o!” she yelled, so startled that the steering wheel jerked in her hands. “Not yet!” Then, appalled at herself, she said, “Oh, God,” and pulled to the curb because she was suddenly shaking so hard she was afraid to drive.

“Don’t you want him dead?” Diaz asked in the same tone he might have used to ask if she wanted fries with her order—disinterested, flat, eerily remote.

“Yes!” Her tone wasn’t flat, it was fierce. “I want him dead; I want to kill him myself; I want to scratch out his other eye and cut out his kidney; I want to hurt him so much he’s screaming for me to end it before he dies. But I can’t. I have to find out what he knows about my baby. After that, I don’t care what happens to him.”

He waited those few unnerving beats before he asked, “’Kidney’?”

She stared at him, eyes wide, her attention totally derailed by that one word. Out of her entire tirade he had picked up on the one detail that didn’t fit in with the rest. From the moment she’d awakened from surgery in that little clinic, her entire life, her very being, had been concentrated on finding Justin. She hadn’t let her focus waver, had gritted her teeth and charged through her physical rehabilitation, had almost literally set her life aside because nothing else was as important to her as her son. She hadn’t dwelt on what the attack had done to her body. Until those enraged words, she hadn’t realized how furious she was at what had been done to her, the pain she’d endured, the physical cost.

She turned away, staring woodenly out the windshield. “I told you I was stabbed,” she said. “I lost a kidney.”

“Good thing you had two.”

“I liked having both of them,” she snapped. She remembered the searing agony, remembered convulsing in the dirt as the pain hurled her body out of control. She functioned perfectly well with just one kidney, of course. But what if something went wrong with it?

She drew a deep breath and forced her attention back to the original subject. “Don’t kill him,” she said. “Please. I have to talk to him.”

He shrugged. “Your choice. As long as he doesn’t fuck with me, I’ll leave him alone.”

Milla wasn’t a prude, but his use of the word “fuck” made her uncomfortable. For her it was primarily a sex word, regardless of how it was used as an adjective, adverb, interjection, and exclamation these days. Her dealings with Diaz were already dicey enough; she didn’t want anything sexual, even language, to make matters more tense. Odd how Olivia could use the word and be funny; hearing it from Diaz made Milla want to squirm.

She pulled back into traffic, concentrating on her driving so she wouldn’t have to think about anything else right now. Silence reigned, and she let it lengthen, let the minutes add up. There were times when even an uncomfortable silence was better than words.

“Don’t go after him yourself,” he said as he checked the traffic around them. “No matter what, don’t go by yourself. Not even if you hear he’s sitting outside your office, and you haven’t seen me in a week. Don’t go yourself.”

“I never go by myself,” she said, startled. “There’s always someone with me when I go on assignment. But if Pavón is outside my office, I’m not making any promises.”

“You were alone in Guadalupe.”

“Brian was there and you know it.”

“He was on the other side of the cemetery. He had no idea I was anywhere around. I could have snapped your neck, and there was nothing he could have done about it.”

That was inarguable. She hadn’t known he was there until he was on her. Besides, he wasn’t telling her to do anything she didn’t already practice. “I’m as careful as possible,” she told him. “I know my limitations.”

“Another missing woman turned up in Juarez last night. Her body did, anyway. This one was an American college student named Paige Sisk. She and her boyfriend were in Chihuahua; she went to the bathroom one night and never came back.”

There was a serial killer in Juarez, she knew; numerous articles had been in the newspaper. The FBI had worked with the Mexican authorities—the first time they had ever been asked to help with a Mexican investigation—and concluded that all the murders were single homicides. If so, a lot of young women had gone missing and turned up dead since 1993. A couple of criminologists agreed: it wasn’t a serial killer, it was two serial killers, possibly more. The pickings were rich in Juarez.

Finally, two bus drivers had been arrested, and supposedly the killings had stopped. Now Diaz was telling her they hadn’t.

“Is it the same M.O.?”

“No.” He checked the traffic again. “She was eviscerated.”

Nausea roiled in Milla’s stomach. “My God.”

“Yeah. So do what I tell you, and stay out of Mexico right now. Let me handle this.”

“If I can,” she murmured, and he had to be content with that, because she wasn’t going to promise him she would play it safe, not when getting some information about Justin was at stake. She wouldn’t be foolish, she wouldn’t lie, but neither would she let an opportunity pass by.

“It’s going to rain,” Diaz said in a complete change of subject, staring at the purple edge of clouds just showing on the western horizon.

“Good. Maybe it’ll break the heat.” The heat wave was killing old people and driving everyone else insane with misery. Granted, El Paso was usually hot during the summer, but not this hot.

“Yes, maybe,” he murmured. “Let me out here.”

“Here?” They were in the middle of a busy intersection.

“Here.”

