by Rob Thomas
“You didn’t happen to get any pictures, did you?”
“I did. And so did everyone else in the world.” He tapped into his phone then passed it to Veronica.
He’d pulled up an inbox for the e-mail “findaurora@infoblast.com.” In the past two hours, more than fifty e-mails had come in, some with pictures attached. She scrolled through and read a few. Just sent fifty bucks via PayPal—I will keep Aurora in my prayers! read one. She opened another: Recognized Aurora from the pictures I took last night—hope this helps. Below was a photo of three white girls in bikinis making gang signs—and behind them, just out of focus but clearly recognizable, was Federico Gutiérrez Ortega, leaning close to whisper something to Aurora Scott.
“Ms. Landros set up the Find Aurora website this morning. I volunteered to sift through tips, so I’m getting some of the messages,” he explained. He jabbed a finger at Rico. “This is the guy she was flirting with when I left last night. I took off just after midnight, and the latest time stamp on any of the pictures we’ve gotten is two twenty-seven a.m.”
Veronica flipped through the photos. They weren’t nearly as R rated as the ones showing Hayley Dewalt in the guy’s lap, but they definitely showed Aurora looking flirty—and Rico looking interested.
She looked at her mother’s pinched, pale face and Tanner’s heavy frown. She didn’t want to lie to them—but she didn’t want to panic them either. Not yet, when there were still so many unanswered questions. If she told them Hayley Dewalt had been seen with the same boy, they’d be terrified. And if that information got back to the press, her quarry might go to ground.
Better to wait. To say nothing, until she had more information. If there was reason for them to panic, it wouldn’t really matter when they started. She made a mental note to e-mail Petra for the passwords for the website so Mac could be cued in to what came through.
Veronica pulled out a few business cards and passed them around. “Please call me immediately, day or night, if anything changes, or if you think of anything that might be useful. I’ll be in touch if I learn anything new.” She stood up and grabbed her purse.
Lianne gave a startled little gasp. “Oh, I almost forgot. Wait there, Veronica, I’ll be right back.”
She hurried down the hallway. Veronica stood awkwardly next to the table. Tanner kept staring at her with a woeful, earnest expression. Adrian scooped his uneaten burger into one of the white bags, taking it into the kitchen and throwing it in the trash.
“I’m sorry to meet you like this, honey,” Tanner said. He gave a strained little smile. “You know, your mama’s my second chance at life. Well, truth be told, she’s my fourth or fifth—but she’s the one that stuck. We met in AA—I was fifteen months sober when she started. We kind of looked out for each other. Every day when I thank my creator for another sober day, I thank Him for bringing us together.”
Veronica didn’t know what to say. A pained smile pulled her lips tight. For a moment she was sure she caught Adrian casting a disparaging look over the kitchen island at Tanner. She suspected he’d heard the story before, more than once.
Lianne hurried back, a spiral-bound book clutched in her hand. It was covered with overlapping vinyl stickers—band decals, skateboarding logos, a bumper sticker that read “Cute but psycho: roll the dice if you dare.”
She thrust it at Veronica. “It’s her diary,” she whispered. “I haven’t read it. I don’t … I don’t want to invade her privacy. But it might be helpful.”
Veronica swallowed, sliding the book into her bag. “Thanks. I’ll take a look.” She gave a faltering laugh and mimed zipping her lips. “I’ll keep it confidential. I promise.”
Lianne walked Veronica to the door. For one awful, sluggish second, Veronica was sure her mother was about to pull her into a hug. Then it passed, hugless, and she realized with a stab of irritation that a part of her was disappointed.
I don’t want her hugs. I don’t want her attention, her love. I don’t want her.
Tears spilled down Lianne’s cheeks.
“Please. Just help us find our little girl, okay?”
Veronica felt her fingers curl into fists. The muscles across her chest felt tight, like a carapace. Like armor.
“I’m going to do my best,” she said. Then she opened the door and let herself out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
You’ll never guess who showed up today.
