ATURDAY, MAY 9, 2009

3:45 A.M.

Eden turned and looked at Jenn in the dimness of the back of the windowless van as the vehicle slowed and turned onto a bumpier, less well-maintained road. They’d been traveling for a while, first on what felt like a highway, then on smaller roads, still at high speeds, and then on what may have been dirt at a much slower pace.

This, however, was even more pitted and rough. It was possibly made of gravel—there were pings and clunks from small pieces of rock being thrown by the tires, up against the bottom and sides of the van.

All in all, they’d been on the move for just over forty minutes.

It didn’t take much more than that to go from the bustle of downtown Vegas out into the middle of nowhere, as this bumpy road implied.

Eden had checked Dan’s cell phone a number of times throughout their journey, and had discovered, very early on, that both the active phone call and the GPS setting generated a glow. She’d had to work to keep it covered and shielded with her body, curling into near-fetal position, which wasn’t that odd for a kidnapping victim to do.

Jenn had helped, putting her arms around Eden and spooning together, once she’d realized what was going on. Halfway through the trip, Eden had figured out how to dim the phone’s screen, but even then, Jenn didn’t let go of her.

Eden knew Jenn was scared—she was, too.

Jenn was also intensely worried about Danny—about how hard Eden had hit him, about him not waking up. She was also worried about him waking up and running out of the apartment wildly in his search for them and running directly into Todd’s deadly weapon.

Eden was afraid of that, too.

It was entirely possible Jenn was never going to see Dan again. It was possible that Eden, too, had seen Izzy’s beautiful smile and heard his infectious laughter for the very last time …

I’m going to find you, he’d said, but he wouldn’t find more than her body if she were dead.

But she couldn’t think like that. It wouldn’t help her.

I need you to believe me, Izzy had told her. So she would. She’d believe that he was going to find her—find all of them—and then, after this nightmare was over, when she was safe in his arms? When she told him, again, I love you, he would believe her, too.

“It’s going to be all right,” she whispered to Jenn, in part because she wanted to put voice to it. It was what she wanted to feel and maybe if she said it out loud, it would help add to her conviction.

“I said no talking!” the man named Jake barked.

Eden had also wanted to test to see if the two men in the front of the van could hear her if she whispered to Jenn.

Apparently, the answer to that was a solid yes.

She cautiously checked the phone, to make sure they still had cell signal out here, and they did. Not for the first time, she was grateful that Izzy had made her take Dan’s phone. Hers could well have had zero bars a mile outside of the city limits, depending on where they were.

As it was, they’d lost signal a few times, no doubt when they’d passed too close to cell towers, and Eden had checked to make sure the phone was set completely on silent, which it was, with the volume turned all the way down, which it wasn’t—before she’d redialed Izzy’s number—just in case the GPS signal wasn’t enough, and she needed to be in direct contact for him to track them. It would’ve been bad for the thing to boop and beep or the phone to ring, and then have Izzy pick up with an amplified Hello?

Not that he would have, but still.

But now here they were, with the van’s tires crunching on more of that gravel as they made another turn and—maybe they weren’t at their final destination, because the gravel turned back into pavement, smooth beneath the tires. And they sped up, but only briefly before they slowed down even more.

One of the two men up front spoke—it was the man with the hat who’d wanted to kill them back in the apartment. “Pull close to the building so the plane can land—”

“Shut up,” Jake cut him off loudly enough for Eden to risk a whisper to Jenn, as he said, “Jesus, what are you? A goddamn moron?”

“We need to ditch this,” Eden breathed, even as she wondered who was coming here via airplane. “We can’t let them find it.” When Izzy’d been giving her rapid-fire instructions, he’d warned her that wherever they were being taken, they could well have electronic detection devices in place—and it would pick up the signal from Dan’s phone if they brought it inside.

And that would be a very bad thing. Because Jake and company would then take her and Jenn somewhere else. Somewhere that Izzy and Dan wouldn’t be able to track them. That is, if Eden and Jenni weren’t just killed right then and there.

Izzy had also warned her against hiding the phone in whatever vehicle they were transported in. If it was found in there, there’d be no doubt as to whom it belonged.

Jenn nodded.

