to shout at the squad cars, but knew how stupid that was. There were only two so far, and it was going to take a hell of a lot more cruisers to do that. But right now, there was only one vehicle that she cared about.

She looked across the parking lot at where the black and red semitrailer and the Ford would be and immediately caught a glimpse of a running figure as it dodged a station wagon that nearly ran it over.

Dwight.

She scrambled to her feet and jumped over the Good Samaritan still rolling around on the floor, cupping his crotch. She focused on Dwight—he was moving fast, even as the red and green lights of more state troopers began filling the truck stop, flickering across the parking lot around her and turning the place into some kind of wild discotheque.

“Dwight!” she shouted.

She was hoping he would slow down at the sound of her voice and look back, and maybe lose a precious second or two (or five) and allow her to make up some ground. But he didn’t, and kept running. He might not have even heard her over the sirens and car engines and horns honking as people came dangerously close to colliding. It was a madhouse if she had ever seen one, except this one just happened to involve hundreds of tons of moving metal.

Then she saw it and instantly forgot all about Dwight: The black and red semitrailer’s headlights had turned on, the stream of bright lights cutting through the shadowed edge of the lot drawing her eyes.

No. No, no, no, no.

She was forty yards away and closing fast, but it wasn’t going to be quick enough. She knew it without having to think about it. She would never reach it in time, and when the driver finally put the rig in gear it was going to leave with Sara and the other girls in the back and she would have failed both Faith and Sara—

No!

No, no, no, no!

The ceiling light inside the semi’s cab flickered on as someone opened a door. It had to be the passenger side, since the driver was already behind the steering wheel and she could make out his form struggling with his seatbelt. The new light gave her something to focus on—more importantly, it gave her a target.

She fired, again and again, using the cab’s light as a marker, even as she willed it to stay on, stay on, goddammit, stay on just a little longer. She ran and fired and could feel the gun getting lighter in her hand, but she didn’t stop.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

Allie mouthed a curse when the cab light finally blinked out of existence, but there was also relief because the semi had still not moved. She concentrated on the headlights, the most visible part of the vehicle, and every second that it stayed frozen—even as she got closer—was a victory for her, for Sara, for all the other girls inside that long trailer, probably terrified to death of what was happening.

She eventually stopped shooting, but she never stopped running. Her breath hammered out of her, her heartbeat racing out of control from exhaustion and adrenaline and fear the rig would start moving. She didn’t know how many bullets she had left in the P250, but the gun felt remarkably light even as she swung her arms back and forth as she sprinted faster, faster, faster.

Allie was almost there, close enough that she could see the cab’s broken driver-side window, the bullet holes in its door, when it came out of nowhere—a new pair of headlights, blinding her from the right—and caught her as she was still in mid-stride. She might have jumped at the very last second, but she couldn’t be certain, because she was overwhelmed with a feeling of weightlessness, as if she were…flying?

She didn’t really feel the impact of slamming back down to the parking lot floor, or know which part of her hit first, never mind where the gun went. Allie was only vaguely aware of voices far and near shouting, police sirens that seemed to drown out everything, and tires screaming and screaming and screaming louder. There was also the thick smell of rubber and spilled motor oil everywhere.

Then someone was grabbing her by the arms and dragging her across the pavement before she found herself flying again, except this time it was a much shorter flight. She also landed on much, much softer material this time, almost like lying down on a cloud or something equally absurd.

After that it wasn’t very hard to close her eyes and let go, to allow herself to give in to the numbness that was flooding her senses. The alternative was to embrace the pain, and although she wasn’t a stranger to that either, she made it a general rule to opt out when presented with the option.

The blare of police sirens continued to dominate everything—at least for a while, because even that started to fade into the background until, finally, she couldn’t hear them anymore. It was instead replaced by the sting of sweat and heavy breathing, though she couldn’t be certain it was coming from her or somewhere else inside—

Where the hell was she?

She had no idea, except she could hear voices, and they sounded remarkably close.

“She dead?” someone asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” a second one said.

“You sure?”

“She’s breathing.”

“For now,” the first one said. “She’s going to wish she wasn’t when I’m through with her.”

Promises, promises, Allie thought, just before she couldn’t hear or see or feel anything anymore.

Fourteen

“What the fuck happened to you?”

“I was shot. What does it look like?”

“She shot you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“In the diner.”

“That explains the stampede of fat asses.” Dwight chuckled. “Serves you right. I told you she was bad news. It’s just like that time in Colombia. I have a sixth sense for these things. The girl wasn’t right the first time I laid eyes on her.”

“Then you should have said something,” Reese said.

“I did. You didn’t listen.”

“You should have tried harder.”

“Whatever.” Dwight glanced over. “So, you going to bleed to death or what?”

“Hopefully not.”

“You sure?”

“Mostly.”

“Sure are bleeding a lot for someone who isn’t gonna bleed to death, though,” Dwight said, not even trying to hide that smile on his face. Apparently he found all of this very amusing.

Can’t say I blame him.

Reese sighed. He was very well aware that he was “bleeding a lot,” even when he pushed his way through the diner and out into the parking lot and saw Alice (Was that even her real name?) on the ground fighting with some fat guy. Then she was up and running, and moments later, shooting. It took him a few seconds to figure out what she was doing: she was aiming at the cab of the semi, the one hauling the girls in the back. She was trying to stop them from leaving like everyone else around them at the time.

And it worked, because the semi never moved, even though it had turned on its headlights. He assumed its engine was also on, but given the roar of noises in the parking lot at the time—police sirens, cars revving, tires squealing—it was impossible to be sure. All of that took a backseat when Dwight, in the Ford, clipped Alice in the legs, and Reese watched, his own gunshot wound momentarily forgotten, as she bounced into the air and landed back on the hard pavement like a rag doll.

Dwight hadn’t wanted to bring Alice along, but Reese didn’t wait for his partner’s permission to pick her up and throw her into the backseat. Not an easy feat, given that the only thing keeping him from bleeding out was his own hands and he had to use them to grab Alice. Thank God he had insisted on outfitting all their vehicles with first-aid kits for just such occasions, otherwise he would have bled to death by the time Dwight, somehow, managed to weave his way through the maze of moving vehicles and get them back out onto the interstate even as more state troopers poured into the truck stop behind them.

“You need a doctor or something?” Dwight was asking him. He didn’t sound amused anymore. In fact, he might have even been actually concerned, though Reese wasn’t willing to commit to that assumption just yet.

“No, I’ll be fine,” Reese said. “She just grazed me.”

“Looked a hell of a lot more than a graze, dude.”

“It looks worse than it is.”

“Really? ’Cause it looks really worse.”

“I’ll live.”

“We’ll see about that,” Dwight said.

A jolt of misery shot through Reese and he grimaced through it, letting it wash over him. Both his hands were slick with blood, and he wiped them on his pant legs, then brushed at the sweat dripping from his forehead. He checked, then double checked to make sure the bandages wrapped around his stomach under his jacket weren’t soaked with blood. It was a slightly half-assed job, but the best he could do while trying not to bleed to death in the front passenger seat of an erratically moving vehicle. Dwight was a hell of a tactical driver, but he hadn’t been shy about swinging the Ford around as if it were a toy as they fled the truck stop.

Reese hadn’t completely lied to Dwight, though; his wound wasn’t life-threatening, though it hurt a hell of a lot more than just a graze, so maybe he was lying just a little bit. Still, he counted his lucky stars. Another inch or two to the wrong side and it would have put a permanent hole in his stomach. He was bleeding, but as long as he stopped it—which he had, despite working in the semidarkness—he wasn’t in any danger of bleeding out in the foreseeable future.

Is that a professional diagnosis or unwarranted optimism, old sport?

He grimaced again and said, “I won’t lie; I could use some painkillers.”

“Why not some morphine while you’re at it?” Dwight said, focusing on the road outside the car’s spiderwebbed front windshield.

The damage to the Ford was limited to the windshield where Alice had struck it when she rolled across the hood before bouncing into the air. The sight of her flying had been something else, and Reese was surprised she was still alive when he turned the corner and saw her lying there.

“That’ll work,” Reese said.

“I’ll see what I can do. Until then, what’s our next move?”

“We’ve lost Nest. Best-case scenario, the drivers are dead. Worst case, they’re wounded and the cops have them.”

“She pumped a lot of rounds into the cab back there.”

“You didn’t see what happened to the boys?”

“Are you kidding me? Cops were coming out of the woodworks. You’re lucky I spotted your dumb ass, or I would have left you back there with your girlfriend. That would have been some sight, the two of you…”

Reese grunted. Girlfriend? Who, Alice?

“Assuming worst case,” Dwight continued, “what are the chances the drivers will talk?”

“They’re freelancers,” Reese said. “They have no reason to take it all on themselves. They’ll talk about what they know.”

“And what do they know?”

“The gigs and the people that hired them. Specifically, us.”

“That’s bad news.”

“Indeed.”

“So what about them?”

“I’ll deal with that when they call.”

“You think they will?”

“Oh, I know they’ll call.”

Dwight didn’t say anything for a moment, and Reese watched his partner staring out the cracked windshield, lost in thought. Alice was right about one thing—he was, in many ways, the “brains” of the operation, but that didn’t mean Dwight was an idiot. If anything, Reese thought Dwight deferred to him simply because it was less work.

“They were there awfully fast,” Dwight finally said.

“The cops?”

“Yeah. Couldn’t have been more than a few minutes after she shot you in the diner before they showed up. I barely heard the gunshot outside, mostly saw the herd running out of the joint. And there were way too many cops responding. There shouldn’t have been that many in the area.”

“What are you saying?” Reese asked.

“I think they were already on their way,” Dwight said. “They knew about us, just like they knew to stop and search the semis at the roadblocks. Question is: How did they know?”

I have a pretty good idea, Reese thought, remembering the woman telling Cheyenne, the waitress in the diner, about a stranger who had asked to borrow her phone when she came out of the bathroom. Then later, Alice spending an awful lot of time inside the ladies’ room.

Two and two gets you four, old chum.

“Well?” Dwight said.

“I don’t know,” Reese lied.

He turned in his seat and looked into the back. She was still alive, because he could see the rise and fall of her chest (slightly labored, but nevertheless clearly rising and falling). She had landed with one leg dangling carelessly off the seat, and her head was lolled to one side—facing him, which offered a nice view of her serene expression.

Reese couldn’t deny that Alice was pretty. Then again, so was Juliet, and he’d never had any interest in her. But there was something different about Alice. Maybe it was the confidence. He liked that in a woman. Even when he put her through the test back at the roadside diner, she hadn’t been flustered. Even when Vanguard wasted the troopers, she had sat there and kept quiet and didn’t panic once. Compared to Dwight, she was a model of calm. Hell, she had given him a run for his money in the stoic department all day.

“Jesus, dude, are you into her or something?” Dwight was saying.

Reese glanced over. “What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me. You’re into her, aren’t you?”

“Am I suddenly back in primary school?”

“Answer the question.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Whenever someone says ‘of course not,’ that means yes. Cause if you are, just go back there and fuck her and get it over with. She’s not going to stop you.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a proper response, Dwight.”

His partner laughed. “Hey, it’s just you and me and her in the car. She won’t know, and I won’t blab about it later. Go ahead. Climb back there. Just be careful; don’t wanna open that graze back up. And, oh, try not to let her shoot you again.”

“Shut up and drive,” Reese grunted.

Dwight laughed again but mercifully let it go. At least, for the moment.

His blood was pooling under him, and it should have made sitting uncomfortable, but Reese was far too relieved that they were still in the wind after everything—the sight of all those squad cars flooding the parking lot had made him overly pessimistic for a second—to let it get him down. He glanced down at his bandages again. Still no visible signs of fresh blood.

It was a good thing he had seen the glint of her gun coming out from behind her back a split second before she shot him. That early split-second warning had allowed him to twist just enough that the bullet went into his side instead of his gut. At the time he thought he could make himself small enough to force her to miss completely, but that was stupid, especially given the distance between them.

But she had shot him, and he hadn’t seen it coming. That was the thing that bothered Reese the most. He hadn’t seen it coming.

How the hell had that happened?

Dwight’s voice woke him up from his slumber: “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, it’s them. Answer the phone.”

Reese opened his eyes to a slight buzzing in his jacket pocket. The interior of the car was dead quiet and they were still moving down the interstate, which looked impossibly abandoned at the moment, except for the occasional vehicle on the faster left lane or coming from the opposite direction.

His body ached, but he ignored it and fished out the phone. The blood clinging to his fingers had dried, so he had napped for quite a stretch. He didn’t bother looking at the caller ID.

“Yes,” he said into the phone.

“We’re looking at the news right now,” a male voice said on the other end of the line. “The truck stop. Andy something.”

“Andy’s Gas N Eats.”

“Yes, that’s it. What’s your situation?”

Reese folded his palm over the phone, said to Dwight, “Where are we?”

“Next state over,” Dwight said.

“Roadblocks?”

“Haven’t seen one yet.”

He turned back to the phone: “We’re beyond the perimeter.”

“I don’t have to tell you what’s happened to the cargo,” the caller said. It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Reese said.

“Good. Because I hate wasting my breath on things people should already know.”

Reese rubbed at his eyes to help himself wake up, but the monotony of the view outside the car windows wasn’t a very big help. There seemed to be an endless series of empty black road in front of him and on the dark shoulder to his right.

“What are you going to do about it?” the man on the other end of the phone asked.

“I’m not sure what I can do,” Reese said. “If you’re worried about the cargo identifying you or even being aware of your existence, don’t be.”

“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t be worried about, Reese. The drivers, on the other hand. They’re yours, aren’t they?”

“We’ve worked with them in the past, yes.”

“How much do they know? About the operation? About us?”

“They know what I’ve told them, which isn’t very much. They’re freelancers; they know better than to ask questions.”

“That isn’t an answer, Reese.”

“Nothing. They don’t know anything about you.” When his caller didn’t reply right away, Reese said, “We’re not even sure if they’ve been captured alive. There was a lot of gunplay.”

“I think it’s best to assume they’ve been captured alive, don’t you? Just in case.”

“Agreed,” Reese said.

“I have to say, we’re a little disappointed.”

“I can assure you, so are we.”

“You’ve always come through for us, Reese. What went wrong this time?”

Alice. That’s what went wrong, he thought, but said instead into the phone, Her “We’re looking into it. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”

“Do that. In the meantime, what’s your current location?”

“We’re about three hours out from the midway point,” Reese said, and saw Dwight glance over at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Good,” the caller said. “We’ll talk again when you get there.”

“Again, our apologies,” Reese said. “We will, of course, not accept any forms of payment for this screwup. Hopefully you’ll let us make up for it.”

“We’ll see,” the caller said, and hung up.

Reese grimaced at a sudden spurt of pain as he put the phone back into his jacket pocket.

“We’re almost at the midway point,” Dwight said. “Ten minutes, tops. Why did you lie?”

“Because we’re not going there. Slow down.”

Dwight did. “What’s going on?”

“Before Alice did what she did, they called me, told me to cut our losses.”

“Fuck. That’s some hardcore shit.”

Reese nodded. “Yeah. Writing the girls off as a loss is a financial decision, but losing them to the cops, along with, potentially, the drivers, goes beyond that.”

“So I take it we’re not going to the midway point.”

“They were already looking to do damage control, and now we’ve just become another loose end that needs to be cauterized.”

“Ouch,” Dwight said. “I think there’s a word for this, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It’s not super fantastic, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Reese said, and leaned back against his seat and closed his eyes. The throbbing had returned, and no matter what he did, it was getting more and more difficult to ignore them.

“You all right?” Dwight asked.

“I really could use some of those painkillers, partner.”

“Hurts, huh?”

“What do you think?”

“Must hurt a lot. You look like you’re about to poop in your pants.”

Reese sighed. “I need something.”

“Hold your horses.”

“Trying…”

It took thirty minutes, with Dwight driving around the scheduled meeting place, before they eventually pulled into a gas station. Dwight found a spot at the side of the main store, away from the bright lights in the lot. The semidarkness kept them, Alice, and the damaged windshield mostly hidden, just as long as someone walking by didn’t look too closely.

Dwight put the car in park. “What about your girlfriend?”

“We keep her alive for now,” Reese said.

“Give me one good reason.”

“Aren’t you curious who she is?”

“It’s pretty obvious who she is. Juliet’s in custody somewhere, and she sold us out. That girl back there’s a goddamn cop. She must have gotten her hands on a phone when you let her go into the diner by herself. Case closed.”

“I didn’t let her go by herself. I followed her.”

“Not quickly enough. That place probably had a pay phone…”

“She didn’t go for it.”

“You saw her?”

“I did. She didn’t use it.”