Back in her office a few hours later, Veronica stared at her computer screen. The cursor blinked rhythmically, an ancient ode to the blank page. Even though there were hundreds—thousands—of things to say, she couldn’t figure out what to write next.
She had work to do. There were lives at stake, careers on the line … and all she wanted to do was talk to one person. The one person she couldn’t reach.
It was just after 4:00 p.m. in Neptune, California—which meant it was 0430 hours aboard the USS Harry Truman. They’d had a date to Skype a half hour ago, but he hadn’t shown up. That happened sometimes; if he was called out on a mission, he didn’t always have a chance to let her know. She tried not to let it bother her, but a part of her always thought, just for a split second: He could be dead right now.
It was stupid. But she couldn’t help it.
Maybe you already saw the news—I don’t know, do you get CNN on the Truman? Trish Turley’s been making a meal out of it. Another girl went missing, and because the cosmos hates me, she just so happens to be Lianne’s stepdaughter.
The late-afternoon sun filtered through the slats in her blinds, sending shadows across her desk. She leaned back in her chair and stared at the plaster on the ceiling, her mind combing over everything that’d happened in the past few hours. It all seemed too complicated to try to describe in an e-mail—the strangeness of seeing her mom again, the confusion of feelings. The discovery that she had a little brother. She sighed.
I’ll tell you all about it when we have a chance to Skype. Are you free Monday morning (my Sunday night?). Let me know and I’ll be online.
She hit Send and snapped the laptop shut.
It was obvious that the disappearances were connected; Federico Gutiérrez Ortega was seen flirting with both girls the night before they went missing. But what had he done with them? What could possibly motivate him to kidnap or hurt two American girls when he had so much at stake? She knew the evidence had to be airtight before she made an accusation; the Milenios weren’t stupid. If they caught a whiff of her poking around, they’d cover their tracks and then some.
Meanwhile, Hayley’s fund had just hit $550,000 that morning; Aurora’s was already up to $300,000 and climbing by the hour. As those figures rose, so did the number of cancellations rolling into Neptune’s motels and hotels up and down the coastline. Trish Turley had rallied her fans, and the sudden drop in the number of spring breakers was becoming noticeable.
A door opened, and Veronica suddenly became aware of raised voices in the reception area.
“I know they came from this office. So unless you want to be charged with obstruction of justice, it’s time to start talking.”
She jumped up and ran to the door to see Sheriff Lamb leaning across Mac’s desk. His stomach had knocked over a jar of pencils, and they rolled slowly toward the edge. He held a blue flyer under Mac’s nose, shaking it back and forth with every word.
Mac sat with her chin propped on her hand, staring at him with flat, bored eyes. She didn’t flinch as he shoved the paper toward her face.
“What’s the problem with my flyers?” Veronica crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door frame. “Did the color not match Neptune’s City Beautiful initiative?”
“Mars.” Lamb turned away from Mac’s desk, his lips curled in a sneer. Veronica could see Mac visibly relax behind him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She took the flyer from his hand and examined it. “It looks like I’m trying to find Hayley Dewalt. It’s going to be hard to do if you keep taking my flyers down, though.
”
“How many times do I have to tell you to keep me informed about your activities?”
“Last I checked, you were busy ignoring my voice mails. And now that there’s another girl missing—from the exact same house—it seems you might want to be printing up some new flyers right about now.”
He stared at her with burning blue eyes, stepping closer until he was mere inches from her face. She could smell stale coffee on his breath. “There’s no evidence the disappearances are linked,” he said carefully.
“Isn’t there?” She affected surprise. “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know, since you left the actual investigating for me to do. Well, buckle up, my friend, because I’m about to hand you actual clues to an actual crime, wrapped in a bow.” She crooked her finger at him and went back into her office. A moment later, he followed.
“I don’t have time for games, Mars.”
“No doubt, what with all that graft and corruption filling your schedule.”