And as the man with the hat—Nathan—shot back with, “Yeah, I’m the moron. I’m not the one always thinking with my dick,” Eden whispered, “I’ll pretend to faint and toss it under the van. Do whatever you can to help.”

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Jake said as Jenn nodded again. “This is almost over.”

“It better be,” Nathan said.

Except, wait, what if they moved the van? Eden didn’t have a chance to ask the question aloud, because the front door opened and the interior lights came on—further proof that they were in the middle of nowhere. Their abductors knew that there was no one around to see them.

Eden squinted in the sudden brightness as they sat up as Jenn looked at her again, and moved down toward the back doors of the van so that she would be the first one out.

Eden pointed to herself—let her go first—as she ended the open call to Izzy, and sent a text message that she’d already prepared.

Arrived. I love you.

Be careful, she mouthed, and Jenn nodded briefly, but the look in her eyes was steely, and Eden knew she didn’t expect either of them to live to see the dawn.

The doors swung open with a metallic screech, and Jake and Nathan the hat man were there, weapons drawn.

Please God, let this work …

“We should’ve taken her with us.”

Izzy was driving the car that they’d hot-wired from a hotel parking lot not far from Eden’s apartment complex, because they didn’t want to risk taking Dan’s rental car on the off chance that Todd was keeping an eye on it, too.

Izzy suspected that Dan had never before hot-wired a car for his own personal uses, and had certainly never done it for any other reason here in the States. Under other circumstances, he would’ve been ragging on the fact that Dan had popped his grand-theft-auto cherry, but seeing how they were both a little preoccupied with the task at hand, they’d been following the signal from Dan’s cell phone in relative silence.

But now Dan was starting to second-guess the extremely correct choice they’d made in leaving Neesha behind, in Eden’s apartment.

“We couldn’t take her with us, man,” Izzy said, telling Dan nothing he didn’t already know. But sometimes it helped to be reminded. “If something goes wrong, we’d be delivering her right into the hands of the people who want her dead.”

And okay, that was stupid to say. If something goes wrong … Definitely not a good strategy to add to Gillman’s doubts and fears. This was a success-mandatory mission. Failure was not an option.

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Izzy continued. “Because we’re not going to be dragging a kid around with us, right? You know if we took the time to get her out the window and then down from the roof? We’d still be up there, bro.”

Dan nodded at that. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I just …” He exhaled hard. “I’m having second thoughts about having to leave Greg’s handgun behind.”

“We couldn’t leave Neesha there alone,” Izzy reiterated. “Not without it.” He glanced at Dan again. “You saw the power it gave her.”

Dan nodded. He’d given the girl a crash course in firing and reloading the handgun while Izzy had scrounged in Eden’s kitchen and bathroom, gathering whatever homegrown bomb-making supplies he could find. There wasn’t much. And the closest thing to weapons he could find—aside from that heavy-ass Buddha—was a collection of kitchen knives of various sizes and types.

He’d tossed all of it—a roll of aluminum foil, rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover, and a bottle of Drano—into his bag with the knives.

“But what if she falls asleep?” Dan asked, still talking about Neesha.

“She’s not going to fall asleep,” Izzy said. “She knows what’s at stake.” Probably more than any of them …

“If that guy Todd gets impatient,” Dan said, “and comes in to wake me up …”

“She’ll blow a hole in him,” Izzy said, “and when he’s good and dead, she’ll call us and give us a heads-up.” They’d left her with Greg’s cell phone, too.

They passed several more miles in silence, then Dan spoke again.

“Ben’s probably dead.”

Izzy glanced at him again. “That was my conclusion at first, too.” Because why else would Jake and his posse come back to Eden’s apartment? If they had someone—Ben—that they could use to offer in trade for Neesha, why did they need to come back and grab Eden and Jenn? Why not just call and threaten?

One obvious answer was that Ben had tried to escape, and they’d shot him. Another was that they got too rough with their interrogation, and had accidentally killed the kid. And then there was all of the potential life-threatening dangers that came with Ben’s diabetes …

“But I’ve been thinking about it,” Izzy continued, “and there are other possibilities. Maybe they wanted the women as leverage, to get Ben to talk. Or—and I think this is the one I’m going with—I heard Jake say he thought Ben was a junkie. Apparently the kid threw up on his shoes. Maybe Ben’s faking it. I mean, he was fine at the wedding, right? And his blood sugar reading when we got home was also excellent. That was just a few hours ago. What’s the likelihood of him having an incident so soon? I mean, in all honesty, I don’t know that much about the disease, so maybe it’s possible …”

“I don’t know much about it, either,” Dan admitted.