Dwight shrugged, but he was not convinced. “Then she got her hands on a phone some other way. I don’t care how; I just know that she’s a cop and you should have left her back there. Better yet, you should have put one in her head as a good-bye gift. She did shoot you, remember?”

Reese shook his head. “I don’t think she’s a cop.”

“She has to be. It’s the only answer that makes any sense.”

“I don’t think so, but I’d like to find out for sure.”

Dwight squinted at him. It wasn’t nearly dark enough for Reese not to see the smirk on his partner’s face.

“What’s on your mind?” Reese asked.

“I think you don’t want to believe she’s a cop because you just want to keep her around.”

“I just want answers, Dwight. How long have we been partners? You know I don’t do well with blissful ignorance.” He sighed and tried to blink away a stab of pain. “Now can you please go into that store and get me something before I pass out again?”

“It’s a gas station, dude; don’t get your hopes up for a bottle of Vicodin.”

The ceiling light flickered on temporarily as Dwight opened his door and climbed out. Reese checked his bandages for the second time since waking up, and finding it stark white against the blackness of the car’s interior, leaned back and attempted to slow down his breathing.

He glanced up at the rearview mirror and looked back at Alice, still unconscious in the backseat. Or, at least, she looked the part. For all he knew, she could have been faking it. The woman was apparently very good at that. Which was just one more reason why Reese wanted to get to the bottom of who she really was.

After that, well, Dwight wasn’t completely wrong. She was much too dangerous to keep around forever. Sooner or later, whether he got his answers or not, they were going to have to say good-bye to her because they had more pressing business on their plates. That was something Reese had no doubts about, just like he knew there was nothing waiting for them at the scheduled midway point where they were supposed to meet their employers’ representatives but bullets with their names on them.

Live by the gun, die by the gun, isn’t that the old saying?

Fifteen

Her legs were broken. She was certain of it. Maybe both, but definitely one. How else to explain the explosion of pain that coursed through her body when she raised herself from…

A bed.

She was lying on a bed. How did she get on a bed?

After a while, she gave up trying to move and simply lay as still as possible. There was an odd smell about the mattress under her, but after fruitlessly trying to see in the darkness, she came to the conclusion that the odor wasn’t just from the bed, but all around her. While the aroma wasn’t completely gag-worthy, it wasn’t anywhere close to being pleasant. It was…sterile.

She reached down to touch her legs, hoping to—

There. They were still attached, and moving them while they hurt was still possible, so she hadn’t broken either legs after all. Thank God, even if she didn’t want to see what they looked like or what color they were underneath her pant legs. If the continuous throbbing that originated all the way from her toes and went up to her chest was any indication, it wasn’t pretty.

She tried to turn her head to get a better look at her surroundings, but just rising off the pillow (not fluffy exactly, but not too hard, either), regardless of how slight her movements, made her spine creak as if it might snap into a dozen pieces at any moment. The fact was, everything hurt, and maybe that was a good thing. Pain was better than not feeling anything at all after what had happened.

She was still trying to piece together the sights and sounds from memory when a male voice, familiar, said, “Maybe a broken bone or two.”

She turned her head slowly, very slowly, and saw him standing next to the window looking outside. Streams of moonlight splashed across one side of his face, and she thought, Of course he’s not dead. I’m not that lucky.

“Maybe a couple of ribs,” he said. “Legs look fine. Or, well, as fine as they can possibly look after what happened. The upside? They’re not twisted into odd shapes.”

Her sides were on fire, and every inch of her ached.

The car. She recalled the car.

It had come out of nowhere, bright headlights giving her just enough warning to jump—or start to jump, anyway—as it was about to strike. That stunt had saved her life, even if it didn’t spare her the brunt of the collision. She remembered rolling across the hood and impacting the windshield, hearing it shatter against her body, followed by that whole flying through the air moment that still felt like a dream, one that was happening to someone else.

But it was definitely me.

The fact that she was starting to remember the details was another good sign, because it meant she hadn’t broken her head open against the parking lot of Andy’s when she fell back down. Broken bones could be mended and gashes sutured, but there wasn’t a whole lot you could do for a cracked skull.

She should be grateful. Ecstatic, even, because despite everything she was still (mostly) intact. It was more than she could have asked for, though looking at Reese as he stood at the window peering out, his back to her, there was a very good chance her good fortune wouldn’t last. Lady luck, after all, was known to be a very fickle bitch.

They were in a motel room, that much she had managed to figure out. The slightly uncomfortable bed under her, the Spartan decorations, and most of all, the smell were all indications of that. They must have left the interstate behind by the lack of back-and-forth traffic noises from outside. How long had it been since she was upended by Dwight in Andy’s parking lot? No idea. It could have been a day or a week or just a few hours.

Reese was there, but she didn’t see Dwight. Not that she had any delusions she could take Reese even if he were by himself and wounded. Besides the fact he still had his gun holstered behind his back, she was in no condition to do anything other than stare at him. She couldn’t even breathe properly without her chest threatening to cave in on her, for God’s sake.

Maybe this is it. The end of the road. Lying on a stinking motel bed waiting for the ax to fall. I can definitely think of better ways to go…

“Why am I still alive?” she asked.

He looked over. His face was partially hidden in shadows, so she could only see one of his brown eyes. “If Dwight had his way, you wouldn’t be.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s running an errand. He’ll be back soon.”

Reese was doing everything possible not to show it, but she could tell he was in pain. It was in the way he stood, in the way he talked and even breathed. He was still wearing his black blazer, but he’d taken off his shirt and it was easy to make out the white bandages wrapped around his stomach where she had shot him.

“Dwight thinks you’re a cop,” Reese said. “He’s pretty sure of it.”

Is thinking I’m a cop good or bad?

More importantly, which answer would keep her alive a little longer until she could heal enough to fight back? She didn’t like the idea of dying inside this motel room. Hell, she didn’t like the idea of dying at all. At least, not yet. Not while Faith was still out there, somewhere…

“What do you think?” she asked him.

“I told him you couldn’t possibly be a cop.”

“You sound very sure of it,” she said, wondering if this was the right play. Was keeping him off-balance the correct move, or was it better to confirm his suspicions? Maybe it was the pounding in her head, but Allie found it difficult to think clearly.

Concentrate!

“I am,” he nodded. “I know cops. I’ve been around a lot of them, in a lot of places—cities, countries, continents. And you, my dear, are not one of them.”

He walked over to her. He was being very careful with his side, flinching whenever he moved or turned too quickly. Even reaching over and bringing a chair to sit down next to the bed made him wince noticeably.

“Which is why you’re still alive,” Reese said.

“Why’s that?”

“You’re not a cop, but you’re not a criminal, either. So what are you?”

“You seem to have all the answers. You tell me.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Maybe I’m both.”

“Both?”

“A crooked cop. A cop and a criminal. I hear they actually exist.”

“They do,” he said, but then shook his head. “But you’re not that, either. I’ve been around criminals all my life. Small time, big time—all the other times in between. But you’re not one of them. I’m absolutely certain of that.”

“Apparently you know a lot more about me than I do.”

“Not true, but I’m getting there. You’re very interesting, Alice.”

“Did you find Juliet interesting, too?”

He smiled. “You mean, did we ever have a sexual relationship?”

“That’s not what I meant, but sure, let’s pull that thread.”

“No.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“She’s not my type.”

“Juliet is everyone’s type.”

“She’s Dwight’s, but I like my women more interesting. Like you, Alice.”

There’s that word again. Interesting. Well, I’ve been called worse.

“So what else do you know about me?” she asked.

“Not very much at all, Alice. Is your name even Alice?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a lie.”

“If you say so.”

“But I’ll call you Alice anyway. You look like an Alice.”

“Is that right?”

“Sure, why not. So tell me, Alice. Why are you here? At first I thought your goal was to save the girls, but if that were the case, you would have done it much sooner, well before Andy’s. You had so many chances before then.”

“Did it work?” she asked.

“Did what work?”

“The big rig. The girls…”

He nodded and gave her an almost amused smile. “It did.”

She sighed with relief and didn’t bother to hide it from Reese. She didn’t care if he knew; not anymore, anyway.

Thank God I did something right today.

Thank God…

“Job well done,” Reese said. “The girls are safe in police custody. All of them.”

He watched her closely, with that same intensity that was annoying and disturbing and more than a little unnerving. Okay, it was a lot unnerving.

“So the girls were important to you,” he said. “But they weren’t your priority. At least, not at first.”

For some reason, Reese was starting to drift in and out of her vision, and she swore he split off into two Reeses at one point, which prompted the amusing thought, Great. I can’t even kill one of him, now there are two?

“Before the truck stop, you were content to ride it out to the end with us,” he continued. “I had to ask myself why—what was so important that you were willing to risk losing the girls?”

He leaned slightly forward, as if to get an even better look at her, though she wasn’t sure how that would be possible given how close they already were. If she could move her arms, she would have been tempted to throw a few haymakers in his direction.

“So what was it, Alice? Was it to get to my employers? Were they your primary target? Am I close?”

She was doing her best to maintain her concentration, to force the two Reeses back into one, and failing miserably. If Reese noticed her waning focus, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat back in his chair and casually touched his side with one hand, over the spot where she had shot him.

Hurts, huh, asshole?

Reese looked down at his watch. “Dwight should be back soon.”

“Where did he go?”

“I told you, errands.”

“Does he know you’re about to fall off that chair?”

He gave her a wry look. “Yes, well, we’ve both seen better days, haven’t we?”

He was still talking when she glimpsed a shadow flitting across the curtained windows over his shoulder.

Dwight’s back, she thought, when Reese suddenly stood up and a Glock appeared as if by magic in his hand.

Or not?

Reese moved silently across the room, abandoning the chair for the wall between the windows and door. Almost at the exact moment Reese pressed his back against the ugly wallpaper, the doorknob turned slightly, as if someone on the other side was trying to see if it was locked. It wasn’t just locked; there was also a deadbolt and chain in place.

When she looked back to Reese, he was facing her with one finger held up to his lips. She sat up, wincing as every joint in her body seemed to pop and enough pain flooded her senses for two, maybe three people. But she kept going, pushing every bruised muscle and (broken?) bone, because the alternative was to lie in bed and do nothing, and there was no way in hell she was going to ignore the alarm bells going off inside her head. She might have been able to convince herself she was just being paranoid, that nothing bad was about to happen, except Reese clearly believed the same.

She swung her legs off the bed, biting back the tears and misery. There was something odd on Reese’s face as he watched her. If she weren’t too busy trying not to scream and pretending that every inch of her wasn’t hurting, she could almost believe he looked...impressed?

Go to hell, Reese, she wanted to tell him, but it was hard enough to breathe, never mind get the invective out.

Voices, coming from outside, whispering back and forth, just before a second (or was it the same one?) silhouetted figure appeared at the window to Reese’s left. With the bright parking lot lights behind him, the man (and it was a man, she was sure of it from the shoulders and frame) looked enormous, and he was holding something in his hand. The man turned slightly, giving her a good look at the barrel and the pistol grip underneath it.

Crash!

It had to have been a heavy boot, because the motel door smashed open and wood paneling along the frame snapped and splinters speared the darkened room. A figure—another man—blotted out the open doorway, gripping something short and black and metallic in its hands. The intruder was trying to reestablish his balance in the aftermath of the kick that had sent the door into the wall, the doorknob slamming hard enough to embed in the drywall.

The man took one step inside, his face becoming visible for the first time—he was in his thirties and had a mustache, his cheeks pockmarked with acne scars from his youth—and the thing in his hands was an MP5K—

Bang! as the man’s brain, along with the 9mm round from Reese’s Glock, exited the left side of the intruder’s head and splashed the door, his body slumping sideways from the impact before collapsing to the doorway in a useless heap.

Reese pushed off the wall and spun around even as the silhouetted figure outside the window reacted to the gunshot and took the first step toward the door. He got halfway before Reese unloaded into the window. The man’s outline seemed to jerk once, twice, before disappearing underneath the windowsill on the other side.

A car alarm began blaring in the parking lot, which set off a chain reaction.

Reese was leaning against the wall, his chest heaving loudly against the spill of moonlight, when they both heard a steady stream of gunfire from outside. The shooting was so loud and ferocious that it actually managed to drown out the car alarms.

What now?

The idea that there were people shooting each other outside hardly computed before she looked back at the dead man just inside the motel room. She searched for and quickly found the shape of the submachine gun nearby and tried to conjure up a scenario where she could stand up and walk to it and pick it up and shoot Reese with it before he noticed.

She was still cycling through the possibilities when Reese snatched the MP5K off the floor (Goddammit!) before leaning against the open door for support. Reese hadn’t been looking out at the parking lot for more than a few seconds when the gunfire suddenly stopped, the last shots fading until there were just the car alarms wailing away, except now it sounded like more than just one or two fighting with one another for attention.

“Reese,” she said, “who’s out there? What’s happening?”

Maybe she was still too groggy from the pain, from almost dying earlier today (Days ago? Weeks ago? She still didn’t know how long it had been since Andy’s), but it was incredibly difficult to figure out what was happening.

Who were the two men with the MP5Ks? Who was shooting at whom outside in the parking lot? And dear God, what was it going to take to shut up those damn car alarms? She focused on the shattered windows, flinching at the shrill cries of the alarms as they attempted to drill right down into her soul.

Would someone please shut them up!

When she looked back over, Reese was limping toward her. “Time to go, Alice.”

“I can’t move,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She wished it were, but it wasn’t. She simply couldn’t move at the moment. Just maintaining her current sitting posture was taking everything she had.

“Yes, you can,” Reese said.

“No, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” he said, and holstered his sidearm and grabbed her arm and jerked her ruthlessly up to her feet.

She didn’t even bother to stifle the screams this time.

Sixteen

He didn’t think she would ever stop screaming, and it made the twenty or so feet from the motel door to Dwight and the Chevy feel like an eternity. He wasn’t even sure how he did it, but he kept pushing, dragging her with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K he’d salvaged from one of the dead guys.

One foot at a time. Move, move, move!

Then they were outside and at the car, and Dwight, a scowl on his face, was shouting at him, “Leave her!”

Reese didn’t waste time arguing and instead opened the back door of the Chevy and pushed her inside. She stumbled and fell face-first onto the seat, but thankfully her momentum put her inside the vehicle as he slammed the door shut after her and turned his attention to a white van parked about ten rooms down from them. His ears were still ringing from Alice’s screams, which he guessed was a good thing because it meant he didn’t have to hear the car alarms filling the night air around them with impunity.

“You good?” Dwight shouted from the other side of the car.

Not even close, old sport! he thought, but shouted back, “Yeah, let’s go!”

Dwight unslung the Heckler & Koch UMP45 hanging off his right shoulder by a strap and tossed it into the car before ducking inside after it. Reese gave the parking lot one final look—the two bodies around the bullet-riddled van, a third slumped over the open driver-side window—before pulling open the Chevy’s front passenger-side door. He dug out and dropped the burner phone to the pavement, then smashed it under his shoe before climbing inside.

The Chevy was a stolen replacement for the Ford, which they had ditched in one of the wooded areas on their way to the motel. Reese hadn’t asked Dwight where he had gotten it, though his partner assured him the owner wasn’t going to notice it was even missing until sunup.

With the windows rolled up, they were mercifully spared most of the blaring car alarms. Dwight reversed, then spun the wheel until the vehicle was facing the right direction before he gunned it. In no time, they were back on the road with the motel fading fast in Reese’s side mirror. Dwight floored the gas and their car’s headlights sliced through darkness. Instead of turning back toward the interstate, Dwight took a small country road where they were the only moving object for as far as Reese could see in either direction.

“How many at the room?” Dwight asked.

“Two,” Reese said.

“Lucky you. They were getting ready to send over more before I pulled up. You should have seen the slack-jawed looks on their faces when I whipped out the UMP. Sad-looking motherfuckers.”

“You grabbed any of their weapons?”

“Didn’t have time. You?”

He held up the MP5K. The submachine gun was highly portable and had a pistol grip under the barrel. The long, skinny magazine offered up a thirty-round load. “I should have grabbed the other guy’s, too. More guns are going to come in real handy after tonight.”

“Understatement of the decade, dude.”

“How’d the scavenger hunt go?”

“Fruitful,” Dwight said, and grabbed a plastic bag from between their seats and tossed it into Reese’s lap. “Don’t ask where those came from.”

Reese opened the bag and peered down at a pile of pill bottles. “Where’d you get them?”

“Didn’t I just say not to ask?”

Reese grabbed the first bottle. He had to turn on the ceiling light in order to read the label: Tramadol. It wasn’t the Vicodin he was hoping for, but it was a hell of a lot stronger medicine than the Ibuprofen Dwight had gotten from the gas station earlier tonight.