Lamb smirked, one hand on the back of the low chair facing her desk. She grabbed her laptop, pulling up the photos she’d received from Hayley’s friends and Adrian. Then she turned the computer around for him to see.
“Aurora Scott disappeared from the same house Hayley Dewalt did nearly two weeks ago. Both girls were talking to this guy right before their last sighting.” She pointed at the picture of Federico. “He’s who you want to be harassing. Not Mac.”
Lamb’s pupils dilated slightly, but otherwise his face was motionless. The bluster had gone out of him all at once, leaving a quiet, calculating intensity to his movements.
“I take it you know who this guy is?” he asked coolly.
She darted a glance at him. “Do you know something I don’t?”
Lamb straightened up, tucking his thumb through his belt loop. “What I know is that you don’t want to go slinging accusations at people like this. Not unless you’re one hundred percent sure you can back them up.”
And just like that, she was sure. He’d known all along that the house was owned by the Milenios, that the Gutiérrez cousins were laundering money for their family. He was just too lazy—or maybe too corrupt—to investigate. The taste of bile burned her tongue, but she swallowed it down.
“I thought you wanted my information, Lamb. I thought you wanted to find these girls.”
He looked at the picture again, a conflicted expression flitting across his face. “Do you have any proof that this guy had any part in either disappearance?”
“No, but he was seen with both girls just before they went missing. That’s enough to get him in for questioning.”
“Is it? Suddenly you’re some kind of legal scholar?”
“Uh, yeah.” She smirked. “Suddenly I kind of am.”
They glared at each other for a minute.
“Look,” she said. “Cartels are a little out of my comfort zone.”
He flinched at the word “cartel,” but his gaze didn’t shy away from hers. For a moment his eyes raked her face as he tried to gauge what she knew. She waited.
“This is a delicate situation,” he said finally. “I’m not hauling anyone in without real evidence. So if you find something on them and bring it to me, I’ll consider questioning them.”
“So, let me get this straight.” Veronica tapped her lips thoughtfully with her index finger. “You’re going to let me do all the legwork, because it’s not politically viable for you to look into wild, orgiastic parties thrown by the junior members of one of the most violent crime organizations in Mexico. I’ll save you some trouble and just assume you’re getting a kickback of some kind from the Milenios—maybe in one of their more legitimate guises.” She cocked her head, feigning confusion. “But if I find actual evidence that they’re, I don’t know, using their parties as some kind of lure to kidnap pretty girls? Or worse? That’s when you want me to hand it over to you.”
“Sounds about right.” Lamb gave her a smile that was all reptile. “The Sheriff’s Department appreciates your assistance in this matter.”
He gave her a little mock salute, and then he was sailing out the door, leaving the lingering notes of his Axe body spray in his wake.
She went to the reception area. Mac didn’t even look up. Her fingers were flying over the keyboard. Veronica took in her friend’s jutting chin, the jerkiness of her shoulders. She wasn’t happy. Not for the first time she thought about how Mac had left a safe, quiet office—and a fat paycheck—for this. Now here she was, working as a glorified secretary, taking abuse from anyone whose toes Veronica stepped on.
“Are you okay?” She sat on the edge of Mac’s desk.
“I’m fine.” Mac looked up, her eyes bright and fierce, but a small smile flitted across her face. “One of these days, I’m going to find something on that guy that’ll wipe the smile right off his face.”
“You handled him like a pro.”
“Luckily, my intimidated face looks remarkably like silent defiance.” She exhaled loudly. “So is he trying to nab our collar?”
“Sure is. But only once I’ve got something on the Gutiérrezes. He’s scared of the big bad drug lords—doesn’t want to take them on until we’ve got something solid.”
“Well, shouldn’t we be?” Mac raised an eyebrow. “Scared, I mean? Some of those stories …”
“Believe me, I am treating the ultraviolent gangsters with all the caution required. I’m not about to poke a rattlesnake nest if the snakes are all comfortably asleep. Did any of those background checks come in yet?”