“We’re both going to have to learn,” Izzy said, purposely acknowledging a future in which they all survived, Ben included.

Dan went with him, willingly, into that world of Everything’s-Going-to-Be-Fine. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s pretty complicated, but … We can get Ben to tell us how it all works. Or Eden. She’s … done a good job taking care of him.” He glanced at Izzy. “Thanks for … doing whatever you did to get Ivette and Greg to write those letters.”

“De nada,” Izzy said.

“Yeah, we both know it was fucking huge,” Dan said. “What did you threaten them with?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I already do,” Dan countered. “You found something incriminating. I’m guessing drugs. Although you’re right, what it was really doesn’t matter. The important thing is we win. We get Ben.” He paused. “If he’s alive.”

Izzy sighed and tried, again, to bring Dan back to a more positive place. “He’s alive. You know, there are high schools in San Diego that have solid gay-straight alliances in place. We should do some research, see where they are …”

“Jenni already started doing that,” Dan said. He laughed a little, then said, “I tried to get her pregnant tonight.”

“Shut the front door!” Izzy looked at him in genuine shock. It was such a personal and private thing to share. Of course, maybe Dan believed they were all going to die, and he wanted to tell someone—even Izzy—before he kicked. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “We just … You know.”

“I’m familiar with the act.”

“I’ve never done that before.” Dan quickly added, “I mean, without the condom.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Izzy said, “I got that, bro.”

“I just didn’t want you making any stupid virgin jokes, because I’m being serious here.”

There was definitely something that could’ve been said there, about stupid virgins, but Izzy let it slide. “I, um, fully recognize your seriossitude.”

“I thought I’d flip out after,” Dan continued, “like, holy Christ, what have I done? But …” He shook his head. “I just … I want her in my life.”

And okay. That was a very future-tense statement. It didn’t sound as if Dan was planning his own funeral just yet. Maybe … he just wanted to talk.

“You really don’t have to knock her up to do that, man,” Izzy pointed out. “I mean, she kinda married you.”

“I know,” Dan said. “But I want it all. I want a family and … Jesus, I’m turning into Jenk.”

“Maybe you’re turning into me,” Izzy suggested. “It’s far more likely, considering you’ve got a shitload of my blood in your veins.”

Dan laughed. “Yeah, no, Zanella, see, Jenk’s married to the love of his life and—” He stopped himself. Looked at Izzy.

Who looked back at him like, and …?

For once, Dan was speechless.

“For me, it was love at first sight,” Izzy told him, as long as it was true confession time, “that was completely cemented when your sister started to talk. Every day I love her even more—it’s crazy.” He glanced at Dan again. “And you’ll note that I’m not afraid to use the L-word, unlike some pussies, one of whom might be sitting next to me in this very car.”

“I’m not afraid to say it,” Dan scoffed, but he was smiling, too. “I love Jenni. See? Unlike some douches who say it, and then have to make sure everyone knows they’re not a pussy because they’ve said it.”

Izzy glanced over at him. “It’s scary as shit, huh?”

“Hell, yeah.” Dan paused. “If those assholes hurt them …”

“Why don’t you dig into my bag and see what you can make that’ll give us some flash and bang,” Izzy suggested, still trying to distract.

And Dan was about to do just that, when Izzy’s cell phone beeped from its place, front and center, in the cup holder between them. Dan picked it up.

“Signal’s cut,” he announced.

“On purpose?” Izzy asked, which was stupid, because how would Dan know? “Use Eden’s phone to call Jenk and Lindsey and ask.”

“Already on it,” Dan said, but then said, “Whoa, you’re getting a text. From me. Arrived,” he read. “I love you.”

Izzy glanced over, and as he met Dan’s eyes, he knew that the other SEAL was thinking the same thing he was. That that I love you was terribly final sounding. That Eden thought they were going to die.