He sifted through the other labels just in case there was something stronger. They were all prescription-strength painkillers, but the Tramadol was the best of the lot. He popped its lid, shook out two, and gulped them down.

“Easy there, Bend it Like Peckham,” Dwight said. “You get yourself knocked out again, and there won’t be anyone to stop me from taking care of your girlfriend back there.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I very fucking would in a heartbeat.”

Reese grunted, then turned around and looked into the backseat at Alice. She had somehow turned over onto her back and was staring at him. Even though he knew she was in tremendous pain and had been since waking up in the motel room, that didn’t stop her from gritting her teeth and firing daggers in his direction.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I had no choice. It was stay behind and die, or run and live.”

She blinked but didn’t say anything.

If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man a million times over.

“Peace offering,” he said, and took the bottle out of his pocket and shook out two pills, then leaned between the seats and held it out to her. “Painkillers. Blink twice for yes, once for no.”

She blinked twice rapidly.

He smiled. “See, we’re already getting along.”

He pried open her lips and slipped one pill through them. He waited for her to swallow, but she didn’t.

“Water?” he asked.

Two blinks.

He turned around and picked up a water bottle from the floor.

“Jesus Christ, you really are into her,” Dwight said from the driver’s seat.

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m just trying to keep her alive,” he said, and returned to helping Alice swallow the pills.

Either the pills knocked her out or the combination of pain and meds did. Either way, Alice was sleeping soundly in the backseat by the time Dwight pulled the Chevy into a roadside convenience store and parked next to a couple of semitrailers that had shut down for the night.

Dwight killed the engine and let the darkness swallow them up. Whoever was working the store would still be able to see them, thanks to the streetlights, but Reese doubted if the employee would care about a sedan parking for the night, especially amongst two big rigs that were already there and doing the same.

“I guess we’re fucked,” Dwight said, tearing open a bag of Twinkies before sucking out the white cream filling, while his other hand busied with opening a large-size can of Red Bull wedged between his thighs.

Dwight didn’t sound nearly as angry as Reese had been expecting; in fact, he was remarkably calm, which was a rarity when it came to his partner. That in itself was surprising, but considering the series of failures they’d had to deal with today, it was downright miraculous.

“Not necessarily,” Reese said.

“You don’t think so? Not even after those guys back at the motel?”

“It’s safe to say they figured out we never intended to make the rendezvous point, so they came searching for us.”

“How’d they do that, by the way?”

“The burner phone they gave me. They probably had some kind of tracking software installed on it.” When Dwight flashed him a concerned look, “I got rid of it back at the motel.”

“That wasn’t the first phone they gave you.”

“Nope.”

“You think they could always track us, even on past jobs?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Paranoid bastards.”

“Indeed.”

Dwight started working on the yellow part of the Twinkie. “So what are our choices?” he asked between bites.

“I guess it all depends on how determined they are, whether they want to cut their losses or make their dissatisfaction with our performance a permanent thing.”

Dwight chuckled. “You say it like we screwed up their pizza order. We probably coast them a few hundred grand with that shipment.”

“You’re lowballing it.”

“No kidding?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, damn. Maybe I’ve been in the wrong business all this time.”

“You were in the right business; you were just at the wrong end of it.”

“Figures,” Dwight grunted. “When have I not ended up on the wrong end of things?”

“At least the pay was good.”

“Yeah, but I bet it’s gooder on the other side.”

Reese smiled. “Likely.”

“So, the drivers are probably goners,” Dwight said. “If they’re even still alive after Sleeping Beauty back there pumped their cab full of bullets.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption. Leave no loose ends.”

“Like us.”

“Uh huh.”

Reese watched a van pull into the parking lot behind them and instinctively reached for the MP5K resting in his lap, but relaxed when the vehicle drove past them and pulled up to one of the gas pumps instead. A fifty-something man climbed out of the van and made his way to the store, hitching up his pants as he went.

“Our reputation’s going to take a hit,” Dwight said.

“That’s putting the cart well before the horse, partner.”

“So, what’s the cart?”

“Getting out of this alive.”

“Makes sense. I’m very biased toward staying alive. Call me selfish if you want, but that’s just me.”

“First things first: We need to find out how far they’re willing to pursue this.”

“You still gotta ask that after the motel?”

“The motel is here, now. It was an easy decision. Tomorrow, the week after that, won’t be so easy.”

“And if they’re not going to stop?”

“We can only run so far for so long before they eventually catch up to us.”

“I don’t know, dude, I can run pretty far.”

“Even so…”

“So worst case, what happens if they don’t feel like letting us off the hook after tonight?”

“Then I guess we’ll have to kill them.”

“All of them?”

“That goes without saying.”

Dwight chuckled. “And I thought I was the crazy one.”

“I call it practical.”

“Your ‘practical’ sucks.”

“That may be, but I don’t see any other choices. If they won’t let it go, then we need to end them before they end us. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple and stupid.”

“Only if we fail.”

“Which, in all likelihood, we will. They’re bosses and we’re worker bees for a reason, you know.”

“Even the bosses were worker bees once upon a time.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“Does it?”

“Not even close.”

“Oh, well,” Reese said.

“They probably have more assholes like the ones bleeding out back at the motel,” Dwight said. “A whole bunch of assholes. An asshole factory, if you will.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“This job just keeps getting better and better,” Dwight said, and opened a bag of chips and started loudly crunching them. “Have I told you how much I regret this partnership of ours?”

“Only twice in the last week.”

“Well, it really sucks.”

“Noted,” Reese said. “You got some water left?”

“What happened to yours?”

“I gave it to Alice to help her with the pills.”

“Then ask Alice for it back, motherfucker,” Dwight said. “Or you could do something for once and go buy your own damn water from the store, instead of always letting me do the legwork.”

“I’m wounded. You really think it’s a good idea for me to walk in there with nothing on but a blazer? Plus, I can barely walk without limping. It’s going to be pretty noticeable—”

“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Dwight said. He put the chips away and opened his car door. “Water, and what else?”

“Some food would be nice. Anything with protein.”

“You want I should make you a special plate, princess?”

“Would you?”

“Dinner and a show; I better get sex out of this.”

“Not now, dear; I have a gunshot wound,” Reese said.

Seventeen

The Tramadol was strong enough to knock her out, but she fought through it anyway, letting it do its job of numbing her body and fighting back against the excruciating pain, but at the same time never letting go completely. She remained in the backseat of the stolen Chevy, not moving or opening her eyes, but letting herself breathe normally (or as normally as she could manage, anyway) as if she were asleep.

None of those things were very hard to pull off since she wasn’t even sure she could move more than just her head if she had wanted to. Being dragged out of the motel room to the car was like having needles shoved into every part of her body. She had been forced to move on legs that might as well be engulfed in lava, while every inch of her spine gave the impression they were about to collapse inward like some black hole.

Reese had done that. The asshole.

The painkillers, she guessed, was his way of making up for what he had put her through. He hadn’t needed to do that, and as he pushed her lips apart and slipped the pills inside her mouth one at a time, then tilted the bottle so she wouldn’t have to move her head too much to drink down the meds, she thought she saw something that was almost like…concern?...on his face.

Bullshit. He’s a killer. A criminal.

Worse than that, he’s an enabler to the people who stole girls like Faith and Sara and sentenced them to a life worse than death.

No, don’t buy his lies. Reese is human garbage. Kill him when you get the chance.

After some driving and putting miles between them and the motel, Dwight finally turned off the road and parked. She heard cars passing in the background, but there weren’t enough extra clues to tell her where they were exactly. If she had to guess (and that was really all she could do while lying in the back of the Chevy), they were probably still using one of the country roads.

She had the satisfaction of knowing that Dwight and Reese weren’t just hiding from cops this time.

Men with guns at the motel. They came there for us.

No, not us. For them. Reese and Dwight.

Looks like someone’s in trouble…

Maybe it was the pills, but her mind was a lot clearer now, and it wasn’t very hard to piece together all the evidence in front of her. You didn’t lose precious cargo like Sara and the others and not have to face consequences. That was the problem with dealing with criminals. They weren’t necessarily the most loyal group of people.

Allie lay silently in the backseat and listened to them talking up front. If they knew she was listening in, they didn’t appear to be altering their conversation to keep her in the dark.

“Our reputation’s going to take a hit,” Dwight was saying.

“That’s putting the cart well before the horse, partner,” Reese responded.

“So what’s the cart?”

“Getting out of this alive.”

“Makes sense. I’m very biased toward staying alive. Call me selfish if you want, but that’s just me.”

“First things first, we need to find out how far they’re willing to pursue this.”

There.

She had been waiting for the opening, and there it was. She knew what she had to do next, but she bided her time and listened to the rest of their back and forth. They sounded muted and calm, even Dwight. Finally, the car rocked slightly as Dwight climbed out and slammed the door shut.

“There’s a way out of this,” she said.

Reese turned around in his seat. He looked surprised to see her staring back at him. “How long have you been awake?”

“Long enough.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

He might have smiled, but in the semidarkness of the car (where the hell had Dwight parked them, anyway?), she couldn’t be entirely sure.

“How’s the pain?” he asked.

“Like my skin is on fire.”

“Welcome to the club. You remember that you shot me, right?”

“I remember.”

“Not very nice.”

“You didn’t give me any choice.”

“Didn’t I?”

She shook her head. Or managed to move it just slightly left, then right, anyway.

“Fair enough,” Reese said.

“I know a way for both of you to get out of this alive.”

“This? You mean this situation you put us in?”

“I didn’t tell Vanguard to shoot those state troopers.”

He thought about it briefly before shrugging. “No, but you’re definitely here on false pretenses. Is Juliet dead?”

“No.”

“Incarcerated?”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Why are you telling the truth now? Or is it even the truth? It’s getting hard to tell with you, Alice.”

“Because now I have a proposition for you and Dwight.”

“I’m listening…”

“You can stay and fight—which is essentially suicide, but I think you already know that even if you pretend not to—or you can go on the run. Far, far away from here, to someplace where your former employers can’t reach you. Overseas, I’d imagine.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Alice.”

“If you choose to live—and run—then you’re going to need money. A lot of it.”

“Oh?”

“I can give it to you. The money.”

“Are you saying you have money, Alice?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough to make a big difference.”

“I don’t think you fully understand how much it’s going to take...”

“One million,” she said.

He stared at her in silence.

It stretched to five seconds.

Then ten…

“One million,” he repeated.

“Each,” she said.

“Each?”

“One million for you, and one for Dwight.”

Another long pause as he gazed at her, and she could practically see his mind working, processing what she was saying, maybe even crunching the numbers.

How much would it take to run? How much did he have on hand? How much could he afford?

All those things took a while, until he finally said, “Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit.”

“Where would you get two million?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“That means you don’t have it.”

“I can prove it.”

“How?”

“The same way you access the money you don’t want anyone—any government—to find out about. Call your money man and I’ll give you a bank name and an account number, along with a password, and whoever manages your money can verify the two million’s existence. He won’t be able to touch it, of course, but you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

There was just a ghost of a smile on his lips when he said, “Who are you?”

“Make the call, Reese,” Allie said.

Reese made the call, using a burner cell phone that Dwight had grabbed from the convenience store. Dwight sat behind the steering wheel, drinking from a large can of Red Bull and scooping freshly-microwaved frozen TV dinner into his mouth while watching on with genuine curiosity.

When Reese finally made contact with his “money man,” he glanced into the backseat at her. She had sat up, both because the pain wasn’t quite as unbearable as before, and she knew that from a purely psychological standpoint, sitting was a better position to negotiate from than lying helplessly on her back.

“Two million?” Dwight said doubtfully.

“That’s what she said,” Reese nodded, holding the phone to his ear. He had been waiting for a response from the other end for the last couple of minutes.

Dwight turned in his seat and looked back at her, cheap plastic spoon filled with dripping creamy white something poking out one corner of his mouth. “So you’re not a cop.”

“No,” she said.

“Then who are you?”

“Verify the money; then we’ll talk.”

Dwight reached down and drew his Smith & Wesson .45 and tapped it against his seat’s headrest. “You better hope everything comes up roses, Alice in Wonderland, otherwise this is gonna be the last ride you’re ever going to take. I don’t care that Reese here’s smitten with you, either.”

“The money’s there,” she said.

“So you keep saying.” He turned to Reese. “Well—”

Reese held up his hand to silence Dwight, then said into the phone, “Confirm it again.” He paused to listen, then, “All right. I’ll be in touch.”

“Well?” Dwight said.

Reese turned the phone off and put it away. “She’s not lying. There is over three million in the account.”

“Three million,” Dwight said, putting the gun away. It might have been her imagination, but he looked either impressed or confused. Maybe somewhere in between. “You willing to give two of that to us?” he asked her.

“Only if you agree to my proposition,” Allie said.

“And what would that be?” Reese said, also turning to face her.

“I’m looking for a girl named Faith.”

“Never heard of her,” Dwight said.

“You wouldn’t. Two years ago, she was taken off the road in a nearby state during a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend. He didn’t survive.”

“Sister?” Reese asked.

“No,” Allie said.

“Friend?”

“I’ve never met her in my life.”

Reese gave her a quizzical look, then exchanged the same with Dwight.

“So what, her parents paid you to find her?” Dwight asked.

“Her mother asked me to,” Allie said, “but she’s not paying me.”

Dwight scratched his stubble, not even bothering to hide the confusion on his face this time. “So what are you, some chick with a Robin Hood complex who just happens to have three million bucks sitting around in a foreign bank account, accumulating interest?”

“What I am, or why I’m doing this, is my business.” She looked at Dwight, then at Reese. “The question is: You want to try outrunning your pissed-off employers with what you have on hand, or would you rather do it with an additional million each?”

The two men exchanged another look, and this time it was much longer than the first.

Reese finally turned back to her. “So that’s it. The reason you climbed into our car in the first place. This girl, Faith.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“So what was the plan?”

“Let you take me to your employers, and from there, find out where they’re keeping Faith.”

“She’s with them?”

“If she’s not presently, then they would know where she is.”

“So you’re going to pay us to find a girl who is currently working for the same assholes we’re trying to avoid?” Dwight said. He sounded on the urge of either laughing or crying. “Which part of trying not to get dead by running don’t you get, Alice in Wonderland?”

“He’s got a point,” Reese said. “It rarely happens, I’ll grant you, but this is definitely one of those rare occurrences.”

Dwight snorted, but Reese ignored him and continued:

“Your big sell is a million dollars each to help us run from the men trying to kill us, but in order to get that payday, we have to actually go back into the viper’s nest.” Reese shook his head. “You didn’t really think this through, did you?”

“On the contrary,” Allie said, “I’ve thought it through enough to know you’ll do it.”

“Is that so?”

“Your former employers are looking to either silence you or punish you for your failures. Either way, it ends with the two of you below ground. The smart thing for you to do is run. And they know that. The last thing they expect is for you to head right back into the belly of the beast.”

“It’s the last thing they would expect because it’s the dumbest thing,” Dwight said.

“I don’t want you to take them on. I want you to go around them. Use your knowledge of their operation and help me locate one girl. After that, you’ll both have a million dollars each to run to your heart’s content. Tell me that’s not a better plan than just disappearing tomorrow with what you have on hand.”

“What makes you think we don’t already have a million bucks socked away?” Dwight asked. “You know how long we’ve been doing this?”

“Because you wouldn’t even be considering my proposal if you did,” Allie said and smiled back at him.

Dwight grunted, but that resulted in a third exchange of glances between him and Reese in the front seats.

“Maybe,” Reese said.

“Suicide,” Dwight said.

“Not if we’re careful.”

“Too many guns. Too many meatheads. Too much everything bad.”

“There are always too many guns, always too many meatheads. At least this time we come out of it a million dollars richer. That’s a lot of operating room. We can run pretty far and pretty long with that kind of bankroll.”

She sat quietly in the backseat and didn’t interject. Despite his reluctance, she could almost sense Dwight coming around. Reese was already halfway there.

“It’s still suicide,” Dwight said.

“You already said that,” Reese said.

“That’s because it deserves to be said twice.”

“There’s a way…”

“A good way?”

Reese shrugged. “A better way.”

“Go on…”

“The houses.”

“The houses?” Dwight repeated.

“The houses,” Reese nodded.

“Maybe…”

“What houses?” Allie finally said.

Reese turned back to her. “You wanted to know where the girls were being taken. The houses. There are a handful of them spread across the countryside—four that we know of in this region alone, three that we’ve delivered to in the past—where they receive the girls and groom them.”

“And you think Faith might be in one of these places?”

“It’s possible. You said the girl was taken off the road in the state next door?”