Mac looked up at her, hesitating. Veronica rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. Just tell me.”
“Okay, well … Lianne Scott—I mean your mom—has a few misdemeanors on her record, none more recent than 2006. Public intoxication, shoplifting, and trespassing. Looks like she moved around a lot between 2004 and 2006. I’ve got her in Barstow, Reno, Scottsdale, and then finally Tucson.” Mac’s eyes flickered from her screen to Veronica and quickly back again. “Married Tanner Scott in January of 2007. Gave birth to Hunter Jacob Scott in December 2007. She started working for the dental office last year, after Hunter started school.”
“And Tanner?”
Mac pursed her lips. “He’s been kind of hard to track. Spotty employment history and no permanent address between 2000 and 2006.”
“That’s not too surprising. He told me he’d been in the bottle pretty hard before he met my mom.”
“He was married to a woman named Rachel Novak in 1996; they divorced in 2000. Aurora was born 1998 in Albuquerque. Looks like he served ten months in jail for check fraud in 2005; Aurora was a ward of the state while he was away. After he got out he seemed to settle down. He got custody of Aurora and started working more steady jobs. Before Home Depot he was a janitor for the city for a few years.” Mac looked up. “That’s all that’s coming up on the basic search. You want me to keep digging?”
Veronica shook her head. “No. I think I can fill in the gaps.”
She knew the recidivism rates for petty crimes; no former criminal worked as a janitor for a few years unless he was determined to go straight. The idea of easy money became much too alluring after scrubbing toilets all night. Tanner Scott may have set off her bullshit detector, but it looked like he really had cleaned up.
She realized Mac was watching her closely, her forehead creased with concern.
“This has got to be weird for you,” Mac said.
“It’s not. It’s fine.”
“Veronica, look who you’re talking to. If anyone has mom issues, it’s me.”
Veronica forced a smile. In high school, she’d been the one to uncover the fact that Mac had been switched at birth, that the family she’d never really fit in with wasn’t really hers.
“Okay. It’s completely weird. But I’m trying not to think about it. Right now I really just want to focus on finding Hayley and Aurora.” She looked out the window over Mac’s head. A seagull hung on the breeze outside, a pale streak against the sky. Pretty, for an animal wa
iting for an unguarded Dumpster. “Did you have a chance to look in on our other guys?”
“Yup. Chad Cohan is, as far as I can see, still snuggled up in Stanford. I’ve gotten into the Stanford security logs, and it looks like he’s used his student ID to access the gym and the library in the past few days. No flight records, and no charges on his cards that would indicate travel.”
“What about Crane?”
Mac shook her head. “I don’t have much of an electronic trail for him. It doesn’t seem likely that he’d be able to slip away from his family and hurt someone while they’re the subject of so much media attention, though, right?”
“Unlikely, but not impossible. I’ll check in with the Dewalts tomorrow. I should do that anyway.” She put her hands over her eyes for a moment. A small headache was forming over her temples.
“What should we do next?” Mac’s voice was quiet, almost tentative.
“The only thing we can do.” Veronica drew her hands away from her eyes. Mac sat very still in front of her, waiting. “We keep going over the evidence, and we hope like hell that sooner or later, some part of it makes sense.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You know what I definitely don’t miss about New York?”
Veronica swayed slightly in the hammock strung between two stolid oaks in Keith’s backyard, a finger stuck between the pages where she’d been leafing through Aurora Scott’s diary. It was just after dinner, and the last of the day’s sun filtered gently through the leaves.
Keith looked up at her from where he crouched, yanking weeds from around the agapanthus. Their dirty dishes and the remainder of their lasagna sat on the little wooden table on the patio; they’d come out to enjoy the evening while they ate, a well-earned break.
“I’ve heard the sewer alligators are very intimidating,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his brow.
She leaned back in the canvas of the hammock, enjoying the sense of being supported.