crucial to finding Tilly.
Those questions had troubled Gannon when he’d arrived at the Las Vegas airport, where he’d first considered flying to San Francisco. Before buying a ticket he’d launched a quick online search on Donnie Cargo but had found nothing.
He’d asked the WPA library to help and he’d contacted Adell Clark and Isabel Luna, requesting they check for anything on “Donnie Cargo.” It was not looking good and Gannon feared his luck at finding people fast may have run out. With little more than Lomax’s accusation, he decided to return to Phoenix and confront Cora, again.
She had texted him minutes before he’d departed.
Jack, what’s happening? Did you find Lomax?
Yes. We have to talk.
Call me.
No time. We’ll talk when I get back.
Now, as the lights of Phoenix wheeled below and Gannon’s plane began its descent, he returned to Lomax’s allegation.
In the time Gannon was gone, Cora had remained lost in her pain.
She had not slept or eaten. The deeper Jack dug among the ruins of her old life, the more dangerous it got.
In finding Peck and Lomax, he’d exhumed demons that would drag her back into the pit of her past.
Forces continued mounting against Cora. Images of the gruesome delivery of eyeballs and those of the headless corpses of the two ex-officers found in the Mexican desert, tortured her. The FBI still had nothing on Lyle or the money. They had no leads on the kidnappers, or any trace of Tilly.
Cora prayed but hope seemed as distant as a dying star.
Now she heard the sound of rising voices in her living room. Recognizing one as Jack’s, she went to her bedroom door, stopping when she saw him arguing with Hackett about where he’d been.
“I’m warning you, Gannon, if you’re withholding information or interfering with this investigation-“
“You want to spend time violating my First Amendment rights instead of finding my niece? Want me to alert the WPA’s lawyers in New York?”
“I want you to think about what you’re doing. If you-”
“I have a right to talk privately with my sister.”
Gannon entered Cora’s bedroom, closing the door behind them.
“What did you find out?” Cora asked.
He struggled to keep his voice low as he spat back with a question.
“Are you involved in any way?”
“No!”
“Do you have, or have you ever had, a connection to any cartel that could be linked to this?”
Cora couldn’t answer him.
“All right, so far this is what I’ve got,” Gannon said. “You ran away with a drug addict, destroyed our family, became a prostitute, got pregnant, left the life and cleaned up. Then your daughter is kidnapped by a drug gang because your boyfriend owes them five million dollars and you want everyone to believe that you and your past have nothing to do with this?”
Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hands.
“What are you keeping from me, Cora?”
Could she tell him? Could she spell out every devastating mistake she’d ever made? Several anguished moments came and went.
“Cora?”
She didn’t respond.
“You called me, remember? I’m putting everything on the line for you.”
“It’s not about me, Jack. It’s about finding Tilly. I called you to help find who took her, help me bring her home.”
“Then tell me everything! For Christ’s sake, Cora! I get more help from the scum in your past than I do from you!”
“I have to protect Tilly!”
“From what? What could be worse than this? I don’t understand you!” Gannon saw that she was contending with a whirlwind. He softened his approach. “You were my hero, Cora. My big sister. I worshipped you. It’s because of you I became a reporter.”
“Jack, you have to trust me. It’s not what you or Hackett think. I am a good person, a good mother. I did terrible things to survive a long time ago. I’m not perfect…I made mistakes. I was a seventeen-year-old addict when I ran away. It was stupid but I had my reasons.”
“Yeah? And what were they?”
Two life-changing incidents were buried in Cora’s past; events she never spoke of, or dared to revisit. She’d kept them secret for decades. That’s how she’d survived, if you could call it that. But now, in order to help save Tilly, she would have to exhume one of them for Jack. Only one.
The other must never be revealed.
Cora swallowed hard, hesitated. The pain was unbearable, the shame overwhelming. It hurt so much to even form a thought around the right words. But she had to do it. She’d have to tell him about the night that changed her forever.
“When I was sixteen, I went to a party. Somebody put something in my drink and I was gang-raped.”
Gannon stared at her for the longest time.
His big sister.
Memory carried him back and he no longer saw Cora, the damaged woman before him. Suddenly he saw his sister at the kitchen table of their Buffalo home, blowing out candles for her fourteenth birthday party.
Glows like an angel.
Looking upon her now, in the wake of her painful revelation, his heart broke for her. His eyes stung and slowly, his shock gave way to rage. He wanted to drive his fist through something, wanted to attack the violation of his sister.
“Who were the assholes? Do we know?”
She shook her head.
“Jesus, Cora, I’m so sorry. I…I never…realized.”
“This is the first time I ever told anyone. I never told Mom, Dad, anyone. That was a mistake. I turned to drugs. That’s how it all happened. The night I ran off, after my biggest blowup with Mom and Dad, Dad told me to never come back. It was like a knife through my heart. I was garbage to them.”