Allie nodded. “Yes.”

“Then the closest house wouldn’t be the one we were headed to originally; it’d be the one north of us. If she’s not there—but she was, once upon a time—they would know where she was moved to, like you said. These people keep meticulous records, but they don’t trust computers. It’s all written down.”

“I got a better idea,” Dwight said. “We give you the locations of all the houses, and you send in the Feds. We’ll even only take a million between us.”

“Sounds fair,” Reese said.

“No,” Allie said without hesitation. “But you’re still going to give me the locations, except we’re still going to the one you think Faith might be at anyway. I know how law enforcement works. Even if I handed them the addresses on a silver platter, it would take weeks, maybe months to get any movement. I can’t afford to wait that long. Faith’s already waited too long.”

“The houses are well guarded,” Reese said. “We won’t just be able to walk inside and ask to see their records.”

“Guys with guns,” Dwight snorted. “A whole lotta them.”

“I know,” Allie said. “What? Did you think I was just going to hand over two million dollars for a couple of addresses? Oh no, boys, you’re going to have to earn your money.”

They exchanged a fourth glance.

“We’ll go in, and if we can’t find any information on her, we’ll move on to the next house,” Allie continued. “We’ll keep going until we find either her or her trail.”

“And what if we get killed along the way?” Dwight asked. “You think about that?”

“That’s why you’re going to give me the addresses first. If anything happens to us, my friends will have the location and they can give it to the Feds. Until then, it’ll just be the three of us. We can do what the cops can’t.”

“You sound like you have personal experience with this,” Reese said. “Run afoul of the law a time or two, have we?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“I was right,” Dwight said, and let out an almost resigned laugh. “I knew the first time I saw you that you were bad news, Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yeah, well, suck it up,” Allie said. “Now, do we have a deal or not?”

Reese exchanged a fifth glance with Dwight.

“How are you going to get the locations to your friends?” Reese asked her.

“You’re going to let me borrow your phone,” Allie said.

“Not going to happen,” Dwight said.

She gave him an amused look. “Are you afraid I’m going to turn you in, Dwight? After all the fun we’ve been through?”

He grunted. “You’re damn straight.”

“The phone’s a no-go,” Reese said.

Allie sighed. “Then write it down on a piece of paper, and I’ll mail it to my friend.”

“Snail mail?”

“Unless you’re going to hand deliver it for me, then yeah.”

Reese chuckled and looked over at Dwight. “I guess you’re going to need to pick up some stamps when you go look for the sewing needle and thread.”

Dwight made a face. “Goddammit, you’re going to make me suture your wound, aren’t you?”

“I would do it for you, partner—and in fact, I believe I have.”

Dwight groaned. “Fuck this partnership.”

“That’s the spirit,” Reese smiled.

“Do we have a deal?” Allie asked.

They looked back at her simultaneously.

“You got some balls on you, Alice in Wonderland, I’ll give you that,” Dwight said.

“Do we have a deal or not?”

“Well, you’re still alive,” Dwight said. “What does that tell you?”

Eighteen

“Where did you get the money?” Reese asked.

“I got it from someone who didn’t need it anymore,” Alice said.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

“So not an inheritance, then?”

“That depends on your definition of inheritance.”

He smiled. He liked the way she answered his questions by never really answering them.

“What’s to prevent Dwight and me from just taking it from you?” he asked. “We know where you’re keeping it, and we have the account number… All we need is the password to access it.”

She smiled back at him. “You could try, though I should warn you, Reese, I have a very long history of disappointing men. It usually ends in violent ways, and as you can see, I’m still here and they’re not.”

He chuckled, but he believed her. Reese had always wondered what he would do when he ever came across a woman who so completely intrigued him. He didn’t think that day would ever happen—there had been a lot of women, in a lot of places—but here she was, throwing everything he tried back at him.

Dwight’s right. She just might be the death of me.

He stood in the back hallway of the motel, wiping away the traces of blood clinging to his hands and pants. He’d checked his bandages inside the bathroom, and they were still bloodless. Dwight had done a good job with the gunshot despite complaining through the whole thing. Reese realized he probably needed an actual medical professional to look at the wound, but if hospitals were out of the question before, they were even more so now. Even the underground medicals couldn’t help them; he didn’t for one second think their employers hadn’t already spread the word about them, most likely with a generous dose of reward money as incentive. That meant their access to the local criminal underworld, and all the assets there, was now out of their reach.

Just the two of us against the world. Well, three, now.

He tossed the towel away and pulled on a fresh shirt and did up the buttons. Alice sat on the bed, eating bad Chinese food from a Styrofoam carryout plate. She hadn’t bothered with the chopsticks and went straight to spearing pieces of orange chicken with a cheap plastic fork. She looked noticeably more comfortable after taking two more painkillers, but he would still catch her wincing in pain every now and then, mostly when she didn’t think he was watching. The lack of broken bones, even ribs, was a miracle, but the aches and bruises were going to last for a while.

Better than a bullet hole, Alice.

The motel room they were in now was a lot cleaner and smelled better than the last one. It was also bigger, with two twin beds instead of just one queen-size. Not that they expected to stay here for very long, but it was nice to have options. Even as she ate, trying to make up for the lack of food the previous day, Alice kept one eye on the windows.

“How long before he’s back?” she asked.

“It’ll take him some time to collect everything we need,” Reese said.

“What are the chances he’ll take off and leave you here?”

Reese chuckled. “Seventy-thirty that he comes back.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a partnership to me.”

“In this business, seventy-thirty is borderline miraculous.”

She stabbed two more pieces of orange chicken with one try and chewed them down. Fast food was never his thing, and Chinese fast food was even lower on the totem pole of things he would voluntarily eat. But then, he’d developed a taste for the real thing during too many jobs in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to count, so maybe he was being a bit of a food snob.

“When was the last time you were home?” she asked.

The question surprised him. “Home?”

“England.”

“It’s been a while. The job’s kept me busy.”

“I didn’t know ferrying stolen girls was such a demanding job.”

He shrugged. “It’s a job. If Dwight and I didn’t do it, someone else would.”

“Is that how you justify it?”

“I’m not trying to justify anything,” he said, realizing just how unconvincing to his own ears all of that sounded. “It is what it is.”

“I don’t know what’s happening in the camps; I’m just following orders, right?”

Reese smiled. She was clearly trying to push his buttons, but Reese didn’t bite and said, “What about you, Alice?”

“What about me?”

“Do you really think what you’re doing here will make any difference? There is more than one organization out there fighting for control of the market. You managed to save those girls yesterday, but what about the others that will be following in their footsteps? The people we worked for will just double their efforts to make up for the loss.”

He watched her face closely and knew he had struck a chord, knew she had never considered that particular consequence of her actions.

He continued: “You don’t really think any of this—yesterday, today, or tomorrow—will make even a dent in what’s happening out there, do you?”

“It’s better than doing nothing. Or contributing to it.”

“Like I said, if we didn’t do it, someone else would. It’s admirable what you’re doing. I mean that. But this thing is bigger than you, me, and Dwight. We’re insignificant in the larger scheme of things.”

“Just keep telling yourself that,” Alice said. She closed the Styrofoam container and put it on the nightstand. Then: “I need a gun.”

“I won’t even give you a phone; what makes you think I’ll give you a gun?”

She looked over at him. “How far are we from the house? The one you think they might have taken Faith to two years ago?”

“It’s across the state line. Six hours, give or take.”

“When we get there, you’ll need all the help you can get. So, I’ll need a gun.” Then, before he could respond, “Are you afraid I’ll use it on you?”

“The thought’s crossed my mind.”

“Why so paranoid, Reese?”

He glanced down at his bandaged side, then back up at her. “Oh, I don’t know. Just call it a hunch.”

“I want to find Faith. Even if that means dealing with the devil.”

“I take it I’m the devil?”

“You’re one of them.” She smirked. “What, did you think you were on the side of the angels? Are you that delusional?”

“Of course not. I was just hoping for Average Joe.”

“You’re not him, either.”

“Maybe one day.”

“Sure, why not,” she said, not even bothering to hide her amusement.

She was doing it again, trying to push his buttons.

And, like last time, Reese didn’t bite, and said, “Dwight should have some extra firearms on him when he gets back.”

“How does he get past the background checks?”

“Are you forgetting where we are, Alice? This is America, home of the Second Amendment. Besides, there are always people around the world willing to sell something you need for the right price. I thought you’d know that by now after the last few days.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten, Reese.”

“Good to hear.”

“I need to make a phone call.”

“And who would you be calling?”

“None of your business.”

“It is, if it’s law enforcement.”

“It’s not.”

“I don’t think I can believe you, Alice. Sorry.”

“Oh, come on, Reese,” she said, looking over at him, and something that almost looked like a sneer played across her lips. “If you can’t trust your girlfriend, who can you trust?”

He chuckled. Of course she’d heard most of his conversation with Dwight in the car last night. Who knew how long she had been feigning sleep back there? Maybe since they left the truck stop.

“No fair; you were eavesdropping,” he said.

“You two should have gotten your own room if you didn’t want me to overhear. Or put me in the trunk.”

“Now there’s an option,” Reese said.

Dwight came back with more food, along with boxes of bullets and three handguns—all G43 model Glocks—and laid them in a pile on a table while the three of them gathered around. Dwight also pulled out three unopened first-aid kits.

“Such a Boy Scout,” Reese said.

“There’s nothing wrong with preparation,” Dwight said. “I learned that from you.”

“I’m honored.”

“But then you also talked me into this job, so…”

Alice, meanwhile, had reached for one of the Glocks.

Dwight saw, and glanced quickly over at him, as if to say, Are we going to let her do that? Reese nodded back slightly and could see Dwight restraining himself with some effort. If Alice noticed, she didn’t give it away.

“You said five or so?” Alice asked, tightening her fingers around the grip of the handgun to get a feel for it.

“Five or so meatheads, give or take,” Dwight said. He picked up and tossed one of the 9mm boxes to Reese, then another one to Alice.

Reese watched out of the corner of one eye as Alice began loading her empty Glock. The woman knew her way around a weapon and was thumbing rounds into the magazine like someone who had done it many, many times before.

“They’re mostly there for show, to keep the girls in line,” Dwight was saying. “They’ll be armed, but it’s not exactly an action-packed job, so they’ll be lazy and easy to pick off in a stand-up fight.”

“And we have the element of surprise on our side,” Reese said.

“From your lips to God’s ears, dude.”

“What about the customers?” Alice asked.

“There aren’t any,” Reese said. “At least, not at the houses. They’re for breaking in the new girls, then housing and feeding them. After that, they’re sent out to where they need to be.”

“Sent out how?”

“By car, planes, et cetera.”

“Planes?”

“Sometimes a john wants a girl who’s being housed on the other side of the country. When that happens, they put her on a plane with a chaperone and send her over. It’s not very often, but it happens.” He shrugged. “It costs extra, but we’re not talking about hobos for clients here. These are people with very specific tastes, and they can afford it.”

Alice’s shoulders tensed slightly, like those of a child who just found out how the real world works. Except he knew better—Alice wasn’t a child, and she had seen and done more than the average American woman would ever do in her entire lifetime. Knowing that about her, and at the same time knowing so little else, only made Reese more curious.

But if he had any doubts Alice would be able to stomach what was coming, the sight of her jamming the magazine back into the Glock and then whipping it behind her and shoving it into the empty holster back there cured him of it. Other men might have been taken aback, even momentarily disquieted by her natural handling of the weapon, but Reese found it…kind of hot.

“What about those locations?” she asked.

Reese took a folded envelope out from his blazer pocket and handed it to her. “The four that we know about, including the one we’ll be going to.”

She opened the envelope, pulled out a piece of paper, and looked at the contents for a moment. She then put back in and sealed up the flap. “Are these addresses real?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Reese said. “I don’t have any reasons to lie about them now. I couldn’t care less what happens to those houses. They tried to kill us last night, remember? We’re not friends anymore.”

She nodded. “I’ll need stamps.”

Dwight took out a stamp booklet from his back pocket and tossed it to her. “First time I’ve bought stamps in… Shit, I can’t even remember.”

“You and the rest of the world,” Reese said. To Alice, “You want me to mail that for you?”

“Gee, thanks, but I think I can handle it.”

“You do realize that you’ll need to tell the mailman where to send it?”

“I’ll write out the address when I give it to the manager and ask him to mail it for me. I won’t be doing that until we leave for the house.”

“Of course, I’ll have to be there when you hand it over to the manager,” Reese said. “Just in case you might be tempted to burden that poor old man with something besides the letter.”

“Of course,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

“And here I thought we were suddenly being all trusty and shit,” Dwight said.

“Never hurts to take precautions,” Reese said. To Alice: “If we’re going to find this Faith girl, we need to know what she looks like.”

“Yeah, that would definitely help,” Dwight said.

“You want me to draw it for you?” Alice said as she tucked the envelope into her back pocket.

“You can do that from memory?” Dwight asked.

“No, genius. I mean I’m going to need that phone now,” she said, and held out her hand toward Reese.

Reese took out the phone. It was cheap and plastic and felt as if it might break if he held it too tightly. “Give me the number, and I’ll call them.”

“Is the screen even color?”

“It retails for forty bucks at a gas station,” Dwight said. “What do you think?”

She ignored him, said, “Can it text?”

“Yeah, but it comes out of the prepaid minutes.”

“Fine,” Alice said, and gave Reese a number to text, adding, “Type ‘It’s Apollo’s best friend.’ Just that, and nothing else.”

“Who’s Apollo?” Reese asked.

“Just do it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and typed it into the phone.

Dwight chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Reese asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Dwight said, and busied himself with reloading the UMP he’d emptied back at the motel parking lot last night.

Reese pressed the send button, then waited.

Five seconds, then ten…

“No one’s responding,” he said.

“Give them a moment,” Alice said.

He smiled to himself. Give them a moment. She wasn’t even going to let him know the sex of the person he was texting.

A generic beep heralded the reply’s arrival. Reese read it: “Password.” He looked up at her. “That’s all it says. No question mark. Just password. All in lower case, if that means anything.”

“Cabin in the woods,” she said.

“What about it?”

“Type cabin in the woods back.”

He typed it, then pressed send. This time, it only took four seconds to get a reply.

“What’s up,” Reese read. “Again, no question marks. Who is this guy, and why doesn’t he follow proper punctuation?”

“Give it a rest, school marm, and type back ‘Send picture of Faith.’”

“School marm? I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s an old lady who taught school back in the ol’ days,” Dwight said. “Sort of like how you’re being right now, dude.”

“Ah,” Reese said, and typed out Alice’s message.

He waited five seconds before the message “Downloading image” appeared on the screen, along with a progress bar that didn’t seem to move—no, there, it just moved. It was just slow. He shook the phone, thinking it might do some good, but of course it didn’t.

“Not exactly the most current model,” Reese said.

“Try shaking it some more,” Dwight chuckled.

“Maybe soak it in water? I hear rice is good for fixing bad phones.”

“I think the correct order is to soak it in water, then shove it into a bowl of rice.”

“I’ll try that next,” Reese said.

Finally, the image finished loading on the phone. It was a picture of a young girl, blonde from what he could tell, though the hair could have been white for all he knew, since the screen only showed a black-and-white photo. The image looked like one of those semiprofessional glamour shots with a faux background. He couldn’t make out the color of the girl’s eyes, but poor quality, black and white or not, it was easy to tell that she was pretty. Very, very pretty.

Reese checked the image against Alice. Maybe if he squinted hard enough there might have been some resemblance, but it wasn’t really close. So she hadn’t lied to him about the Faith girl not being related to her after all.

Reese showed her the photo. “Our girl?”

She nodded. “That’s Faith.”

“Blonde?” Dwight asked.

“Blonde hair and blue eyes,” Alice said. “She was seventeen when she was taken, and her nineteenth birthday was two months ago.”

“They probably cut her hair and dyed it so she wouldn’t be recognized,” Dwight said.

“I don’t think they did,” Reese said.

“No?”

“You don’t snatch a blue-eyed, blonde all-American girl with long hair only to change her appearance. Defeats the whole purpose.”

“Hunh, good point,” Dwight said.

“I know; that’s why I’m here.”

“You think way too highly of yourself, dude,” Dwight said, and went back to loading a Glock. “There’s a word for that.”

“Self-awareness?”

“Not even close.”

Reese looked across the table at Alice. “How are you so sure she’s even still alive? Two years is a long time in this trade. Girls come and go. They get used up and tossed aside. It’s not a pretty business.”

“She was alive as recently as five months ago,” Alice said.

“You know this for sure how?”

“The same way I came across you two. I asked around, made friends with the right people, enemies with others.” Alice nodded with absolute certainty. “She’s alive, and she’s out there, waiting, and you two are going to help me bring her home.”