And that kind of thinking wasn’t going to help any of them. So Izzy swallowed past the lump in his throat, and tried to change the gloom-and-doom mood by saying, “I love you, too, man.”

But Dan didn’t take the bait. He didn’t roll his eyes or Zanella don’t be an asshole him, the way he would’ve done in the past. Instead, he just kind of nodded and said, “Eden can’t let them find my phone.”

“She knows,” Izzy said. “She’ll ditch it.”

“She better.”

“She’s Eden,” Izzy said, trying to feel as confident as he sounded. “She’ll get the job done.”

It wasn’t easy to lie, naked, in a puddle of his own vomit.

But Ben knew that he had to do it, if he was going to continue to convince his kidnappers that he was not only unable to respond to their questions, but unable to move or otherwise put up a fight.

He’d made himself lie still, even when the bald cop from the mall—who wasn’t a cop after all—told Ben that they were going out to find Eden.

Find was better than kill, and the man had already threatened to kill Ben’s sister, in an attempt to force him to reveal Neesha’s location.

“I don’t know where Neesha is!”

Ben had said it, over and over and over after waking up here, head pounding, on the floor of this hot little empty room. With its too-high-to-reach drop ceiling and the in-the-wall air conditioner chugging ineffectually away, with the single door leading out to who knows where, Ben could have been anywhere in Las Vegas or outside of the city, for that matter.

And the men who had grabbed him from the courtyard of Eden’s apartment complex made it very clear that where he was didn’t matter. It was who he was with and what they wanted from him that counted.

And they hit him and they kicked him, and he still couldn’t tell them where Neesha was, because he honestly and gratefully didn’t know. And finally, when the bald cop said that unless Ben told him—immediately—where the girl was, he was going to go and kill Eden, Ben had lied and said that if he did that, he’d be screwed, because only Eden knew where Neesha was hiding.

Which wasn’t true, but he would have said anything to keep his sister safe.

And then he made himself shake and he made himself throw up, right on the bald cop’s boots.

Which had gotten him another kick, but he let himself flop back from it, as if he’d fainted.

The bald cop—who wasn’t a cop—was cursing and shouting at him, “Tell us where Neesha is!”

But Ben didn’t move.

It was then that he thought they were testing him, because two of them grabbed him and pulled him away from the mess that he’d made, and started taking off his clothes. They weren’t very gentle—so much so that after they pulled off his T-shirt, his head bounced against the cheap tile floor so hard that he saw stars beneath his closed eyelids.

But he still didn’t fight them, didn’t speak, didn’t move. Not even when they yanked off his boots and stripped his jeans and briefs from him so that he was buck naked.

He almost gave himself away at that point, because there was no way he was going to lie there and let himself get raped without fighting back.

But no one touched him, other than to grab him by the ankles and straighten his legs—a move that shifted him completely onto his back—and to roughly push his hair out of his face.

It was then he heard the unmistakable sound of a digital camera.

The pervs were taking pictures of him naked.

Someone—the photographer, apparently—said, “Turn him over.”

Again the hands that touched him were impersonal and not at all gentle. The camera clicked and whirred, clicked and whirred.

And then someone tossed something—his shorts and his jeans—over Ben’s bare butt, and even though the message was clear—he could get himself dressed now—he still didn’t move because he wanted them to think he was helpless.

“I wonder if he speaks Korean,” one of the men said.

Another laughed. “Yeah, that’s where I was thinking he’d be going. Good old Mr. Kim. Poor kid.”

“Maybe there’ll be a bidding war. Maybe he’ll end up in Turkey, instead.”

“Could happen. The boss is the only guy I know who can turn a profit from a threat.”

One of the voices faded. “Provided Jake gets his ass in gear and finds the girl.”

The remaining man called after him. “If he doesn’t? Boss is going to ship him off to Korea or Turkey, too.”

And Ben almost opened his eyes as he realized what they were saying.

But then the last guard left, too, closing the door behind him with a solid-sounding thunk as a bolt fell into place.

Ben did open his eyes then, looking around cautiously to see if there were cameras watching him. But if there were, they were invisible, and he sat up, and then stood up and looked around.

Shit, if he put his pants back on, they’d know that he’d moved. He held his briefs up to cover himself as he explored the windowless room, searching for a way out.

