The baby started crying again, its sound weak and sickly. Or was it? Sebastian knew little about babies. He’d blessed babies, he’d baptised babies and-on sad days-buried babies. Was the child hungry? What did one feed a newborn when there was no mother?
He took the baby across the hall to his room and turned on his nightstand light. He put the baby on the bed and opened the cloth. It was a shirt, not a blanket-and there was a lot of blood. He prayed without realizing the words were coming from his lips as he inspected the infant. The child didn’t appear to be bleeding, though the umbilical cord was still attached. It had been tied off, but looked unusually large and swollen. Was this common?
He took a clean undershirt from his drawer and wrapped the baby. She was a girl, a perfect, small human child. So delicate, so fragile… who would just leave her on the cold ground? Did the blood come from her mother? The umbilical cord was tied, which meant someone had cut the cord, tied it as a doctor or nurse would. But this baby had no wrist or ankle band; this baby hadn’t been born in a hospital. This baby had been born tonight, possibly only hours ago.
“Saint Elizabeth, please pray for this child laid at your feet tonight,” Sebastian said as he picked up the baby. He held her close. He had never had a child, but the protective instincts must have been granted to all God’s creatures, because Sebastian felt that he would do anything for this little soul. “Elizabeth,” he whispered and rocked the baby stiffly in his arms.
Sebastian looked down on the bed. Tangled in the bloody shirt that the child had been wrapped in was a necklace of some sort. He picked it up.
A simple, oblong silver locket hung from a long chain. On the front was a cross, on the back an intricate design. It looked familiar, but Sebastian couldn’t imagine where he’d seen it before.
He opened it. There were two pictures inside. On the right was a photo of two Hispanic girls who looked almost identical standing outside a small church that was unlike any he’d seen in the area; on the left one of the girls had her arm around a tall white girl wearing a wide-brimmed hat. They were in a field somewhere, but the details were lost in the miniature picture.
One of the photos was loose. As he tried to close the locket, it slipped in the catch, and then slipped when he opened it again. Something was written on the back. He searched for his reading glasses.
Ana, Siobhan, me.
Under the names was a phone number, but he couldn’t make out all the numbers. They were faded. Maybe someone with better eyes could read them.
He picked up the phone to call 911. Then he saw that the shirt had writing on it, in the blood.
He spread the shirt out.
Trust no one.
He put the phone down.
CHAPTER ONE
The house on El Gato Street appeared empty, save for a lone beat-up van in the weed-choked driveway and a pickup truck parked on the dead lawn behind the house. Photojournalist Siobhan Walsh had been watching the place for two hours, taking photos and zooming in to analyze every detail. She’d seen something inside. Movement behind the thick drapes.
Patience was her strength, and she would sit in the neighbor’s house as long as it took to get proof that her friends-two sisters who were practically family-were here.
Siobhan adjusted the zoom lens to focus on the van. Again. She’d already taken a series of pictures. The filthy Texas license plate was near impossible to read, but she used the technology built into her state-of-the-art camera to expose the numbers. She already had them memorized, but if she was right-and the van belonged to human traffickers-the number would lead nowhere.
She would follow up nonetheless.
Siobhan had good instincts, but there were times when she had to go against her gut in order to do the right thing. More often than not, she came out of such a situation not only unscathed, but with the result she wanted. Kane Rogan had once told her she was a cat on the last of nine lives. She scoffed. Some things were worth the risk. Of all people, Kane should understand.
Finding Marisol and Ana was definitely worth the risk.
It wasn’t as if she were going to confront the bullies who were holding the young women; she needed evidence. Pictures. She would expose the bastards for the world to see, while giving law enforcement information they needed in order to do their job. She’d been burned in the past when she turned over unverifiable information to local cops. It took them too long to mount an investigation-they wouldn’t act solely on her word that a crime had occurred. They wanted proof. By the time they had actionable evidence, the traffickers had moved out, taking the girls with them.
Or worse, the girls had been sold or killed.
Siobhan couldn’t take the chance that this particular enterprise would shut down overnight, not when it was the closest she’d come to finding the sisters. She’d take photographs of every person and car coming and going from the house, then she’d walk away. She’d have to, no matter how hard it would be to leave.
Unless she saw them with her own eyes. Then she would call 911 and say anything to bring in the police.
I’m not the idiot you think I am, Kane Rogan.
Siobhan stood and stretched. Two hours and her joints were creaking from sitting still for so long. She rolled her neck and lamented that she couldn’t break herself from the imaginary conversations she had with Kane. It had started years ago, almost from when she’d first met him, but the habit had grown worse since she’d left him in that hospital room three months ago.
I didn’t leave you, Kane; you kicked me out.
Jerk.
She had contacts other than Kane Rogan. He wouldn’t jump through hoops to help; he wouldn’t think this was his problem. He didn’t work cases in the United States; he much preferred the dark underbelly of Mexico where he didn’t have to play at being a diplomat, where life was cheap, where he could kill a cartel leader and walk away unscathed. Kane Rogan was perfectly willing to save a kidnapped American being held for ransom by a two-bit cop in the middle of Nowhere, Mexico, but he’d damn well make sure you knew how stupid you were while he saved your ass.
Siobhan sat back down and looked again through her camera lens. She was losing light. In an hour it would be dark, and she wouldn’t be able to see much of anything.
The small, broken-down houses were set far apart, most rented by migrant workers or longtime residents who couldn’t afford much. No air-conditioning in the hot summers; faulty heat in the cold winters. Dismantled cars cluttered dirt yards; metal and other large items that most would call junk-most of it was junk, Siobhan thought-littered the area. Refrigerators with and without doors, some chained and bolted. But the house across the street was cleaner than the others; it was not in as sorry a state of disrepair.
There was activity every day-when Father Sebastian first talked to Mrs. Hernandez, she’d said there were many people coming and going, men and women of all races, many of them pregnant. If Father hadn’t spoken at Mass about the baby left at the rectory, Mrs. Hernandez probably wouldn’t have even approached him. But Siobhan convinced him to release the information. Mrs. Hernandez was the only one who stepped forward. The only one who was willing to help, even though Siobhan saw fear and guilt in the eyes of others.
Father Sebastian had wanted to come with Siobhan tonight, but she wasn’t going to risk an old priest with arthritis so severe he could barely stand upright.
Right now, this was her only lead other than the baby herself. Father had called her Elizabeth, and the nurses in Laredo had kept the name. Siobhan couldn’t wait to return to the hospital and see her again. She’d promised Elizabeth that she would find her mother. There was no doubt in her mind that either Marisol or Ana had given birth to that small, beautiful child.