Nineteen

“She’s alive, and she’s out there, waiting, and you two are going to help me bring her home,” or die trying.

Of course, she didn’t say that last part out loud, though she suspected they probably knew it already. She had seen people do worse things for the chance to make much, much less than a million dollars. For killers like Dwight and Reese, she had a feeling her proposition was not even close to being the most dangerous—or questionable—thing someone had offered to pay them to do.

If she had to, Allie would kill the both of them. Or finish the job, in the case of Reese. Whether they knew it or not, absolutely no one was going to miss the two of them if they disappeared from the planet tomorrow. She had a hard time imagining either one with loved ones waiting for them back home, wherever “home” was. England for Reese, but it was anyone’s guess where Dwight hailed from.

It was better she didn’t know too much about them anyway. It was easier if she just thought of them as bad men who had to be dealt with. Listening to them joke with one another, even with her, took away some of that edge, but all she had to do was remind herself that they were not her friends and that they were mercenaries who would do anything for money, even transport young girls to a miserable new life.

If they honored their part of the deal, she would, too. Two million was a steep price to pay, but it wasn’t as if the money belonged to her in the first place. The only reason she had taken it was to help ensure Lucy’s future, and there was still more than enough in the trust fund she had set up for the girl to do that. The fact that the money came in handy when she started searching for Faith was a bonus. It was nice to have, but she had gone through all her life without it, and she could do so again. After all, she hadn’t needed a cent of it to hunt down Beckard not all that long ago.

Allie reached into her jacket pocket now and took out the pill bottle Reese had given her and shook out two more of the white meds. She glimpsed Reese watching her in the rearview mirror (So what else is new?), probably alerted to the sound of the pills clinking in the bottle. She ignored him and chased the painkillers down with a bottle of water.

“Might want to take it easy with those,” Reese said.

“I don’t see you taking your own advice,” she said.

Reese smiled. “I was shot, remember?”

“And I was run over by a car. So what’s your point?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Dwight said. “You jumped before I hit you. It was barely a glancing blow.”

She smirked. “Right. Glancing blow. Fuck you, Dwight.”

Dwight chuckled but didn’t reply.

The afternoon sunlight flashed by around them in a blur of green woods and flat farmland, with a roadside establishment every other mile or so. They had crossed the state line sometime in the early morning of last night, though neither man had bothered to tell her that until they left the motel behind. The white, unassuming pickup they were in now was another stolen vehicle, this one pinched from a rest stop, its license plates swapped with those of a black GMC’s. At the rate Dwight was going around stealing cars, they might have enough to start their own used car lot within a month.

She sat in the backseat, listening to the engine struggling against the smooth, paved road. Maybe Reese was right; maybe she had taken one painkiller too many, if the brief bouts of drowsiness were any indication, but there was no way around it and she wasn’t going to let him know that. Besides, parts of her body, especially from the waist down and all over her back, still throbbed and hurt too much when she moved even a little bit, and the continued dosage helped to ease a lot of it. Sooner or later she was going to have to visit a hospital to make sure nothing really was broken, but that could wait.

If nothing else, Reese was still moving with a hole in him, and she would be damned if she gave in to her injuries first, even if her insides did feel as if they had turned to mush.

They had been driving for the last five hours, most of it in silence. Reese was the type who didn’t need to occupy every single second of their traveling time with inane chatter, though she was surprised by Dwight’s mellow (and quiet) presence.

After a while, Allie said, “Juliet told me she never stayed with you guys long enough to reach the end of the line, and that was why she didn’t know where the girls were being taken. Was that a lie?”

“No,” Reese said. “She usually left us before we made the final deliveries.”

“Why?”

“I told you before; Juliet was smart, she preferred not to know all the details. The first time, we insisted she stick around to the very end, but it’s hard to make a woman with a gun do something she doesn’t want to.”

“And yet you brought her back again and again…”

“After a while, it just became a part of our modus operandi. It was working, so why change it? Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Alice, but good help is very hard to find these days.”

“Really, really hard,” Dwight chimed in. “For instance, shit never hit the fan with Juliet around.”

Allie ignored him and stared at Reese and wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her, something between him and Juliet that even Dwight might not know. Nothing about Juliet’s relationship with these two men really made sense even as Juliet was laying it out for her, but maybe Allie just didn’t fully understand the way their criminal minds worked.

Maybe sensing her stare, Reese turned in his seat to look back at her. “You said you were one-hundred percent sure the Faith girl is alive. How?”

“Her mother found her on social media almost a year after she went missing,” Allie said. “One of her johns secretly taped her in their motel room and uploaded a five-second video. It was a quick shot of her face and the quality wasn’t the best, and she looked older, with a lot of makeup, but it was enough for someone she knew to recognize her and contact her mother. Susan took the evidence to the authorities, including the FBI. The agent in charge did his best to push her back to the forefront, but the government is more concerned with devoting manpower to terrorism and other headline-making cases these days.”

“And you confirmed it was her?”

Allie nodded. “Five months ago.”

“How?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. We won’t know until you tell us.”

“Maybe you’re sending us on a wild goose chase, hoping we’ll get capped along the way and you won’t have to pay us,” Dwight said.

“Is he always this paranoid?” she asked Reese.

Reese shrugged. “It’s one of his better qualities, actually.”

Dwight grunted but didn’t say anything else.

“One of the men who handled her appointments confirmed to me that she’s still alive,” Allie said. “I found him through the john who posted the five-second video.”

“The handler just confirmed it because you asked?”

“I didn’t exactly give him a choice.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“But he didn’t know where she came from or where she went after she passed through his area. He was just a freelancer, like you two. He did, though, give me a name.”

“Juliet,” Reese said.

She nodded. “They crossed paths enough times that he knew where to find her when she wasn’t working.”

“And Juliet set you up with us.”

“It was awfully nice of her to do me the favor,” Allie said, remembering how seething with rage Juliet had been in that unflattering Mexican prison jumpsuit when they first met in person.

“Right. Favor,” Dwight smirked. “Remind me never to cross you.”

“All of this from a grainy five-second video on social media,” Reese said.

“It’s the digital age,” Allie said. “You can find out anything on anyone if you look hard and long enough.”

And know the right people to dig through all the virtual trash heaps and other unsavory things, for a price.

“This is why I stay off Twitter,” Dwight said. “Well, one of many reasons.”

“I thought it was because you couldn’t type?” Reese said.

“That too. But mostly the whole lack of privacy. Makes my skin crawl.”

That makes your skin crawl? Allie wanted to ask him, but bit her tongue.

Reese had taken out the cheap burner phone with the black and white photo of Faith and showed it to her, as if she didn’t already have every inch of the girl’s face etched into her mind. “Just to make sure you understand, we’re looking for this girl and no one else.”

“Didn’t we already go over this at the motel?” she asked.

He ignored her and continued: “We’re not going in there for any other reason. If the other girls at the house take the opportunity to flee while we’re there, so be it, but we’re not spending even one second rounding them up and delivering them to a women’s shelter or anything similarly altruistic. That’s the deal. Now, I need you to tell me you understand the perimeters of our partnership.”

Allie clenched her teeth. “Agreed.”

“Just as long as we understand each other.” Reese turned back around in his seat. “This is probably a stupid question, but I don’t suppose I have to tell you not to hesitate if you get one of the house enforcers in your crosshairs?”

“What do you think?” she asked, staring back at him in the rearview mirror.

“These aren’t pissant lowlife criminals off the streets,” Dwight said. “The hombres they have babysitting these houses don’t fuck around, and they sure as hell weren’t hired because of their looks. The more blood you have on your hands, the higher your standing in the organization. That’s how fucked up they are. Why do you think Reese and I were ready to tuck our tails between our legs and run?”

“Dwight isn’t exaggerating,” Reese said. “They’re the kind of pricks that will cut their losses if they think an operation has been compromised. For example: back at the truck stop with the girls, or with us at the previous motel. They’re ruthless, Alice. You need to absolutely understand that. So when we go in there, don’t hesitate. Because they won’t.”

“Are you both done?” she asked, staring at one, then the other.

“Just as long as you know what we’ll be facing,” Reese said.

“I understood it the first fifty times. You can both shut the fuck up now.”

Dwight chuckled. “Man, I like this Alice way better than that other bitch from yesterday.”

Reese and Dwight didn’t have to tell her anything she didn’t already know or hadn’t thought about countless times on the long road just to get to this point. She’d always known the odds were against her, but it wasn’t in her DNA to let go or give up. If it were, she would never have caught Carmen’s killer ten years after the sonofabitch took her little sister.

Burn in hell, Beckard.

She was drifting off again, the pills playing havoc with her concentration, and she almost missed Reese talking in front of her. She sat up in the backseat and forced herself to zero in on the here and now, on the sound of his grating voice:

“If this doesn’t work and she’s not in there, or if we can’t find traces of her, this might be our only chance. After this, they’ll put the other houses on alert and you might have to rely on those slow-moving Fed dinosaurs after all. The people in there might not trust technology, but they aren’t living in caves, either. They do have phones.”

“The only way to keep them from calling it in would be to kill everyone on site,” Dwight said.

“There’s that,” Reese nodded.

“And even then, there are no guarantees someone won’t notice the house going dark.”

“Even if she’s not in there, there might be information we can use to find her. Names, places, maybe money trails.”

“Great, paperwork,” Dwight said. “Just what I signed up for.”

“You signed up for adventure and a big payday. Guess what, partner? You’re about to get both.”

“Oh, gee, how did I end up so lucky?” Dwight said, and rolled his eyes.

Allie tuned them out and concentrated on the structure about fifty yards in front and across the street. The “house” was a brick-and-mortar apartment building, brown with time and the elements on the outside, and at least ten stories tall. The only way in, as far as she could see, was the front lobby.

They had entered the city of Summerville almost two hours ago, and on the way over here Allie couldn’t help but notice that the only time she saw police of any type was when they passed two uniformed deputies chatting in front of a food truck parked at a busy intersection about twenty minutes back. The buildings around them were tagged with gang signs and murals, including the apartment they were looking at. She couldn’t see a name, only fading white numbers over a gated front door that a Hispanic woman with a stroller was punching a code into before disappearing inside.

“This is it?” she asked.

“This is one of them,” Reese said. “This is where they bring the smaller deliveries—say, a lone girl snatched from a neighboring state. The last time we delivered here, we babysat a van. They take the semitrailers to bigger locations where there aren’t so many people around.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“All the way up to the tenth floor.”

“Five or so meatheads the last time we were here,” Dwight said. “That we could see, anyway.”

“Probably more than five,” Reese added.

“Will they recognize the two of you?” she asked.

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Reese said. “They won’t know what we’re doing back, and hopefully that’ll confuse them just long enough for us to make headway up to the tenth floor without incident.”

“You really believe that?” Dwight asked.

“I’m hoping.”

“Daydreaming’s more like it.”

“Either/or,” Reese said.

Dwight snorted but didn’t take his eyes away from the apartment tenement up the street.

“I saw a woman go inside with a stroller,” Allie said.

“They own the building and lease out the bottom seven floors,” Reese said. “The remaining top three are theirs. The super works for them, and he has a key that controls the elevator. One of the benefits of owning the place is the ability to lease to whoever they want. What did you notice while we were driving through this part of town?”

She didn’t have to think about it for very long. She remembered the flashes of storefront displays, the people on the sidewalks, the gang tags on the sides of buildings…

“They’re mostly Spanish speakers,” she said.

“First-generation South Americans,” Reese said. “Most of them are migrants who may or may not be here legally. That’s the kind of people that tend to avoid the police and keep their heads down. The rent is cheap and the organization doesn’t bother them. It all looks legitimate from the outside, because it is.”

“Well, mostly,” Dwight said.

“What about the girls?” Allie asked. “How does it work?”

“They’re just housed here. What’s that expression, ‘Don’t shit where you work?’ This is how they’ve stayed under the radar for so long. Of course, bribing the locals to look the other way probably helps, too.”

“So we can’t count on the cops?”

Dwight chuckled. “Not around here. At least, not until you’re long dead and screwed.”

“No, but that’s a good thing, because it means we have room to work.” Reese unzipped a pack he had sitting on the floor between his feet and handed her two spare magazines. “Just in case.”

She put them away while he fished a pill bottle out of his pocket and downed two more with a sip of water.

Dwight looked over at his partner. “Didn’t you just tell Alice in Wonderland to go easy with those?”

“I was shot, remember?” Reese said.

“Excuses, excuses. You gonna make it across the street?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Aw, I didn’t know you cared,” Reese said, grinning back at Dwight.

Dwight snorted. “Fuck off.”

If Allie didn’t know any better, she could almost believe that Dwight really was concerned about Reese. Maybe all that back-and-forth between them wasn’t just a joke after all; maybe they really did care about one another, as hard as that was for her to believe.

Bullshit. They’re bad guys. Killers. When you get the chance, take them both out.

“They’ll keep the girls on the top floor,” Reese said, looking back at her. “Along with the guys who run the place, so that’s where we need to be.”

“What about the eighth and ninth?” she asked.

“They should be empty.”

“Under construction,” Dwight said.

“It’s been ‘under construction’ since they moved in,” Reese said. “Their way of letting the residents know they shouldn’t wander past the seventh floor. We’ll have to take the stairs all the way up to the top.”

“What about the elevator?” Allie asked.

“They have cameras inside, and the bad guys can control them remotely.”

“What he means is, if they don’t like the way we look, they can stop us wherever they want and lock us in,” Dwight said. “It’s gotta be the stairs.”

Allie winced at the thought of having to take all ten floors’ worth of stairs in her current situation, but she didn’t let them know that. Reese was probably in even worse shape than her and if he wasn’t going to complain, she wasn’t going to, either.

“What’s our target once we’re inside?” she asked. “I mean, besides hitting the tenth floor. I assume searching every room for Faith, or evidence of Faith, would take too long.”

“Way too long,” Reese said. “Too many rooms, too many meatheads with guns to worry about. If Faith is there, or was there, the caretaker will have records of her. So our goal should be her office, located at the very end of the hallway.”

“It’s a woman?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“Probably the same reason we brought you along,” Reese said.

Allie nodded. “How are we getting inside? I’m assuming they’re not just going to open the door even if they do recognize you.”

“Nope. Not without a scheduled delivery.”

“So how, then?”

“I have a plan,” Reese said.

“Is it a good plan?” Dwight asked.

“Eh,” Reese shrugged.

Twenty

It took five minutes after Reese told Alice he had a plan before an elderly man wearing a flat cap exited the building, then walked down the street to a corner grocery store. Almost exactly eleven minutes later, the man reemerged on the sidewalk with a paper sack.

“Okay,” Reese said, and climbed out of the truck.

Alice and Dwight followed behind him as he walked across the street, glad he was in front of them so they couldn’t see the way he was grimacing with every step. Extra painkillers or not, moving was still going to be a pain in the ass for the next few days (weeks?). The old man was thirty yards ahead of them, but thank God he was moving at a much slower pace, which allowed Reese to catch up without having to exert himself too much.

“This is your plan?” Alice asked behind him.

“Low tech works best,” Reese said.

If the old man sensed or heard them, he didn’t show it by looking back. He led them all the way to the front lobby door, where he punched in the code, then spent a few seconds struggling to pull open the heavy metal door. Reese hurried forward and grabbed the gate and smiled at the man as he pulled it open for him.

The old man smiled back at Reese and said something in Spanish before stepping into the building with his bag carefully cradled in his arms. Reese let the man get about five feet ahead of him before following. He quickly noted the first security camera, right where he remembered it in the corner of the lobby ceiling.

“Go straight, and don’t look at the camera,” he said, and kept walking. “Pretend like we’re supposed to be here.”

The old man had wandered on ahead of them and disappeared around a corner, even though Reese could still hear his small and careful footsteps.

“They can see us,” Alice said behind him.

“They can see us, but they can’t hear us,” Reese said.

He made a beeline for the staircase next to the elevator then went up the steps, grunting as pain, like icicles, repeatedly stabbed at his gut. He hoped Alice hadn’t heard, but she probably had since she was right behind him, unlike Dwight, who was bringing up the rear.

“Another camera up ahead,” he said. “Keep your head down. The longer we can keep them off-balance, the higher up the building we’ll be before they finally make their move to stop us.”

“Maybe we should have risked the elevator after all,” Dwight said from behind him.

“Too late for that now.”

“Well, shit. Let’s just hope the meatheads running this place are dumber than us.”

One can only hope, Reese thought, and grimaced through another couple of steps. If he knew it would hurt this much to take the stairs, he would have risked the elevators, too. A quick, painful death was preferable to the agony he was going through now, but if Alice, in her condition, wasn’t moaning about the steps behind him, he’d be damned if he was going to do it, literally, in front of her.

