“Do you see … her belly?”
I do. She wears a halter-top exposing her midriff and a belly button ring.
“What about it?”
“The coroner … found only one … earring … on the body. But I … do not think … it was an earring.”
I stare at the picture for several long seconds before I frown at Carlos.
“So you think Miguel Dominguez got a call at the motel and he grabbed the prostitute and took her to the building and … what? He swapped out her body for Maria’s?”
This causes Carlos to frown again. His face has somehow grown even paler, and his breathing has worsened. He barely has a minute to live, and I’m worried he’s going to die before I learn what I need to know.
When he speaks next, his voice is barely a whisper.
“Who is … Maria?”
“The children’s nanny.”
Carlos closes his eyes as his head slowly moves back and forth.
“She … was not … a nanny.”
I glance back at Nova, and then I lean forward to hear Carlos better.
“Then who was she?”
Fifty-Four
Daniela felt like a prisoner.
For four days now she hadn’t been allowed to leave the ranch house. She was allowed to leave her room, of course, but that was only to wander down the hallway to the bathroom. If she was hungry, food was provided. If she was thirsty, water was provided. If she felt like smoking, cigarettes were provided. At one point, just to be a bitch, she asked for cocaine, but the men keeping an eye on her—whom she had come to think of simply as her guards—just shook their heads and ignored her.
She hadn’t seen her father since the day he brought her to the ranch house. Several times she asked the guards to call him for her, to put him on the phone, but the answer was always the same: he was busy and would return when he felt it was safe.
Safe. That was a word Daniela had always taken for granted. She knew the company she’d kept was not the best, and there had always been the threat of some kind of danger, but she had never felt in fear for her life. Not like that night at the compound when the shooting started and Ernesto ordered her to hide with the children. That was the very first time she felt true fear. At that moment, safe was a mythical concept.
Could she run? Probably. While her father had stationed guards around the ranch house—older men he could trust, retired policía no doubt—she didn’t think they would shoot her if she attempted to escape. They would chase after her, yes, and they might even manage to catch her, but they would not hurt her. At least, she didn’t think so. The men had been pretty indifferent toward her so far. None tried to make conversation with her. None even asked her questions. They simply brought her food and water and cigarettes and told her that her father would eventually come every time she asked them to call.
The ranch house sat out in the middle of nowhere. There was electricity but no Internet. Books and magazines were provided, but she was never much of a reader. Still she would page through the magazines, looking at the same pictures and text, but absorbing none of it. Mostly she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and smoked.
That was what she was doing on the fifth morning when her father finally returned.
When the door opened, she expected it to be one of the guards bringing her breakfast, but in walked her father. He was already an old man, but he looked as if he had aged a decade in the past several days.
He stood there for a moment in the doorway, simply watching her. Daniela stared back. A younger version of herself may have rushed forward, wrapped her arms around him, but that wasn’t the relationship they had. Not anymore. Whatever close ties they once shared had long since been severed, but in the end he was still her father and she was still his daughter, and like most fathers, he would do anything to keep her safe.
Her father said, “Let’s go.”
She wanted nothing more than to leave this place and never return. But still the stubborn part of her—the part that created the rift between them—forced her to stay motionless.
“Where have you been?”
Her father shook his head, impatient.
“We do not have time for this. Let’s go.”
She didn’t move.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Out of the country.”
She had assumed this was the plan from the beginning. There was no way she could stay in the country after what had happened. She wasn’t that well known, but word spread quickly. If someone in the country happened to recognize her, it would cause a lot of trouble. Her father didn’t need to do this, not after how awful she had been to him, but again she was his daughter and he was going to do whatever it took to help her. Even if it meant putting his career on the line. Even if it meant putting his life on the line.
When she didn’t move, her father grunted in frustration.
“We do not have time to waste, Daniela. You have no idea just how much shit has happened in the past two days.”
This made her pause.
“What happened?”
“Fernando Sanchez Morales is dead. Over two dozen of his men are dead. Half the town of La Miserias is dead. Two of my crime scene investigators are dead. The whole thing is a mess. We need to leave now.”
The stubbornness keeping her in place finally snapped. She nodded and stood and started toward her father.
She had taken only three steps when the gunfire started.
At first Daniela wasn’t sure what she had just heard. It was only one shot, distant and almost indistinct, but then more quickly followed. She had never fired a weapon herself, but she could tell that the current gunfire was coming from several different guns.
Her father stepped into the room,
