As Jessie followed him, her stomach tightened, especially when she got to the second floor and made the turn she knew would come. If Chief Cook hadn’t been leading the way, she still would have known where to go. That window she had seen outside had been important to her for a reason.
She’d been there before.
“She was found in her bedroom. Right there.” He didn’t need to point to where Angela DeSalvo had died. Bloodstains marred the old floorboards. The pooling wasn’t red anymore. It had turned dark brown with age.
When Jessie knelt by the stain and put her hand to the floor, she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. And flashes of violent images came from nowhere, bombarding her with a past she didn’t realize she had buried. The darkness of it gripped her hard. And she fought a lump in her throat. She didn’t want to break down in front of the chief, but a part of her didn’t care.
“You ready to see a photo?”
Jessie looked up in shock, unsure what to say. After she took a deep breath, she stood and waited for him to fish out a photo from his file. When he handed it to her, she looked into the face of Angela DeSalvo.
“Oh, my God.” Jessie couldn’t help it. She gasped with a hand to her lips, her fingers trembling.
“You recognize her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not . . . sure.”
The woman in the crime-scene photo stared back at her, forever immortalized in black and white, a look of shock frozen on her face. The photo was a close-up, and a dark pool of blood was congealed under her head. Despite the image being graphic, Jessie had lied to the chief.
She’d recognized the woman from the many times she’d come to Jessie while she slept.
A flash of her smile and the sound of laughter jarred Jessie from her stupor, memories of the only happy moments she had when she was a child. The woman in her dreams had played with her in a park, on a swing.
When Jessie heard a steady squeaking sound coming from outside the bedroom window, she turned her head, trying to listen for the noise, and her breath caught in her throat.
“What’s that?”
It took the chief a minute to realize what she was asking.
“That squeaking sound is from an old swing out back. You want to go see . . .”
Jessie didn’t wait for him to finish. She ran down the stairs and headed for the backyard until she stood next to an old rusted swing, blowing in the breeze. The play set stood under a large tree, squeaking every time the wind blew. An eerie trigger for her memory.
Jessie knew right then that she had been there before. This had been where Angela DeSalvo had pushed her on the swing. That memory hadn’t been from a park. It had come from right there, within steps of where Angela would later be murdered.
“Was she my mother? Can you tell me that?”
Avoiding the chief’s eyes, Jessie looked down at the swing as she wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. He’d never answered her before when she questioned him on the DNA found at the scene, but now she had to know.
“Not sure how to answer that.” The chief’s voice was low. Feeling numb, she really had to listen to hear him when he said, “Biology doesn’t always determine a real parent, but if you’re asking if your DNA is a match to Angela’s . . .”
Jessie found that she was holding her breath, waiting to hear what he’d say.
“ . . . I’m sorry to say . . . No, her DNA didn’t match yours.”
Jessie was crushed. She couldn’t help it. If Angela’s DNA had matched, it would have meant her mother was dead, which would have felt just as bad. Yet without having a biological connection to Angela, everything she thought she knew about the sliver of memory she’d always associated with her mother was gone.
She had a strong feeling that Angela had loved her, but if she wasn’t her mother, then who was she?
And why had she crossed paths with a killer?
Chapter 6
Situated twelve miles southeast of the city, Guadalajara International Airport had only one terminal, with domestic and international flights coming into the same facility. That meant more traffic for Alexa to blend into. A tall blonde would have stood out in a sea of brown skin and dark hair, but after the dye job from last night, she was a brunette. Having changed disguises at the last two layovers and scrubbed off her fake tattoos, she now looked like a conservative schoolteacher on vacation.
She didn’t need to fight the crowd at baggage claim since she carried only one bag. Keeping things simple also got her through Customs without a hitch. Now she stood on the curb, waiting in line for a cab.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching.
As a trained operative, she had learned to pay attention to her instincts. Using every tactic she had in her arsenal of tricks, she discreetly searched the crowd outside the airport. Tourist buses and yellow-and-green-striped taxicabs lined the arrivals ramp outside baggage claim, with the vehicles clouding the muggy air with diesel fumes. And men in uniform blew whistles and waved traffic through, yelling out orders in Spanish. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Yet she had the unmistakable sensation that someone was keeping tabs on her. If they had followed her to Mexico, after the many ways she’d covered her tracks, they were plenty good. Whoever got the hair on the back of her neck to stand at alert, they had her complete respect. She’d have to find a way to lose them,
“You need a taxi, lady?” A short, brown-skinned man in uniform smiled at her.
“Yes . . . please.” Alexa adjusted her dark glasses and didn’t look him in the eye.
She could have told the man she was also looking to rent a vehicle, but the fewer people who could trace her movements, the better.
“And can you recommend a good hotel in the city?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. The Hotel de Mendoza is very popular.”
The man grinned and rattled off a location in the heart of Guadalajara—a place Alexa had no intention of staying. If anyone had eavesdropped or traced her movements, they’d be running down bogus leads. She needed a good smoke screen to ditch whoever was watching her now.
“Thank you,” she told the man as she tipped him and got into the cab that he’d waved to the curb.
“
After the taxi pulled into traffic, Alexa told the driver to take her to the Hotel de Mendoza. From there she would find another place to stay. On pure reflex, she moved to where she saw the traffic behind her, using the driver’s mirror. Although nothing looked out of the ordinary, Alexa had been in the field long enough to know looks could be very deceiving. And instincts carried much more weight than merely trusting her eyesight.
“How long to the hotel?” she asked the driver, to distract him from noticing her obsession with his mirror. As the man talked, she thought about her next steps.
She planned to get lost in the city of Guadalajara, traveling off the grid, using her fake passports and paying cash for everything. Once she got situated in town, she’d lease a rental car and make contact with the local Tanya had given her. For a price, he’d have what she’d need to conduct surveillance in a foreign country. She needed the right gear and enough firepower to make a good first impression.
Soon she’d be on the hunt for Garrett Wheeler, staked out near the compound of Manolo Quintanilla Perez, the leader of a ruthless drug cartel. But if she couldn’t shake whoever was following her, she had to come up with a better plan. No one was getting in her way, not when she was so close. If Garrett’s life was at stake, she’d never forgive herself if she did nothing.
“Were there any witnesses?” Jessie asked Chief Cook as she stood by the swing set in the backyard behind the abandoned old house where Angela DeSalvo had been murdered.
“Only a yardman who found the body three days later. The smell, you know. His name was Luke