They’d taken his picture, because they were going to ship him out of the country, and sell him to the highest bidder.

And his solid faith that, wherever he was, Eden and Dan and Izzy and Jenn would come after him, shifted and stirred and cracked with doubt.

Not that they wouldn’t come for him. Ben believed that, absolutely.

But he now was afraid that they wouldn’t come quickly enough.

And once he disappeared, the way Neesha had, from her family, all those years ago? They might never find him.

Neesha sat on the sofa in Eden Gillman’s living room with the gun that Ben’s brother Danny had given her on the cushion beside her.

It was heavy.

She’d held it in both hands, aimed at the door, for quite a long time after Izzy and Danny had gone out the window. But the muscles in her arms and shoulders had started to shake, so she’d finally put it down.

Aim for the chest, Dan had told her,!!!for the largest body mass. And don’t just pull the trigger once. Keep on pulling it, steadying yourself with your left hand. You got that?

She’d nodded.!!!Leave the light on in the entryway, light off in the living room; that way, if he comes in, you’ll see him clearly and he won’t see you.

Another nod.!!!He probably won’t just come walking in the door. He’ll push it open and he’ll poke his head around the frame, really quickly at first. Don’t take the bait. Hold your fire. He’ll come in along one of the sides of the door, weapon leading. Again, wait until you have a clear, close shot of his chest—until you can’t possibly miss.

Neesha had nodded.

You gonna be okay?

It was a good question, and one she managed to avoid answering.

Her cell phone rang now. She could tell from the number that it was Danny. She answered with her left hand, her right resting on the grip of the gun.

“Yes.”

“I’m just checking in on you,” Dan said. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “You, um, have—I don’t know—any questions?”

“May I move the couch so that I can hide behind it?” That way, when Todd came in, she’d be able to let him get really close. And she could brace the gun on the back of the thing. “I don’t have to move it much to get back there.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Knock yourself out. Whatever you want to do, to feel more secure. You go ahead and do it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“We’re getting close,” he told her. “It’s all going to be over soon. I’ll call you again, in a bit.”

They both said good-bye, and Neesha hung up the phone the way Dan had showed her before he’d left.

She moved the couch—just a little. Just enough to squeeze behind it. And she took the gun back there and practiced peeking over the top, gun aimed at the door.!!!Whatever you want to do, to feel more secure—you go ahead and do it, he’d told her.

After all that she’d been through, Neesha wasn’t sure she’d ever feel completely safe, not ever again. Although, at the same time?

She found herself almost hoping that Todd would come in.

“Come on. Move it.” The man with the hat—Nathan was his name—held out his hand in an impatient offer to help Eden down from the back of the van.

But she made herself recoil from him, shaking her head in a very strong but silent, No, I don’t want you to touch me. She turned around, onto her hands and knees, as if she were going to climb down that way, Dan’s cell phone concealed in the palm of her right hand.

Please God, please God …

“She said she was feeling dizzy.” Jenn dared to speak despite their previous order to be silent. She also moved closer as if to try to help Eden. “Can you get her some water?”

“I want to see Ben,” Eden chimed in. “Do you have the bag with the insulin?” She’d insisted that they take it when they left her apartment—when they’d left Danny unconscious on the floor and Neesha hiding in the sofa. The man with the hat had carried the bag out to the van, but he didn’t have it with him now. Maybe he’d go and get it from the front …

But Jake had had enough. “Let’s go,” he said as he grabbed Eden by the back waistband of her shorts.

Eden screamed and shot a wild look at Jenn, fearing that he’d pull her too far from the van. Jenn moved quickly and grabbed both of Eden’s arms, which both slowed her down and pulled Jenn out of the van with her.

The additional weight proved too much for Jake, who had his weapon in his other hand, and Eden and Jenn both went down into a heap on what appeared to be concrete. It was. It was some kind of landing strip, with a warehouse-type structure nearby.

“Get off me!” Eden cried, even as she pulled Jenn more completely on top of her. “I can’t breathe!”

Jenn played along beautifully. “My knee! My knee!” she sobbed. “I think I just broke my knee!”

And Eden did it. She scrambled toward the van, as if trying to crawl out from beneath Jenn, flailing both her legs and arms—and tossing the cell phone into the darkness beneath the van’s chassis.

