He considered his mother and father and the sleepless nights they’d spent sitting in the darkened Buffalo kitchen, sick with worry, not knowing if Cora was alive.
Knowing the truth would have killed them.
After picking over the remainder of his cheeseburger and fries, Gannon stared at himself in the black surface of his coffee. He needed to shave. The past few days had been mashed together, Mexico, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Where did he go from here?
He checked his phone again.
No texts from Luna or Adell. One word from Lyon in New York.
Update?
Chasing a new lead. Tell you more when I can, he responded.
Cora texted him: What’s happening, Jack?
Not sure, we’ll talk later.
Then he looked at Tilly’s picture again. It was like looking at Cora. Memories started to swirl until the waitress arrived to remove his plate. Two hours had passed. It was time to go. He paid the bill, then went outside to flag a cab to the airport.
“Got the time?” a voice asked.
Gannon turned to a large man who’d materialized on the sidewalk, just as an SUV with tinted windows halted beside them. The rear passenger door swung open. Sitting inside, a man with a jacket on his lap tugged it back to let Gannon see a gun barrel.
“Get in,” the stranger behind him said.
26
The SUV traveled southbound along Interstate 15.
Gannon was positioned in the rear seat, between the large man and the man with a gun. Another man sat up front with the driver.
No one spoke.
They had to be Lomax’s people.
The large man was rough as he patted Gannon for a weapon. Then he took Gannon’s BlackBerry and wallet and passed them to the guy in the front passenger seat. He studied Gannon’s ID, made a call and spoke in muted tones.
Gannon felt the highway clicking under them as they traveled beyond the city, then turned onto a secondary road, then turned again onto a back road. Fewer and fewer buildings dotted the landscape. Before long, the area had grown desolate. The SUV jiggled when they turned off the road and cut across the desert, coming to a ridge that descended into a low valley that looked like a dried river-bed.
They stopped and jerked Gannon out of the SUV.
The heat was intense as they led him several feet away. He heard the tail door open. A shovel clanked on the cracked earth.
“Start digging, asshole,” one of the men said.
Gannon looked at his captors, stone-cold behind their dark glasses. One stepped forward, seized the shovel and scraped a six-foot-by-two-foot square in the surface, then put the shovel in Gannon’s hand.
One of the men directed Gannon with his gun hand.
“Dig down three feet.”
Gannon’s stomach spasmed as all the saliva evaporated in his mouth. He barely felt the shovel as he started digging.
“My news organization knows where I am and who I went to see,” he said.
The air exploded and Gannon flinched as the gunshot echoed.
“Shut the fuck up and dig,” the gunman said.
Gannon started digging.
Odd, he was not afraid. He was at peace. If this was how it was going to be, then this was how it would be. But he would not go down without a fight. He considered charging the gunman with the shovel, swinging that blade at his throat, but no doubt the others were armed, too. They were standing too far apart. At best, he’d get a shot at two of them, he figured as the sweat dripped from his face, making blotches in the sand.
Gannon was down a little over two feet deep when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dust cloud. He heard the crunch of tires, then saw an approaching vehicle. Another SUV.
The gunman took the shovel from Gannon.
“Get on your knees and face the hole.”
Squinting against the sun, Gannon saw doors open. A man in a white suit got out of the vehicle and approached the group. His dark glasses were locked on Gannon as he took Gannon’s wallet from one of the men. He went through it quickly and nodded to the gunman, who then pressed the barrel hard against Gannon’s head.
The new man removed his dark glasses.
Vic Lomax.
His face seemed as if it had been broken; his eyes were asymmetrical, as if one had migrated down and the other was sunken. His upturned shark’s mouth twisted into a sneer and Gannon’s head snapped when the back of Lomax’s hand flew across his face.
“Who sent you, Gannon?”
“Nobody sent me.”
“Don’t lie.”
“Nobody sent me.”
“You go to my home. You threaten my family. You know, I scrape shit like you off my shoe. Did that old skank of a sister send you?”
“No.”
“Some shit-for-brains cop?”
“No.”
“Why come to me about this kidnapping shit that’s all over the news?”
“To beg for your help to find my niece.”
Still breathing hard, Lomax’s nostrils flared as he glared at Gannon.
“I only know what’s in the news and it looks like a lost cause.”
“I’m begging you, please.”
“Your stupid bitch sister never learned. She’s at it again. You ask her why she got herself tied up with this Galviera asshole, who seems to have pissed off the wrong people.”
“Just help me. A name, advice, anything, and I’ll go away, I swear.”
“I can make you go away-” Lomax snapped his fingers “-like that.”
The gun bored into Gannon’s skull.
“Please, she’s eleven years old.”
“I got nothing to do with this. Bet you didn’t know that your bitch sister got into trouble with a cartel a long time ago. Ask her if it’s got anything to do with this kidnapping shit.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The worst kind.” Lomax gave it a few seconds to sink in. “You ask her what she and Donnie Cargo did in San Francisco all those years ago. When I first heard about it, I told them to hide, stay out of the mix. I told her this would follow her all of her life. Well, now it’s caught up to her. So you talk to your sister, asshole, because I’m thinking that if your niece is not dead yet, she will be. And the only person Cora can blame for that is Cora.”