Death before showing weakness in front of the pretty girl, right, old sport?

Empty brown bags and discarded soda cans littered the stairs, but they were easy to go around. A second camera, its white shell covered in graffiti along with the rest of the stairwell walls, greeted them by slowly turning to pick them up as they made the turn in the middle and ascended to the second-floor landing.

Reese kept his head down, wondering how long he was going to be able to keep going in this condition. His side was already throbbing, and it might have been his imagination, but he swore the stitches that Dwight had sewn into him were already starting to pop underneath the bandages.

Definitely my imagination.

Probably…

But Alice was being very quiet behind him—except for her footsteps and slightly labored breathing—and that, more than anything, forced him to keep going, slowing down only whenever they reached another turn in the stairwell.

He was sure that by now one of the cameras would have already picked up his face. Someone (maybe a couple of someones) on the tenth floor was watching them going up, but he was hoping what he had told Dwight earlier about the element of surprise being on their side was partially true. Even so, it was only a matter of time before the organization’s people decided to stop just watching their steady upward progress and do something about it. When that happened, he was going to be glad they weren’t cornered inside an elevator. At least in the stairwell there was room to maneuver and shoot back.

Unless you die from all these goddamn-never-ending steps first…

“How long before someone stops us?” Alice asked behind him.

“Hopefully not until we’re almost there,” Reese said.

“Some plan.”

“Hey, it was short notice; give me a break.”

“If it’s okay with you two, save the marital spat for the bedroom, will ya?” Dwight said from the back, not even bothering to hide his amusement.

A door opened in front of them, and a young kid, maybe fifteen, was pushing a bicycle with a slightly bent front tire into the stairwell. He saw them as they were coming up, and the kid turned around and hustled back through the door without a word.

Smart kid.

They made the turn and started up the third floor.

A third camera followed their every movement, and again Reese kept his head down and knew without actually seeing that Alice and Dwight were doing the same behind him. They had gotten through three floors without resistance, but it wasn’t going to last. He knew that without a single shred of doubt.

Any minute now, lads. Any minute now…

There was no one on the fourth floor, but a pair of young lovebirds were giving each other hickeys on the fifth. The two didn’t even look up as Reese led Dwight and Alice around them.

Reese had to skirt a used condom on one of the steps, and said, “Watch the bodily fluids.”

“Romantic,” Dwight said from the back. “Maybe you and Alice in Wonderland can take a moment to join the fun.”

Alice didn’t say anything, but Reese grinned and kept going.

They had just reached the sixth-floor landing when their luck finally ran out. Reese was frankly surprised they had gotten this far so easily, so he wasn’t the least bit shocked when he heard footsteps coming down from the floors above them. From the speed and intensity, he guessed a heavyset guy in sneakers.

“Here comes tons of fun,” Dwight said behind him.

“Stick to the walls, away from the center,” Reese said, doing just that as he continued upward and rounded the sixth floor.

He drew his Glock from behind his back and held it at his side, knowing that another camera was up there but still around the turn, so it couldn’t see him just yet. Behind him, Alice’s breathing had accelerated noticeably, but he didn’t waste the second or two it would have taken to glance back and check on her. The woman following at his heels had already shot him at almost point-blank range, so he had no trouble whatsoever believing she could handle what was coming. And if she couldn’t, then, well, she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

He heard voices coming from in front of him. Two, talking in rushed (panicked?) Spanish just before Reese heard the echoey squawk of a radio.

Reese picked up his pace and started taking the steps two at a time, not even trying to hide the loud grunts coming out of him this time as what felt like ten-foot spears drilled through every inch of his frame.

Jesus Christ, it hurt!

He looked up just as a figure rounded the corner up ahead. The man had a pistol in one hand and a radio in the other, and he must have been shocked to see how much distance Reese had covered. Or maybe he saw the mask of pain on Reese’s face and felt sorry for him. Either way, that half-second hesitation was all Reese needed, and he shot the man in the chest—the loud bang! like thunder in the narrow confines—and as his victim slid down to the top landing, Reese shot him again, this time hitting the man in the neck.

“Tenth floor! Go!” he shouted, his voice joining the echo of the two gunshots as they traveled the length of the stairwell. Reese thought he could hear the two lovebirds below running in the other direction, but he didn’t spend more than a heartbeat thinking about it.

He ignored the almost cartoonish spray of blood as it poured out of the dead man’s neck and skipped around the lifeless body to reach the seventh floor’s top landing. The pain that had been coursing through his body a few seconds ago seemed to lessen, but Reese attributed that more to the fresh surge of adrenaline than any delusional idea he wasn’t in pain anymore.

He concentrated on the sound of a door clicking open in front of him and glimpsed a white shirt as the second man escaped into the hallway beyond. He squeezed off three shots, hitting the door twice as it was swinging closed, and was rewarded with the sight of a figure flopping to the floor just before the door clicked shut in his face.

A flash of black blurred in the corners of his eyes as Alice ran past him and continued up the stairs, Dwight following closely behind.

“You gonna die, dude?” Dwight asked as he passed him.

“Shut up and go!” he shouted back.

They were moving fast, and he actually found himself lagging more than five steps behind them, pushing himself, because slowing down would only give his body too much time to remember that he should be lying on a hospital bed, not racing up an impossible flight of steps. At the moment, Reese wasn’t sure if surviving what was waiting for them up ahead or the ten floors of steps was the greater challenge.

As he went up, Reese risked a glance down at his side and was shocked not to see blood on his shirt. Of course, if his stitches had snapped somewhere during the mad dash up, it would take a while for the blood to seep through the bandages.

But for now, he was okay. Well, mostly, anyway.

He followed Dwight and Alice around the eighth floor and was halfway up to the ninth when there was a bang! from above them, but this wasn’t a gunshot—it was a door crashing open, just before someone opened up with a fully automatic weapon, like someone banging on drums with a sledgehammer inside the stairwell.

He finished the turn onto the ninth just as the gunfire stopped, his shoes slipping as they came down on a layer of bullet casings left behind by Dwight. His partner was pushing aside a bullet-riddled door, keeping it pried open with one shoe while he peeked in at the hallway and a man lying with a bloody chest on the other side. Dwight had the UMP45 in a sling over his shoulder, the weapon hidden in his jacket all this time.

Reese followed Dwight’s example and put the Glock away and unzipped his jacket, then pulled out the slung MP5K with the pistol grip. He looked for and found Alice, already on the steps leading up to the tenth floor, her Glock pointing up at the turn ahead. If she was in any pain at all, she wasn’t showing it, and Reese thought, Christ, that is one amazing woman!

“Anything?” he called up to her.

She looked down at him and shook her head briefly before returning it to the empty staircase above them.

“Clear?” Reese said, looking over at Dwight.

“As clear as it’s gonna get,” Dwight said, walking back to him.

“Let’s go earn our paycheck, then.”

“I thought that’s what I’ve been doing?” Dwight grunted.

Reese grinned then headed up the stairs, passing Alice and resuming the lead. Dwight was right behind him, while Alice didn’t say a word as she fell in at the back. Maybe she hadn’t argued because they were better armed, or, more likely, she wasn’t going to protest if they wanted to put themselves between her and whoever was waiting up there.

Can’t say I blame her one bit.

But there was no one waiting for them on the tenth-floor landing, not that it stopped Reese from moving with the submachine gun gripped in front of him, forefinger on the trigger. Dwight shadowed him with the UMP until they had made the turn and faced the last door. Reese kept going, turned right and rushed up the stairs that led to the rooftop, and, finding no one waiting up there either, headed back down.

He found Dwight focusing on the stairwell door, and Alice, with her back turned to him, keeping an eye on the stairs below them just in case someone decided to attack from the lower floors. Reese almost smiled at the way they were working together, as if they had been doing it for years instead of less than twenty-four hours.

Dwight glanced over and Reese shook his head, then nodded at the door. Dwight grinned and turned and unloaded the remains of his magazine into the slab of wood, stitching it from left to right until he was empty.

Reese quickly jumped down and pulled security while Dwight reloaded.

“You go first,” Dwight said.

“I went first last time,” Reese said.

“When?”

“Hong Kong.”

“I don’t remember that happening whatsoever.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.”

“Whatever, dude.”

Dwight assumed the position, raising his weapon up to chest level, until he was looking from behind its iron sights before nodding.

Reese tossed a quick look behind him at Alice—found her staring back at him, waiting patiently. He returned his focus to the tenth-floor hallway door and scanned the holes Dwight had put into it but didn’t see anything that resembled movement on the other side. Not that he could see much through the small holes anyway.

He gave Dwight another glance. “You ready?”

“Depends,” Dwight said.

“On what?”

“You gonna go through it first?”

“Your turn, remember?”

“Figures,” Dwight said before turning back to the door. “On the count of five?”

“Sounds good.”

“So let’s get this show on the road before I die of boredom in here.”

Reese nodded and grabbed the doorknob, then twisted it but didn’t pull at it. He waited until Dwight finished mouthing the word five before jerking the door open and throwing himself against the wall at the same time. The door creaked against its hinges, and Dwight was a blur of black clothing as he lunged through the opening, the UMP gripped tightly in his hands—

Bang!

A stream of blood flashed across Reese’s eyes almost a full second before Dwight’s head snapped back into the stairwell, his body following and hitting the landing with a loud thump. The back of Dwight’s head smashed into the concrete floor, the submachine gun clattering as it left his useless hands and bounced against the railings before disappearing down the empty middle section of the stairwell.

Reese was still processing what had happened, staring at Dwight’s (dead) open eyes, when Alice charged past him—jumping over Dwight’s lifeless body—and into the hallway, slipping through the door as it began to swing shut.

He heard gunshots—one, two, three times—and they snapped him out of his shocked stupor, and Reese spun away from the wall and tilted his body to hit the slim opening before the door could close on him.

Alice was already up ahead, racing down the hallway with the Glock, stepping over another body in jeans and a black T-shirt. Dwight’s killer, now dead himself.

Dwight’s dead.

Thinking it made it somehow more real than when he had seen Dwight’s body crumpling in the stairwell a few heartbeats ago.

Dwight’s dead.

Five years since they had met in Panama City on an assignment put together by their former organization, when the seeds of freelance work were first introduced.

Dwight’s dead.

He liked the guy. Really, he did. They weren’t exactly as close as brothers—Reese didn’t have brothers and didn’t particularly want one—and most of the time they only ever met up when there was a job, but if you were to ask him how he felt about Dwight, Reese would have said, without hesitation, that he liked the guy.

Holy shit, Dwight’s dead.

Twenty-One

Dwight was dead, his body still warm in the stairwell behind her as Allie pushed on, stepping over the young man in jeans who had shot Dwight in the head. It was a good shot from twenty yards, while he was in a crouch, and maybe the guy was enjoying the moment just a little too much when Allie killed him, because he really did look surprised by what had happened.

The tenth-floor hallway resembled every other apartment she had ever been to, with numbered doors on both sides. Reese’s words echoed in her head—

“If Faith is there, or was there, the caretaker will have records of her. So our goal should be her office, located at the very end of the hallway.”

—and she pushed forward, the Glock gripped tightly in her hands. Putting down Dwight’s killer stayed with her for just a second before she was past it. She wished she could have said the ability to do that was new, that it made her uneasy, but it would have been a lie on both counts.

Beckard…

Dan’s men at the cabin…

None of this was new to her, and she’d honed her skills even further since those men. Even so, she couldn’t ignore the pounding in her chest, the tightness in her legs and arms and fingers as she moved ahead. Her eyes snapped from door to door, waiting, just waiting for someone to come out, for the first click to signal opposition.

The pain had lessened since the shooting began, more a direct result of the adrenaline coursing through her than anything else. Even the meds she’d downed before hitting the apartment hadn’t prevented the sensations of fire from engulfing her legs as they moved up the stairs. It had been all she could do not to scream out in pain with every step. The only thing that had kept her from acknowledging the misery was being squeezed in between Dwight and Reese, and refusing—simply refusing—to look weak in front of them. Reese had a hole in his side, and if he could grit it out, then dammit, so could she.

So she had moved on until the adrenaline kicked in when the shooting began. After that, she simply didn’t have time for the pain anymore. And it worked, too—until she stepped into the tenth-floor hallway and it suddenly returned, though not nearly with the same intensity as back in the stairwell.

She clenched her teeth and pushed through it, telling herself that Faith was somewhere in here and she had to find her, or find evidence of her existence, because if she didn’t do it, then no one else would. Not the cops, not the Feds, no one. It might not have been the absolute truth, but it was just enough motivation to keep her going.

Allie heard everything (footsteps in the rooms, frightened and confused whispers), saw everything (a section of the wallpaper peeling, a pen’s misplaced cap), even smelled the dirty carpet under her, and something that might have been perfume coming from the door she had just passed.

Then, out of nowhere, Reese’s voice was cutting through her sensory overload: “Remember, last door up the hallway to your left.”

Last door up the hallway to your left, she repeated to herself, and picked up her pace.

She was three doors down from her objective when the door clicked open and a woman stuck her head out and looked down the hallway—

Allie fired a shot over the woman’s head, splintering the doorframe behind her.

“Get on your knees now!” she shouted.

The woman, the caretaker that Reese had mentioned, hurried to obey, putting both arms over her head without having to be told, as if she had been in this situation many times before. She sneaked a look as Allie rushed to her, the Glock in her hands shifting from the woman’s overly made-up face to the room behind her, more parts of the living room coming into view as she got closer. The woman watched Allie the entire time. She might have been in her early forties, but the clown makeup made her look much older.

Allie finally reached the apartment and grabbed the older woman by her coiffed hair, jerking her back up to her feet. The woman let out a squeal but didn’t try to get away. Allie turned her around until they were facing the room, then clutched the back of the caretaker’s blouse and led her inside. The woman was a few inches shorter than her, despite wearing pumps, which allowed Allie to survey the room unobstructed.

Framed landscape oil paintings dotted the walls and the furniture looked new, including a coffee table with stacks of magazines that were just too perfectly staged to have ever been picked up. A hallway in the back led into the bedrooms, and there was a kitchen to her left.

“Alice,” Reese said from behind her.

She glanced back. He remained outside the door, the MP5K pointing back down the hallway. There were no other doors behind him, so he would have a perfect view of the floor all the way to the elevator and stairwell at the other end.

“Here,” he said, and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone and tossed it to her. “Faith’s photo,” he added, because apparently she had given him a blank look.

Right. Faith’s photo.

Allie pocketed the burner phone and turning back around, got a good grip on the caretaker’s hair and pulled her head—just her head—backward. The woman let out another pained squeal.

“How many men do you have in the building?” she asked the woman.

The woman said something in Spanish.

“She’s lying,” Reese said. “Bitch can speak English better than Dwight could.”

Allie tightened her hold on the older woman’s hair and jerked it back again until her neck was straining. “How many?”

“Six,” the woman said, this time in perfect English.

Six men. How many had they killed just getting up here? Reese had shot two on the way up. Dwight had killed another one when he sprayed the ninth floor stairwell door. Then there was the one who had shot Dwight, whom she shot in return.

“Two left,” Allie said, looking back at Reese.

He nodded. “They’re probably waiting for us downstairs. Go get what you need, but hurry.”

“The cops?”

“Eventually, but I’m more worried about reinforcements.”

She nodded and turned back to the caretaker. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” the woman asked through clenched teeth. If she was scared even a little bit, Allie couldn’t read it in her voice.

“The records of all the girls here, that have been through here. Where are they?”

“I don’t know—”

Allie pressed the Glock into the back of the woman’s neck, and her body stiffened. “I’m going to ask you just one more time: Where are they?”

“In the last room,” the woman said.

“Go,” Allie said, and pushed the older woman into the bedroom hallway.

The caretaker stumbled, caught herself, and glanced back at Allie. “They’re going to kill you for this.”

Allie ignored her, said, “What’s your name?”

“Melinda.”

“Shut the fuck up and take me to the records, Melinda.”

The older woman grinned back at her, the sight almost comical with her smeared lipstick. “You’ll never make it out of this building alive.”

Allie pointed the gun in her face. “Then neither will you.”

The woman grunted, still showing none of the fear—or, at the very least, some doubt—that Allie was hoping to see.

What’s it going to take to scare this woman?

Melinda led her into a room at the back of the apartment—some kind of office with a large oak desk in the center.

“Stop,” Allie said when they were inside. She took out the phone, made sure Faith’s black and white photo was on the screen, and showed it to Melinda. “Do you recognize her?”

The other woman squinted at the photo. “Who is she?”