It was then that the world slowed down into a series of nanoseconds that seemed to take forever, as Jake turned away in disgust, as Nathan, with his hat, reached down and grabbed Jenn by the wrist, pulling her up and onto her feet.

And as neither of their captors said, “Hey, what the hell did that bitch just throw beneath the van?” or “What was that scraping sound?”

In fact, neither of them said anything at all that wasn’t a four-letter word or a plea for help to whatever twisted god that killers and kidnappers believed in.

Eden pushed herself up onto her hands and her knees as Jenn wiped her eyes and her nose and said, “No, wait, I’m okay—I think I’m okay. I can walk. I’m okay.”

And they were good—or at least as good as they could be as they were marched at gunpoint into that warehouse, here on the edge of an airfield, in the middle of nowhere.

The phone rang.

Izzy’s phone. The one he hadn’t been able to use for quite some time, because it was holding open the line to Eden and Jenn.

It wasn’t Jenk or Lindsey, because Jenk was already talking to Dan. Jenk was confirming that the signal from the cell phone Eden had been using had stopped moving. He was verifying the directions they should take to arrive at the same location.

And he was reassuring Danny that everything was going to be okay—that he and Lindsey and Jay Lopez were on their way. If everything went just right, they’d travel most of the way via helo, and arrive in two and a half hours.

Izzy didn’t recognize the number that was on his cell phone’s screen. But it had a 6-1-7 area code, which was … “Good morning, Boston,” Izzy said as he answered, one hand on the steering wheel as they continued to zoom through the night. “Jules Cassidy, I presume. How’s it hanging, bro?”

“It’s … hanging with no small amount of trepidation,” Cassidy, a high-ranking agent in the FBI, said. “Where are you, Zanella?”

“Approximately twenty-five—twenty-four—minutes now from the place where my wife, her little brother, and a dear friend are being held hostage,” Izzy said, “by some very nasty people.”

“You have no idea how nasty,” the FBI agent told him. “Do me a favor, and put me on speaker so that Dan Gillman hears this, too.”

“Is that necessary?” Izzy said, lowering his voice so Dan, who was finishing up his call with Jenkins, wouldn’t hear him. “He’s … wound a little tight. Understandably so. He got married tonight and … Someone stole his bride.”

“I know,” Cassidy said. “But really, Zanella. You both need to hear this information.”

Dan had ended his call with Jenk, and was ready to listen in as Izzy pulled his phone from his ear and punched a button. “You’re on speaker, Cassidy.”

“Hey, Gillman,” Cassidy said. “Congrats—I heard about the wedding. I’ve met Jenn, you know. She’s great. You’re a lucky man.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Lucky might not be precisely the right word to use at this exact moment.”

“I hear you,” Cassidy said. “And I understand your anxiety. There’s something you both need to know, and you also need to know that I’ve been encouraged not to divulge some of this information to you and there are definitely things that I cannot tell you. As it is, I’m going out on a bit of a limb by telling you this, so … factor all that in, okay?”

Izzy glanced at Dan in the light from the dashboard. This was not going to be good. That was one hell of a cryptic message, and Jules Cassidy was usually a straight shooter when it came to telling it like it was.

“With that said,” Cassidy continued, “I first want to inform you that I’ve been in contact with Field Agent Kathy Gordon, who’s been working a case there in Las Vegas. That picture you took on your cell phone, Zanella? That one of the two men who came to Ben’s house, looking for him, because they were trying to track down the girl, Neesha? They allegedly work for an organization that specializes in international sex trafficking. We’re talking the sale of women and children to buyers who are … Well, they’re in the market to buy women and children, so that pretty much tells you all you need to know. Except maybe that some of them are snuff enthusiasts, which is pretty much just another name for serial killers who happen to be really rich men, who can purchase victims who won’t be missed.”

“Jesus,” Dan breathed.

“That’s just one branch of this booming business, but it’s one I thought you should know about, in terms of the danger that Ben, Eden, and Jenn could well be in.”