She put on her brakes and turned on her right signal at the same time, wedged her way into the right-hand lane, then pulled to the side. A horn blared at her, but she didn’t blame the offended driver, so she didn’t bother looking. Diaz unhooked his seat belt, got out, and walked away without a word of good-bye or a hint of when he would turn up next. Milla watched to see where he went, noticing the catlike way he walked, as if his legs were spring-loaded. He disappeared behind a utility truck, and didn’t reappear. Still she waited, but somehow he used the utility truck, traffic signs, and other vehicles for cover, because she didn’t see him again. Either that or he went down a manhole. Or had slithered under the utility truck and was clinging to the undercarriage. Or—

She had no idea where he’d gone, and she wished he’d stop doing that.

Diaz made his way back to where he’d parked his dusty blue pickup. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the vehicle, except perhaps that it was in perfect working condition. It wasn’t pretty, but it could run. He could afford a newer model but he didn’t see any reason to get rid of this one. It suited him, and didn’t attract attention.

He’d spent most of his life not attracting attention. He instinctively knew the best camouflage, and whenever anyone noticed him, it was because he wanted them to. Even as a child he had been silent and solitary, prompting his mother to have him tested for autism, mental retardation, anything that would explain the way he just sat and stared at the people around him but seldom joined in any conversation or activity. Even knowing that his mother had worried about him at first and later was simply uneasy around him hadn’t stirred any emotion or response in him.

He watched people. He watched how their faces, their bodies, would tell a different story from their words. And contrary to his mother’s belief, he wasn’t an inactive child. When she wasn’t there to see, or when she was asleep, he roamed the house, or—depending on where they were at the time—the neighborhood or the countryside. He was as at home in the night as the other predators. From the time he was so small he had to stand on tiptoe to reach the doorknob, he had slipped outside at night and explored. He liked animals better than he did people. Animals were honest; no animal, not even a snake, knew what it was to lie. Their body language expressed exactly what they were thinking and feeling, and he respected that.

Eventually, when he was about ten, his mother got tired of dealing with him and sent him to his father in Mexico. His old man was less concerned about socialization than he was about how much Diaz could help with the chores, so the boy fit right in. But it was with his grandfather, his father’s father, that Diaz had found a like soul. His abuelo was as remote as a mountain snowcap, content to watch rather than participate, his sense of privacy like an iron fence around him. Mexicans in general were a friendly, highly social bunch, but not his grandfather. He was proud and remote, and fierce when crossed. It was said that he was of Aztec lineage. Thousands of people were, of course, or said they were. Diaz’s abuelo never said any such thing, but other people did. It was their way of explaining him. And it was how, in turn, they explained Diaz.

Diaz had tried not to be any trouble. He made good grades in school, both in the United States and Mexico. He didn’t act out. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, not out of any sense of social responsibility but because he saw both as weaknesses and distractions, and he couldn’t afford to have any.

He liked living in Mexico. Whenever he visited his mother in the States, he felt hemmed in. Not that he visited all that often; she was too busy with her social life, with finding another husband. Diaz’s father had been her third, he thought. He wasn’t certain they had ever actually been married. If they had married at all, it hadn’t been in the Church, because by the time Diaz went to live with him, his father had another wife and four children. His father regularly went to confession and mass, too, so he was in good standing with the Church.

When Diaz was fourteen, she took him back. She wanted him to finish school in America, she said. He did. She moved so often he spent his last four years in six different schools, but he graduated. He didn’t date; teenage girls had great bodies, but their personalities left him cold. He thought he was probably the only virgin in his class. He was twenty before he lost his virginity, and he’d been with only a handful of women since. Sex was great, but it required a voluntary vulnerability on his part that he had a difficult time accepting. Not only that, women tended to be afraid of him. He tried never to be rough, but nevertheless there was a fierceness to his lovemaking that seemed to intimidate them.

Maybe if he tried it more often, he thought with black humor, he wouldn’t seem so hungry. But taking care of the matter himself was easiest, so he did. It had been a couple of years since he’d seen a woman he was attracted to enough to consider having sex with—until he saw Milla Edge.

He liked the way she moved, so smooth and fluid. She wasn’t pretty, not that bright American prettiness that made him think of cheerleaders. Her face was strongly molded, with high cheekbones, a firm jawline, dramatic dark brows and lashes. Her hair, worn not quite shoulder length, was a froth of light brown curls, with that startling streak of white in front. Her mouth was completely feminine, soft and full and pink. And her eyes... her brown eyes were the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

Those eyes made him want to put himself between her and the world, and kill anyone who caused her one more iota of pain. Many women would have been broken by what had happened to her. Instead she fought, and she wouldn’t let herself stop fighting, no matter how hopeless the cause or how difficult it was for her to keep going. Such gallantry humbled him in a way he’d never before felt. Here, he thought, was a woman he truly wanted to know. For a while, at least.

If he could keep her alive, that is. Arturo Pavón might be a chingadera, a fuckup, but he was a vicious fuckup. She would break her heart and her spirit trying to find her kid, and that was the best-case scenario. He couldn’t let her track Pavón on her own, even though the odds were she’d learn nothing of value from him. That was if Pavón didn’t kill her; it was well known he harbored a deep hatred for the gringa who had torn out his eye. He would love to sell her body on the black market.