“Do you recognize her?”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of girls here. A lot of girls come and go. I can’t keep track of all of them. Anyway, they all look the same, especially the white girls.”

“Her name’s Faith.”

“That doesn’t help. They all get new names before they come to me.”

Allie stared at her. Was she lying? She couldn’t tell. Maybe it was the caked makeup or the bitch face looking back at her, but Allie couldn’t read Melinda at all.

Shit.

“Show me the records,” Allie said.

Melinda walked around the desk and reached for the top shelf—

“Slowly,” Allie said, pointing the gun in her face again, this time from across the desk. “If you think being a woman means I won’t pull this trigger, you better think again.”

The older woman didn’t respond. Instead, she pulled open the drawer and reached inside, taking out a stack of manila folders and putting them on the desktop one at a time. A Polaroid of a young girl with blonde hair slid out from one of the folders. It wasn’t Faith, though she looked much younger than Faith had been when she was taken. Fifteen years old at the most.

“How many?” Allie asked.

“What?” Melinda said, moving to the next drawer.

“How many girls are in this place?”

“Fifty.”

“In the rooms?”

“Yes.”

“Permanently?”

“Some of them. Some are in transit.”

“In transit to where?”

Melinda dumped another pile of folders on the desk. “I don’t know. Once they leave here, they’re no longer my responsibility. I don’t know where they go or what happens to them.”

“Slowly,” Allie said, even as Melinda pulled another drawer open and reached inside and looked up—

Allie saw her eyes. They were dark and black and unsmiling—the eyes of a woman who had seen and done evil things, and didn’t care. And there was something else—a twinkle of mischief—that flared across her face.

“Don’t,” Allie said, but before she could get out the rest of the warning, Melinda lifted her right hand and Allie shot her once, then a second time, in the chest.

The caretaker staggered backward, bumped into the chair, and collapsed out of view behind the large desk.

Allie hurried around the furniture and looked down at Melinda, gasping on the floor. She was gripping a black revolver in her right hand, still trying to lift it even though she barely had the strength to breathe. The older woman’s eyes stared up at Allie the entire time, refusing to let go.

“Alice!” Reese shouted from across the apartment.

“I’m fine!” she shouted back.

“What happened?”

“She reached for a gun!”

Allie kicked the pistol out of Melinda’s hand and stepped over her to rifle through the drawers, pulling out enough folders to make two more stacks on the desktop. When she looked down again, Melinda had gone still, even though her eyes were still open and staring up at the ceiling.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” Allie said quietly to no one in particular.

She looked back at the stacks of folders. Six in all. There had to be at least twenty—maybe thirty—in each pile. She processed the numbers in her head but stopped after they became too much and grabbed the first one.

Every folder contained a Polaroid of a different girl posed against a wall—maybe even this very apartment—with a single piece of college-rule paper filled with the girl’s name, age, and identifying marks. Americans, Mexicans, South Americans girls. They were tall, short, but always slender and young. That was the thing that nagged at Allie the most—their age. They weren’t just young, they looked like little girls, too.

She battled through the nausea so she could keep going, but it quickly became apparent she wasn’t making enough headway at a fast enough rate, and there were still too goddamn many folders left. After a while she started only looking for blonde hair, feeling sick to her stomach as she tossed aside the ones with brunettes, redheads, girls with dark black hair…

“Alice!” Reese again, still shouting from the hallway by the sound of his voice.

“I need more time!” she shouted back.

“You don’t have more time! We’ve been here too long! Just grab what you can and let’s get the hell gone!”

She concentrated on the remaining stacks of folders. There were five of them. She hadn’t even managed to finish the first one yet, and there were still five left. The sheer number of folders horrified her. How long had this “house” been in existence? How many girls had come through this hellhole? All the other houses she knew about, and the ones even Reese didn’t know existed? How many were snatched off the streets? How many would never see their friends and family and boyfriends ever again?

Reese again, sounding even more urgent this time: “Alice! We gotta go!”

She stared at the folders, trying to think of a better way. A faster way. There had to be. But how? How?

She finally abandoned the folders and ran outside.

Reese was visible in the hallway through the open front door. He looked over when he heard her coming. “Did you find her?”

She shook her head and darted past him and into the hallway and began moving up it, shouting, “Faith! Faith, if you can hear me, come outside! Your mother sent me! Faith, are you here? Can you hear me? Faith!”

“This is not a good idea,” Reese said behind her.

She ignored him and continued shouting at the top of her lungs, stopping every time she reached a new set of doors and banging on them. “Faith! Your mother sent me to find you! Faith! Can you hear me? Come outside if you can hear me! Your mother sent me! Faith!”

No one answered, and there was just the sound of her own voice echoing up and down the hallway. She didn’t know why she was so surprised that no one was responding. Why would they? In their shoes, she would come across as a crazy woman shouting someone’s name over and over again, minutes after what had clearly been a gun battle. You would have to be insane to answer something like that. Even if Faith was here, what were the chances she would risk coming out?

But Allie didn’t have any choice, and she kept at it, doing her very best to ignore the slightly crazed sound of her own voice.

“Faith! Come out, Faith! Your mom sent me! Faith! I’m here to take you home! Faith!”

“What about the folders?” Reese asked behind her.

She stopped screaming and moving up the hallway just long enough to answer him. “There’s too many of them. Too many girls…”

“I’m sorry, but we have to go. We’ve already spent too much time here. There are still two more somewhere inside the building, remember? Alice, are you listening to me?”

But she wasn’t listening to him, not really. She was too busy shouting Faith’s name and could hear the strain starting to appear in her voice. It just made her shout louder and bang on the doors even harder.

“Faith! Come outside! Your mother sent me! Faith!”

“Alice, she’s not—” Reese started to say, when there was a click! from behind them, and they both spun around.

Reese aimed his MP5K at a head peering out of one of the apartment doors. It was a girl, frightened, her hand shaking as she gripped the doorknob. She stared at Allie and Reese with large blue eyes, and she was just the right size, the right age, and the right shade of long blonde hair…

But it wasn’t Faith.

“Faith’s gone,” the girl said, her voice trembling slightly, but it was clear she was trying very hard to fight through it. “But if you take me with you, I know where you can find her.”

Twenty-Two

Dwight was dead, and he was on the tenth floor of an organization house with a woman who insisted on shouting at the top of her lungs and didn’t look all that interested in getting out of the building anytime soon. He guessed things could have been worse. For instance, the two remaining men (or “meatheads,” as Dwight called them) that guarded the building could have been five, or ten, or more. As it stood, there were just two guns still unaccounted for, and while that didn’t sit very well with Reese, it could have been much, much worse.

Then the girl who looked like Faith—and could very well have been Faith, but wasn’t, because obviously his luck wasn’t that good—poked her head out of one of the rooms.

“Faith’s gone,” the girl said. “But if you take me with you, I know where you can find her.”

Reese was going to say “Hell no,” but Alice beat him to it. “Come on!”

The girl came out of her room in jeans and a T-shirt. She was so skinny Reese thought she might trip over her own legs, but she was surprisingly athletic and ran past him without a look, clearly having decided that Alice was in charge of the situation.

Well, she’s not wrong.

“What’s your name?” Alice asked her.

“Iris,” the girl said.

“Where’s Faith, Iris?”

The girl shook her head. “Get me out of here first and I’ll tell you.”

Reese thought Alice might argue, but instead he saw the relief on her face as she nodded and looked over at him. “Let’s get out of here.” Then, to Iris, “Stay next to me and go where I go, understand?”

Iris nodded. She looked scared, but also resilient. Reese couldn’t help but be impressed by that.

“I got point,” Reese said, and hurried past them.

“I’m Allie,” he heard Alice tell the girl behind him. “That’s Reese.”

He smirked to himself and thought, Great. She won’t tell me her real name but has no trouble telling a perfect stranger she only met a few seconds ago. I should be insulted, right?

He decided to think more on that later (if there was a later), but right now there were still nine floors to get past before they were safe. Or as safe as you could possibly get once you crossed people like his former employers, anyway.

The apartments to both sides of him were dead silent as he walked past them, and he couldn’t even pick up shuffling from behind the doors like earlier. Alice (Allie) and the girl were wisely keeping quiet behind him, the soft tap-tap-tap of their footsteps, along with his, seemingly the only sound in the entire building. The girl was barefooted for some reason, which contributed to the quiet.

Reese wasn’t too surprised by the absence of police sirens outside the building. The organization had chosen their tenants well, because cops meant questions that not everyone could or wanted to answer. He’d been to too many ghettos around the world to think this was out of the ordinary.

He was a third of the way down the hallway when he noticed the camera perched above the elevator in front of him. Reese stopped and turned around and looked for the girl. She was so small that Allie dwarfed her. “Iris…”

The girl stuck her head out from behind Allie.

“Where’s the surveillance room?” he asked her. When she didn’t seem to understand his question, “The bad guys. What room do they usually stay in?”

Iris didn’t have to think about the question for very long. She pointed down the hall to their right. “The first door.”

He turned back around and hurried over, stepping over the dead man on the floor. He gave Allie a look, and if she didn’t understand what he was doing, that didn’t stop her from understanding what he needed from her. She nodded back and Reese turned around, opened the door, and went inside, the MP5K swinging from side to side.

The apartment was heavily lived in, the living room turned into a monitoring station with LED screens arranged in a semicircle. Reese was greeted by two empty chairs and no signs of occupants. He swept the back hallway, just to be sure, before coming back out and focusing on the monitors. There were five in all, and they switched between camera feeds every five seconds, showing all ten stairwells and ten floors.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think the building was empty, that there wasn’t a single soul in the entire place. Of course, he knew better. The residents in the other seven floors were staying indoors to wait out the chaos, which was smart of them. He searched for signs of the remaining two goons but didn’t see them anywhere, either. There was also something else missing that was harder to explain: a receptacle for all the footage being recorded by the cameras.

“Well?” Allie said impatiently, poking her head through the door behind him.

He sat down on one of the chairs and used a keyboard to switch between the monitors, stopping only when he found the lobby camera. Like the hallways and stairwells, it looked empty. Looked, anyway. Reese didn’t believe it for a second, especially with two more meatheads running around out there somewhere. Unless, of course, the caretaker had lied to Allie. That was entirely possible, too.

Reese took the opportunity to dig out the pill bottle from his jacket while he was scanning the monitors. Now that all the shooting had stopped and the adrenaline had ebbed, the throbbing pain had returned with a vengeance, and Reese swallowed down two more pills in an effort to stave them off for just a little bit longer.

“Reese,” Allie said behind him. “What are you looking for? You were the one who wanted to get away from here as fast as possible, remember?”

“I’m looking for the remaining two meatheads.”

“Do you see them?”

“No.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Maybe. But there’s also the other thing…”

“What other thing?”

“Where does all the footage go?”

“What footage?”

“The ones being recorded by all the cameras.”

“So? Who cares where they go?”

“You should care. Our faces are all over them, not to mention all the killing we did.”

He heard Allie whispering to Iris before she said to him, “Iris doesn’t know where the footage goes. Maybe they don’t want anything recorded, either. All of this might just be for surveillance only.”

“Must be,” he said, though he didn’t fully believe it as he got up from the chair.

“What now?”

He stepped out into the hallway and glanced toward the elevator, then the stairwell with its bullet-riddled door. “There’s only one way out of here, and that’s down. And they know that, too. Unless the caretaker was lying about their numbers.”

“Why would she lie?”

“She’s a criminal, and criminals lie. I should know.” Then he looked over and smiled at her. “So, Allie, huh?”

“What?”

“Your name.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s Allie.”

“Alice, Allie. You couldn’t have told me that the first time I asked?”

She flashed him an annoyed look. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Is that short for Allison?”

“Later.”

He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and took the lead up the hallway once again.

“Are we taking the stairs again?” Allie asked behind him. He thought she sounded almost pained by the question.

He didn’t blame her; the prospect of doing ten more floors was like a physical hammer slamming into his side.

“I have a better idea,” Reese said.

Instead of going down the stairs, Reese opted to take the elevator. The only reason he hadn’t let them take it before was because the house could remotely control it from the monitoring station. That risk was now gone, with the remaining two (if there were even two more) somewhere below them instead of on the tenth floor.

He pressed for the lobby, then hit the third-floor button just as they passed the fourth floor and exited the elevator into an empty third floor hallway. Reese heard movements behind the closed doors of the two closest apartments, but no one (wisely) came out.

If there were two more gunmen left, they would no doubt be waiting in the lobby. That was the only explanation that made any sense and why Reese felt it was safe enough to abandon the elevator on the third.

He turned left toward the stairwell door as soon as the elevator closed back up and continued down. He didn’t go through the door but instead stood back and waited.

“Well?” Allie said behind him.

“Give them a moment,” he said.

“For what?”

“For them to realize we’re not in the elevator. They’ll figure it out.”

Allie said, “Whatever you do, stay behind me, Iris.”

Then Reese heard it—footsteps in the stairwell. They were coming up fast, and he waited, waited—

Clump-clump-clump! as heavy shoes reached the floor landing directly on the other side of the stairwell door. Reese took a brief step back and unloaded the submachine gun into the door and kept firing until the MP5K was empty. He quickly tossed the weapon, drew his Glock, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled the door open.

A figure lay on the landing on its back, the man’s head dangling off the steps behind him. Blood gushed from holes in his torso, his eyes open and staring up at nothing. A pump-action shotgun lay next to him, but Reese ignored it and stepped over the man and into the stairwell, searching for another target.

Searching, searching…

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

A soft tap from above him, and Reese looked up and saw a figure turning the corner, a pistol in his hand aimed right at Reese’s head—

Bang! from behind him, and the man collapsed and slid down the steps, landing in a pile at Reese’s feet.

Reese looked over at Allie, who was leaning into the stairwell with her Glock.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said, and stepped into the room beside him.

Iris, sticking close to Allie, looked down at the two bodies, but if she felt anything at all for them, Reese didn’t see it on her face.

Tough kid. Tougher woman leading her.

Reese followed them down. “You could have let him shot me, then taken him out later.”

“I could have,” Allie said, “but what if they had reinforcements in the lobby?”

He grinned as she leaned around the corner, looking down at the second floor below them.

“Anything?” he asked.

She pulled her head back and shook it.

He moved past her to take point again. Allie followed, with Iris close behind.

The second floor was empty, and they exited into the lobby without any problems. He thought about taking the back door instead, past the super’s office, but decided the distance to the front was closer and worth the risk.

“Come on,” he said, and headed toward the door, grimacing through a sudden flurry of pain.

Just a little longer, just a little longer…

Taking the elevator had been a well-deserved break, but the three stairwell floors had just about undone all of that. But as he made a beeline for the front door, Reese couldn’t help but feel better, almost light on his feet, which allowed him to push through the misery and keep moving.

Halfway to the front door (Christ, I might survive this after all!) Reese found himself thinking about that one million he had coming and wondered how hard it was going to be to convince Allie to give him Dwight’s share. Maybe he could come up with a sob story about Dwight having a wife, or girlfriend, or even better, kids. It wasn’t like Allie would know any different. Yeah, maybe that was the correct approach—

“What about the others?” Allie asked behind him.

“Everyone’s dead,” Reese said. “If they want to leave, there’s nothing to stop them.”

“They don’t know that.”

“Not my problem. We already had this talk, remember?”

Allie didn’t reply, but she stopped, and when he glanced back, saw her looking behind her. Iris stood obediently next to her, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. The girl kept looking at the front door, no doubt thinking about all the freedom waiting for her on the other side. Reese thought she might take off on her own at any second, but she never did.

“Allie,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

“Allie,” he said again, “we have to go.”

But she still didn’t move, and he had started running the scenarios through his head (How the hell was he going to get her out of here without bloodshed? Because he needed her out there; he needed her to release that money that was going to help him run as far away from the organization as possible, with or without Dwight’s share) when he heard it.

It was very soft at first because it was still far off, but it got stronger as it neared.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Allie said, looking back at him.

Police sirens…

“You said the cops were paid off,” Allie said.

“Some, but not all of them,” Reese said. “We left a lot of bodies up there, Allie. They’re not going to be able to cover this up.”

He saw her mind working…

Five seconds, then ten…

All the while, the sirens got louder, and closer…

“Allie,” he said.

She finally turned around. “Let’s get out of here.”

But of course she didn’t let him leave right away. They sat in the old truck almost a full block down and across the street from the organization house and watched as two police cruisers arrived, then two more five minutes later. They gathered outside the tenement and waited, cordoning off the street and diverting traffic.

“Here comes the big guns,” Reese said when a black van appeared and was waved through the sawhorses.

Men in assault vests and ballistic helmets, carrying rifles, climbed out of the back of the newly arrived vehicle.