Izzy couldn’t believe what he was hearing and he drove a little faster. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“I wish I were,” Cassidy said. “But there’s a whole nother side to this, and it’s the more immediate subject of this FBI investigation, because this organization also deals in the sale or trade of girls—and I’m talking really little girls, seven, eight years old—to brothel-type businesses, here in the U.S. One of those esteemed establishments is believed to be northwest of Vegas, just over the Clark County line. The children are nearly all brought here from outside of the country. Most of them are sold by their families, some of them thinking that they’re going to work as maids, others knowing exactly what their daughters are going to be doing. Others are orphans. Some are kidnapped—some are from families of illegals who are living here in the United States. They can’t go to the authorities to report the disappearances and … Well, bottom line, these little girls are easy to exploit, because they don’t exist. And when they grow up or if they cause trouble, they’re sold at a discount to one of those snuff fans who’ll kill them and dispose of the body. Neat and tidy, two birds with one stone.”

Dan spoke. “So you’re telling us that Neesha’s one of these girls.”

“We believe so,” Cassidy said. “Yes. And securing her as a witness, to testify against the men who run this operation? That’s the priority of the AIC of this investigation. I’ve been asked to obtain from you the girl’s location, so that she can be brought into custody as quickly as possible—”

“We do that,” Dan interrupted, “and those very dangerous people who have Jenni and Eden and Ben? They’re going to know it, and they’re going to kill them. They’ve got a man watching—”

“Neesha doesn’t go anywhere,” Izzy cut him off. “Until we get our family out of harm’s way.”

“I suspected you’d say that,” Cassidy said evenly. “And, in anticipation of that, I’ve been instructed to inform you that an FBI task force is being created to rescue your family members, if possible.” He paused so his words could sink in. “We have access to the GPS signal from Gillman’s cell phone, too, and have pinpointed their location. From satellite images, they appear to be in some kind of storage-type structure, alongside an airfield.”

“An airfield?” Dan’s voice cracked.

“Correct,” Cassidy said. “The belief is that this is one of the locations where the children are transported into the country. And where … others are transported out. If you arrive at the airfield and there is an aircraft on the runway?” He paused, again very deliberately, and then said, “Report that information immediately. But I am to insist that you remain back, out of danger, until the authorities arrive. At which point you will be taken into protective custody—”

Fuck you, Dan started to say, but didn’t get more than the F-sound out before Izzy reached over and whacked him in the chest. He shot Izzy a what the hell look, and Izzy answered with a hard look and the hand signal for silence. This man was not their enemy.

“—while the team determines the best option for apprehending the suspects and rescuing the hostages.”

It was no mistake that he’d again mentioned the apprehension of the suspects as being the FBI team’s priority.

Izzy had to work to keep his voice even. “Task Force ETA?” he asked.

“Best guess,” Cassidy said, “is they’re about thirty minutes behind you.” He paused again. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Zanella?”

“Sir, yes, sir, absolutely I do. Any other info you can share from the sat images?” Izzy asked. “Any infrared?”

“You don’t need that information,” Cassidy said. “Unless you can reassure me that you’ll limit your participation to surveillance only.” He cleared his throat rather loudly.

“Cross my heart,” Izzy said, “and if I lie, sweet baby jeebus can poke me in the eye.”

“Fabulous,” Cassidy said dryly. “I’m completely reassured. And in that case, there are what appears to be four guards outside the structure, eleven people inside—but it’s difficult to discern which are the prisoners and which are the bad guys. Sorry. I know you have concerns about Ben’s health and safety, but I don’t have access to moving images and can’t begin to speculate which green dot belongs to Jenn, Eden, or Ben. If this information changes, I’ll … text you.”

Text, not call. Because Cassidy knew damn well that Izzy wasn’t going to be able to pick up while he was dispatching those four guards and kicking down the door of that storage facility.

“Thank you, sir,” Izzy said.

“I thought I was your bro, Zanella.”

“No, sir,” Izzy told the man. “You’re the kind of leader I would follow into hell, should the need ever arise.”

Cassidy cleared his throat. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said quietly, then added, “Good luck, guys.” And with that he ended the call.

Dan looked at Izzy. “Did he just say what I think he said?”

“He certainly did, and he could lose his job for it.” Izzy glanced back at Dan. “But if there’s a plane on that runway? Shit, even if there’s not … He just told us we shouldn’t wait for anyone. As soon as we get there? We’re going in.”