Pavón was now involved in something much worse than baby snatching, and the stakes were proportionally higher. Before, getting caught would have meant a prison sentence; now it would be the death penalty. Mexico didn’t have the death penalty, but Texas sure as hell did, and from what he’d been able to find out so far, the gang was headquartered in El Paso. Pavón might not be executed, but the higher-ups would be. Diaz didn’t know exactly how international law shook out on that one. If Pavón was caught on American soil, though, he thought American laws would prevail. That was what happened in Mexico whenever a stupid tourist believed the old tales about what a free and open country Mexico was when it came to drugs. If you got caught in Mexico, then you went to a Mexican prison.

The matter of law might be a moot point, though. When he was certain who was running the operation, if he couldn’t get enough evidence to turn it over to law enforcement and be sure of a conviction, then he would take care of the matter in other ways.

He’d told Milla he didn’t kill for money, and he’d told the truth, as far as it went. He’d killed, and he’d been paid for it, but money was never the reason he did it. There were some people whose crimes were sickening, yet if they were ever brought to trial, they would be given either light prison sentences or probation—and that was assuming they’d even been found guilty. Maybe killing them wasn’t his decision to make, and maybe he’d answer for it in the hereafter, but he’d never felt bad about it afterward. A child molester, a serial rapist, a murderer—those people didn’t deserve to live. To some people that would make him a murderer, too, but he didn’t feel like one. He was the executioner. He could live with that.

He would help Milla find Pavón, because she would keep trying anyway and she would be safer with Diaz. But even more important, Pavón was a link to the head of the snake. If he kept following the little fish, eventually he would find the big fish.

People were dying in Juarez, and all over the state of Chihuahua. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Some of these were the work of the serial killer. But more and more bodies were being found with the organs removed, and that didn’t fit the pattern. Different killing methods were used. Some had been shot, some had been stabbed, some had been strangled. In a few horrible cases, evidently the organs had been removed while the victims were still alive, though he hoped they were at least unconscious when the process began. The victims were both male and female, mostly Mexican, though three of the unfortunates, like Paige Sisk, had been tourists. The bodies were found in different parts of Juarez, carelessly dumped as if they were no longer of any value. And they weren’t.

How much was a heart worth on the black market?

A liver? Kidneys? Lungs?

People on transplant lists died every day, waiting for an organ to become available. What if some of those people had money, though, and didn’t want to wait? What if they could put in an order for, say, a heart, from a donor with a particular blood type? What if they were willing to pay millions? What if the donor not only wasn’t willing, but wasn’t dead?

Easy. Make the donor dead.

Diaz’s job was to find whoever was behind this. Not the peons, the grunt soldiers like Pavón—and he was far from the only one—who kidnapped the victims. There was likely a central place where the organs were removed and refrigerated, then immediately transferred to the waiting recipient, but he hadn’t located it yet. He might be wrong; the organ removal could be carried out wherever it was most convenient at the time. What was needed other than a cutter and some coolers of ice?

Whoever was doing the actual organ removal had to have some training, so that the organs weren’t damaged. Perhaps not a doctor, but at least someone with a level of medical expertise. Diaz thought of the unknown person as “the Doctor,” though. Kept things simpler in his mind. The Doctor might be the head of the gang; who else was in a better position to know about the transplant lists, who was on it, and who had enough money to privately arrange for an organ?

On Friday night, behind the church in Guadalupe, he’d watched the transfer of what he was sure was another victim. It might even have been the Sisk girl. The presence of two other people watching the transfer had been a hindrance, especially when the woman started to blow the whole scenario wide open by attacking. He’d admired her guts, if not her brains, but he’d had to stop her. The last thing he wanted was for Pavón and his cohorts to know someone was onto them; they would become more careful, and that much harder to trace.

Taking care of the woman had cost him precious seconds, and he’d lost them. He’d known the person he jumped was a woman because of the curls sticking out from under the cap, and her general shape, as well as the slenderness of her arms and hands. From his vantage point, and with his own night-vision device, he’d watched the two from the moment they arrived. The guy was pretty good at ghosting around, the woman less accomplished but still competent.

He didn’t know what they were doing there, but it was obvious they weren’t part of Pavón’s gang, so he didn’t intend to harm them, even though just by being there they were fucking him up. He’d have other chances with Pavón; it was the victim who wouldn’t have another chance. He could have intervened and maybe saved that one person, but he’d have had to kill probably three of the men and there was no guarantee the one remaining would tell him anything, or even know anything to tell him. Until he had seen which car left with the victim, he’d had no idea whom to follow.

He’d had a tip about that meeting behind the church. Then Milla had received a tip telling her that he would be there. Who could have known other than the person who had tipped him off? And who the hell was it? His caller had been female; a man had called Milla. What was going on? Was it coincidence that they were both sent to the church in Guadalupe at the same time, or deliberate?

He didn’t believe in coincidences. It was safer that way.