“SWAT,” Allie said.

“And they’ll go in and clear the building,” Reese said. “The girls will be fine.” He turned in his seat and looked over at Iris in the back. “I guess you risked your life for nothing, kid.”

“I want to go home,” Iris said.

“They’ll take you home.”

“I want to go home now. It’s been so long…” She looked out the window, as if she was already imagining wherever “home” was.

“You said you knew Faith,” Allie said, looking back at the girl.

Iris nodded. “She was already here before me. I guess because we kind of looked alike, they put us together a lot of times.”

“Together?”

“You know, photos, videos, that sort of thing. Together.”

Allie nodded. “Do you know where she is now?”

“They took her away two months ago. She’s not supposed to be back for a while.”

“Where did they take her, Iris?”

“Can I go home now?” Iris asked. Suddenly she looked very young and vulnerable, and Reese couldn’t help but wonder if she was one of the girls stuffed into the trailers of those big rigs he and Dwight had babysat in the past.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have.

Telling himself that usually worked, but this time it didn’t quite have the same impact. He looked out the windshield at the police action up the street instead, anything to keep him from seeing the tears coming down the girl’s cheeks in the backseat.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have…

“All right,” Allie said. “We’ll go home first.” She turned around and nodded at him. “Let’s go.”

He turned on the engine and U-turned down the street.

He drove for half an hour, sticking to the speed limit. He didn’t say a word, and neither did Allie in the front passenger seat next to him. He hadn’t asked Allie where they were going, but he guessed it didn’t matter as long as they were out of the city. Iris sat quietly in the back, smiling to herself as she stared out the window, as if everything was new to her and she couldn’t (and never wanted to) get enough of it.

If we didn’t do it, someone else would have, Reese told himself for the tenth time in as many minutes.

He slowed down as they hit a stoplight and parked behind a beat-up Chevy with a Baby on Board sticker in the rear windshield.

“What’s next for you?” he asked.

“I take that list of addresses you gave me, and I give it to the authorities,” Allie said. “Then I go find Faith.”

“I thought you said the Feds were slow dinosaurs.”

“They are, but I can’t go around shooting up buildings like this the rest of my life. After today, after this hits the news wires, they won’t have any choice but to act on what I give them. If they don’t, I know a few people in the press I can call.”

He chuckled. “You mean blackmail the Feds?”

She didn’t answer.

“Damn,” he said. “Dwight was right. Remind me never to cross you.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“Listen, I was thinking, after this—” he started to say, when he caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of his right eye and thought, Shit!

Reese jerked his head back just in time, and the first shot buzzed! past his face, so close he could feel the heat of the projectile going by, and smashed the driver-side window. He struck out and hit her gun hand, and she squeezed off a second shot, this one sending a round into the front windshield and spiderwebbing it.

The wound in his side screamed from the sudden movements and pain lanced through him, but it was better than getting shot again. Reese reached blindly for the door lever with his left hand, by some miracle located it, and jerked it back while at the same time throwing himself out just as she fired again and the round zipped! over his head.

He landed in a pile on the cold pavement, then rolled and bumped into the tires of a gray sedan. A car door creaked open, and Reese, flat on his stomach against the road, looked underneath the truck and saw Allie’s feet hurrying down from the front passenger side—

He scrambled up and staggered down the street, partially bent over at the waist in some pathetic attempt to lessen the pain coursing through him. He went down the street, toward the back bumper, because he knew she would take the fastest route to him, which meant circling the hood. His side burned, and he couldn’t decide whether to reach for his gun or grab at the wound to keep the stitches from busting.

He reached for the gray sedan’s radio antenna to stop himself from falling headfirst to the street and nearly snapped it in two. He grabbed as much of the car’s trunk as he could and went around it. An old couple in a white station wagon five feet away stared wide-eyed at him as he darted in front of their vehicle and onto the other side of the lane.

Bang! as a round sailed over his head and hit a sign in the middle divider.

Reese summoned every bit of speed he could muster even as moving traffic threatened to run him over. Horns blared, but he ignored them (Bleeding man running for his life here! he wanted to shout and laugh) and made it to the other side of the street without having to dodge another bullet.

A half dozen people on the sidewalk scattered at the sight of him, and Reese threw himself into their midst to use them as shields. He took a moment to glance back and saw Allie looking after him before she turned and hurried into the driver-side of the truck and drove off.

He couldn’t help himself and smiled after her even as he felt the wetness against his hand. He was bleeding again, but that was okay. He watched the truck make a right turn and disappear and briefly wondered if Allie would turn around and try to finish him off.

That was unlikely, but he didn’t completely put it past her. She was, after all, one of a kind. He’d known that when he first saw her, and the last two days hadn’t changed his mind whatsoever. If anything, they’d only reinforced it.

Allie, or Alice, or whatever she called herself, was a hell of a woman, even if she had tried to kill him.

Twice, now.

“Hey, mister, you all right?” a man with a ball cap asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Reese said, and grinned back at the guy. “Lover’s quarrel. Nothing we can’t get past.”

“You serious, man? You’re bleeding!”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Reese said, and hobbled off.

Somewhere up the street he heard police sirens, but Reese ignored them and slipped into an alleyway.

He was bleeding badly and dripping blood on the pavement as he limped his way toward the end. He fumbled with the bottle in his jacket and popped two pills into his mouth, and that seemed to alleviate some of the pain almost immediately. Of course, that wasn’t really possible, but Reese had found that he could trick his mind into believing just about anything if he tried hard enough.

I’ll see you around, Allie.

I’ll see you around…

Twenty-Three

She knew about the process that took place between the brokers and the johns, and how the girls were moved from place to place in order to maximize revenue. Most of the information she gleaned herself in the early days of the investigation, while various people—some more voluntary than others—filled in the rest.

It took her almost a full week to isolate where her target would be. It was a four-star hotel, and the man was inside one of the building’s two bars, ordering drinks, when she slid onto the stool next to him. His eyes, predictably, went first to her generously exposed cleavage before settling on her face.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said back. The wig itched, but she was used to discomfort and brushed at a blonde strand to let him know she was interested.

He smiled. He wasn’t bad-looking. Late thirties, with streaks of gray around the temples. He was dressed appropriately for the environment.

“I’m Glen,” he said.

“Gwen.”

“Hey, two Gs in a bar.”

She smiled. “I don’t get it.”

“Dumb joke,” he said. “What’re you having?”

She told him, and he ordered it, then a second one about thirteen minutes later. He was waiting for someone, he told her, but the guy hadn’t shown up yet, though he was expecting the man any minute, which meant he might have to go at any time.

“You’re attending the convention?” he asked her.

She laughed. “Do I look like I’m attending a convention, Glen?”

“Guess not.” Another smile before he glanced down at his watch. “You know, I think this guy’s a no-show.”

“Stood you up, huh?”

“I think so.” He let out an exaggerated sigh and took a sip of his cocktail. “You wanna grab some dinner with me?”

“You paying?” she asked, and gave him a mischievous look.

“Absolutely,” he said, and smiled widely. “But what I meant was, you wanna grab some dinner with me in my suite?”

“Easy there, Texas. I’m not that fast.”

He chuckled. “Give me a break. I know a working girl when I see one.” He took out a roll of money and peeled off a hundred dollar bill and slid it under her glass. “How about it?”

“Five hundred for the night,” she said, and plucked the bill off the counter and slipped it into her purse.

“Five hundred’s steep.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“You worth it?”

“Every cent.”

He laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

He was trying to get her cocktail dress off before they even got into his suite on the fifteenth floor, and it was only through experience that she managed to keep her clothes on in the elevator, then during the long walk through the hallway. By the time they were inside his room, she pushed him away and walked into the living room while he locked the door and began peeling off his own clothes.

It wasn’t until he was strutting after her in his boxers that he started to feel the effects of the drug she had slipped into his drink sometime before the last entrée. She had been a little afraid she hadn’t timed it correctly, but looking at him now as he stopped about ten feet in front of her and felt for his head with his hands, she guessed she had, after all.

“What’s happening to me?” he asked, his words slurred.

Allie sat down on the end of a sofa and watched him trying to shake it off. He had the look of a man who didn’t know what was happening to him and began groping the wall for a handhold. He ended up stumbling into an end table and knocked the vase off it before dropping to the floor on his butt.

“What’s happening—” he said, but never got the rest of it out before he toppled over to one side, his cheek hitting the carpeted floor with a nice, solid thump!

She opened her purse and took out the phone and called down to the parking lot.

Lucy answered on the first ring. “Are you decent?”

She smiled. “Bored yet?”

“Getting there…”

“Go get some food. I hear they have a pretty good buffet in the hotel next door.”

“Oh, I see, you get to enjoy the four-star hotel while I get stiffed with the inn next door, huh?” Lucy let out an exaggerated sigh. “Eh, I have to take Apollo for a walk anyway. He’s getting a little antsy in the backseat.”

“Get him something to eat, too.”

“Will this take long, or shouldn’t I have asked?”

“I’ll give you a shout when I’m done,” Allie said, and put the phone away.

It took almost two hours before he opened his eyes, about an hour after she had everything in place. He was still just in his boxers but was now strapped to a chair in the bathroom, his arms bound behind his back with plastic zip ties and his ankles similarly restrained. Duct tape covered his mouth, but his eyes were wide open and free to see her standing at the sink counter, looking at the contents of his wallet.

She glanced over and made tsk tsk sounds at him. “You lied to me, Glen. Your real name’s Mick Anderson.” She held up his driver’s license. “Out of Tucson, Arizona. You’re a long way from home, too.”

He said something, but the words were hopelessly muffled against the duct tape.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and picked something up from the sink. It was a small metal tube, but when she flicked it, it expanded into a sixteen-inch metal baton.

His eyes widened and his entire body went stiff.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, turning to face him. “‘She’s just a girl. She’s not going to do anything. It’s just a bad attempt at intimidation.’” Allie smiled at him. “I assure you, Mick, that this is going to hurt you way more than it hurts me. On the plus side, I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”

She took a step toward him and he attempted to retreat, but of course he barely moved against his restraints.

She stopped and pointed at the floor. “Oh, you’ll note the plastic I put over the floor. We wouldn’t want to make a mess for the hotel to clean up, now would we? Wouldn’t be fair to housekeeping.”

He started shouting something into the duct tape when she struck him on the shoulder, the thwack! of the metal tube slamming into flesh, echoing off the bathroom’s tiled walls. The blow left a thick purple bruise against his exposed flesh almost right away, and he screamed into the tape over his mouth and tried to move his arms but only ended up almost toppling sideways.

She reached out to steady him. “Easy there. Don’t want you to fall again. It was tough enough dragging you in here. You’re a big boy, Mick. I bet that comes in handy when you have to keep the girls in line, huh?”

His eyes teared up and he might have been begging, but it was hard to tell.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and landed a second blow—thwack!—against his left thigh.

He jerked his body up as if he was trying to leap off the chair, but of course he didn’t get very high before coming back down on the tarp. He couldn’t stop the tears from falling, but he must have realized pleading wasn’t going to work, so he resorted to firing daggers at her with large, bulging red eyes.

She leaned back against the sink counter and twirled the baton in her hand. “I know that look. You’re mad. I can see how you’d think I’m being sadistic, but I’m really not. I’m just trying to impress upon you the seriousness of your situation, Mick.”

Muffled sounds against the tape.

She ignored him and continued. “One of your johns gave you up, in case you were wondering. Told me everything. How you arranged young girls for him and his friends. You’re a bad man, Mick. A very bad man who is far from home, doing very bad things. And, oh, the guy you were waiting for? I found him outside the hotel and told him I’d call his wife if he didn’t turn around and never come back. I may or may not follow up with him after tonight depending on my mood. I guess I could always use more practice with this thing. Practice makes perfect, right?”

She pushed off the counter and squared up against him again. He tensed up and the anger in his eyes vanished in a blink, replaced by real fear. If she had any doubts, he convinced her when urine drip-drip-dripped from his boxers.

“Glad I lugged that plastic tarp all the way up here,” she said just before she hit him again, this time on the right arm.

Before he could finish screaming into the duct tape, she struck him a fourth time in the right thigh.

Ten minutes later, he told her everything.

The man who answered the motel door when she knocked on it had at least fifty pounds and five inches on her, but none of that did him any good when Apollo slammed into his chest and knocked him to the floor. The man was reaching for something in his jacket when Apollo growled and clamped down on his wrist. The big man let out a hellacious scream that probably woke up every single one of his motel neighbors.

Allie followed them inside and locked the door behind her. “Apollo, back.”

The dog let go of the man’s wrist and backtracked, but he snarled and showed his fangs to the man.

“I’d stay down if I were you,” Allie said.

The man grabbed at his bleeding arm while Apollo sat down on his hind legs five feet away and never took his eyes off his prey. If the man thought he had any advantages, he quickly realized that he didn’t and didn’t make any effort to get up.

“My hand,” he moaned instead.

“You’re lucky you still have a hand,” Allie said.

The man thought about replying but wisely kept his mouth shut. Allie crouched next to him and stuck her hand into his jacket pocket, the same one he had been reaching for, and took out a small pistol. She put it away then looked around, but there was no else in the room.

“Where is she?” she asked the man.

“Bathroom,” he said.

She stepped over him and toward the bathroom on the far side. The door was closed, but Allie could hear movement behind it and there was light visible under the slot.

Allie leaned toward the door and knocked softly on it. “Faith?”

There was no response, and the only sound was Apollo letting out a low growl behind her. She looked back and saw the big man attempting to rise from the floor, only to sit gingerly back down at the sight of Apollo’s exposed fangs.

She turned back to the bathroom. “Faith, my name’s Allie. Your mother sent me to find you. She told me to tell you that she saved Angles for you, that she’ll be waiting in your old room when you come home.”

She waited five seconds, then ten...

An almost hesitant click as the door opened, and a pair of blue eyes looked out at Allie. “Angles?” the owner of the eyes asked.

Allie smiled and nodded. “Your mother told me you’d know what it meant.”

“Angles,” the girl with the blonde hair said. It wasn’t a question this time. “I called her Angles because I couldn’t pronounce angels when I was younger.”

The door opened wider, and Allie took a step back as Faith stood in the doorway. She was tall for a nineteen-year-old and might have been taller than Allie if she wasn’t standing in her bare feet. She was a beautiful girl, and there was still unbreakable spirit in the eyes that looked back at Allie, a fire that hadn’t turned to embers yet despite everything she had been through.

“How did you find me?” Faith asked.

“Iris,” Allie said.

“Iris?” Her eyes widened. “Is she okay?”

“She’s safe and home right now. She asked me to tell you—”

Allie didn’t get to finish because Faith threw herself at her, and it was all Allie could do to grab the girl to keep from being knocked to the floor. The tears came, the heavy sobbing against her jacket, but Allie didn’t tell Faith to stop or pry her away and instead held the girl in a tight embrace and let her do what she needed to.

“You’re safe now,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s hair. “You’re safe now…”

She looked back at Apollo, and the dog gave her a curious tilt of his head. She smiled back at him then looked at the man on the floor.

“Hey,” she said. And when the man glanced over his shoulder at her, “You have two choices. You’re going to tell me everything you know about the organization, or you’re going to find out just how sharp his teeth really are.”

Apollo growled for effect, and the man swallowed hard.

“I can’t,” he said.

“We’ll see about that.”

“You don’t understand, lady. I can’t, because I won’t. What you’re going to do to me, what your dog can do to me, it’s nothing compared to what they can do.”

Allie stared at him, trying to decide how far to push. She had a lot of choices, but there was something on the man’s face—a resolute hardness—that told Allie it wasn’t going to matter how hard or far she pushed, because he wasn’t scared of her. Oh, he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to end up at the wrong end of Apollo’s teeth again, but as much as he was afraid of her, he was terrified of them.

Who the hell are these people?

But she’d deal with that question later. Right now, she turned back to Faith and continued holding the girl as tightly as possible.

“Let’s go home,” Allie whispered.

“What about him?” Faith asked, turning her head just enough to look over at the man on the floor. “What about the ones who took me?”

Allie narrowed her eyes at the man, cradling his bleeding arm while at the same time trying to avoid Apollo’s hard glare.

“Forget about them,” Allie said. “I’ll deal with them later.” She turned back to Faith and smiled. “Right now, let’s just get you back home where you belong…”

From The Author

Things are getting interesting for Allie Krycek and company. She’s collecting a lot of new friends…and some new enemies too, from the looks of it. But hey, it’s nothing she can’t handle. Probably.

Until Allie Krycek returns, please consider leaving a review for the book at a bookseller of your choice. Even a short review would be tremendously appreciated.

And now, for those of you interested in being social, you can contact me at the following links:

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