no doctor, so they were going to kill him and get rid of his body.
Krista blurted out the one thing she prayed would save his life.
“He’s rich! They are rich! This is how his mother is away so long!”
The tall man glanced at Rojas, who offered what he knew.
“This is the one whose mother is in China. There is no one to call until she returns.”
Krista kept pushing.
“She takes these trips always. My mama says they have much money. If he dies, you will get nothing.”
The tall man thought for a moment, then nodded at Medina.
“We shall see. Do what you can for him.”
The tall man and Rojas disappeared down the hall as Miguel and another guard bent over Jack. The Mantis took Krista’s arm, but Medina leaned close with his jack-o’-lantern face.
“As soon as he’s gone, you will make the first call. You gonna call Mama. I’m gonna make you scream real good.”
He leered even wider, then told the Mantis to take her to her room.
Krista was scared, but relieved. She had told them one secret about Jack, and it had saved him. But she had come dangerously close to telling them who Jack was related to, and about the army of people who were looking for him. Jack and Krista had agreed on the night they were taken they couldn’t tell the bajadores who Jack was related to. If these men found out, they would kill him. Jack and Krista could only pray she found them quickly.
The Mantis returned Krista to her room.
The tall man with the ponytail left one hour later.
Medina was good at his word.
Krista made the first call.
He used the terrible teeth, and made her scream.
27
Nancie Stendahl
Stendahl lowered the windows on her rental car to let in the night-blooming jasmine. Nonstop D.C. to L.A., four hours in the air, hit the ground running, forty minutes later, here she was driving up Kenter Canyon in Brentwood, California. Home. Stendahl had come home because of a call she received from the chief of the Coachella Police Department four days earlier.
Nancie loved the drive up Kenter at night, when the smells of jasmine, fennel, and eucalyptus bloomed, and coyotes and deer might be framed by her headlights. The narrow street began on Sunset Boulevard, but climbed steeply through dense trees and affluent homes until star-field views of the city stretched south and east to the horizons. Nancie Stendahl had missed this drive since her transfer two years earlier to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’s Washington headquarters, but she didn’t miss the crappy cell reception.
“Gonna lose you, Tone. I’m on my way up to Bonnie’s.”
“Can you hear me?”
“So far, but not for long.”
Assistant Deputy Director Nancie Stendahl represented the ATF on a congressional task force that included the FBI, ICE, DEA, and the state and local law enforcement agencies that lined the U.S.-Mexican border. This task force was charged with containing cartel gang activity on the Mexican side of the border. Tony Nakamura was her liaison officer with the committee. Normally, the Bureau would have provided a car to someone of Nancie’s rank, but this trip was personal.
Nakamura went on.
“I said, the senator’s chief bitched me out because you left town with the review coming up.”
“I’m available to the senator twenty-four/seven by phone.”
“Said that.”
“Tell them I’m on a fact-finding mission, and it’s necessary if they want a full report.”
She waited, but Nakamura was gone. Reception would return when she reached the ridge, but losing him was just as well. Her mind was on other things.
Nancie rounded a last curve by Hanley Park, and pulled up outside a sleek clean modern home with a breathtaking view of the Pacific. It had been her baby sister’s house, which Nancie inherited in trust when Bonnie and Mel were killed in a traffic accident on PCH. That was four years ago, when Nancie was between husbands, and serving as the Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division. Now, four years later, with a new husband, a new job, and a new life in D.C., she returned as often as possible, but for reasons other than the house.
Nancie lifted her wheelie from the trunk, shouldered her purse, and went to the front door. The house appeared normal. The outside lights were on and the soft glow behind frosted sidelights told her the inside lights were also on, but these lights were on timers.
The alarm went crazy when she let herself in, blaring she had sixty seconds to turn it off before LAPD’s finest rolled out in force. Nancie keyed in the four-digit code (her nephew’s birth year) to shut off the alarm.
“Hey, buddy! You home? It’s Nancie!”
She followed the entry to the great room, which looked out on the glowing pool (also on timers) so still and clean it appeared to be filled with air, and called out again.
“Hey, dude!”
The house was neat, orderly, and clean. She was on her way to the bedrooms when her phone rang. She assumed it was Tony calling back, but saw the 760 area code. 760 was Palm Springs.
“Stendahl.”
“Ah, this is Sergeant Conner Hartley with the Palm Springs Police Department. I’m calling for, ah, Ms. Nancie Stendahl.”
“This is she.”
She didn’t recognize the voice, but this didn’t matter. She had received many calls from the desert during the past four days.
“Ah, Deputy Director Nancie Stendahl? With the ATF out of Washington?”
Like he couldn’t get his head around it.
“Assistant Deputy Director, Sergeant, but thanks for the promotion. Have you found my nephew?”
“Ah, no, ma’am, no, I’m sorry. My boss told me to call. He wants you to know we confirmed the Ford Mustang parts found in Coachella came off a vehicle registered to, ah-”
She finished it for him.
“The Arrowhead Trust, Nancie Stendahl and Jack Berman, trustees.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am. It was never reported stolen, not here, and not in L.A., either. We double-checked with LAPD and the L.A. Sheriffs, just in case it fell through the cracks, but it wasn’t reported.”
The Coachella Police and the Riverside County Sheriffs had busted a stolen car ring running a chop shop in Coachella, California, not far from Palm Springs. During the subsequent check of Vehicle Identification Numbers and part serial numbers, the investigators discovered the registered owner of a certain Mustang was something called the Arrowhead Trust, whose mailing address was ATF headquarters in Washington, D.C., in care of Assistant Deputy Director Nancie Stendahl. The chief of the Coachella police had immediately contacted her to ask if she still owned the car.
“The people you busted at the chop shop say where they got my car?”
“Ah, well, that would be the Coachella detectives. They made the arrests. I wouldn’t know.”
“Are they still in Coachella’s custody?”
“Ah, well, I’ll have to check.”
She made her voice cool.
“Would you pass along my number, and ask your chief to phone me directly? I’d appreciate a call back tonight, regardless of the hour.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am.”
