Maryse was grateful that Dee White hadn’t insisted on talking through the trip. Once the other woman had given her a vague explanation about how they’d make sure Nank believed she was being transported against her will, she more or less zipped her lips. The silence gave Maryse more time to think. But the thinking wasn’t all positive. Something still nagged her, just like it had since the moment Dee first opened her mouth the previous day. Maryse didn’t have a natural tendency to dislike someone, and she rarely made snap judgments. In fact, her inability to assume that anyone and everyone could be up to something suspicious was what kept her from truly settling in over the last six years. She always saw the best in people, and she didn’t always trust herself to see someone in a bad light.
But Dee...
Maryse stole a quick glance at the now-brunette woman. She was capable of holding down a full-time job in an upscale hotel. She was perfectly at home acting like a crazed criminal with a gun. And now she was something else entirely. None of it, though, seemed real.
She tugged on Cami’s bracelet hard enough that it snapped in her hands. But even the feel of a dozen silver, heart-shaped beads in her hands couldn’t distract her from the question that she kept coming back to.
So if Dee White is acting all the time...who is she underneath it?
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the cab was slowing down until it had almost come to a complete stop. She turned her attention out the window, trying to sort out where they were. There was nothing to see except the expanse of dry land. But Dee was already swinging open her door.
“C’mon,” the other woman said. “It’s hot out here, and we’ve got a bit of a walk.”
Confused and increasingly anxious, Maryse slipped from the car, a bead falling from her hands as she hurried to catch up. Dee moved at a quick pace, seemingly with a destination in mind, even though the horizon appeared barren. After a few moments, though, the ground began to slope.
Maryse slowed, wondering how Brooks would possibly find them now. She squeezed the remaining beads in her hands.
Bread crumbs, she thought suddenly.
She’d already dropped one. Would Dee notice another?
Maryse decided to hazard it. She released a bead, tossing it behind her back. When the slope became a hill, she let go of a third one.
Dee didn’t slow and she didn’t turn back. Maryse wasn’t quite as sure-footed, and she used it as an excuse to move slowly, dropping another little heart every few yards, careful to make sure they didn’t simply roll down. As they neared the bottom, though, she lost her footing. She landed on her rear end, then slid the rest of the way down. As she hit the ground, the remaining pieces of the bracelet cascaded around her, drawing Dee’s attention.
“What’re these?” the other woman demanded.
Maryse was glad that she had the fall as an excuse for her flush. “My bracelet broke.”
Dee narrowed her eyes. “Yours?”
She remembered that she’d grabbed the jewelry from the other woman’s own home, and she corrected herself quickly. “Camille’s. I grabbed it—”
Dee cut her off. “I know where you got it. Never mind. Just leave it there. Let’s go.”
Relieved, Maryse pushed to her feet, then started to walk again. But stopped as she spotted what lay in front of them. Another road, overgrown and unused. And what looked like an abandoned gas and service station. Something straight out of a serial-killer movie.
Dee turned her head over her shoulder and smiled. “Stop looking so worried. If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it by now.”
Maryse didn’t smile back. She just shivered and forced herself to get all the way up. Her feet dragged as she approached the run-down buildings.
Nothing good can come from this, she thought.
Dee, though, still moved confidently. She bypassed the old pumps and the store attached to the station, and she walked straight up to the service-bay door. There, she bent down, twisted the rusted handle and slid the rusty mechanism up. It groaned and scraped, but still lifted. And inside the large space sat a new-looking black sedan.
“Nank keeps these stashed here and there,” Dee explained. “In case of emergency.”
Maryse’s throat was thick with nerves. A new wave of worried questions sprang to mind. But the most pressing one was how Dee knew where to look. Why was she aware of Nank’s getaway plans? And how come she reached down so surely to retrieve a key from under the front bumper of the sedan? That wasn’t just peripheral awareness. That was inside knowledge.
She fought another shiver. “Are we far from where we’re going? Do we need a new car?”
Dee shook her head. “Not terribly far. But I’m not underestimating your guy. If he managed to evade Nank’s men, he’ll be finding a way to track that taxi.”
“Nank’s men are at the house?”
“Why do you think I was in such a hurry to get away from it?”
Maryse swallowed, guilt and desert heat making her head swim. “I don’t know.”
The petite woman shrugged, then lifted a piece of rope off the wall beside the car. “You ready?”
“You want to tie me up?”
“And I want to put you in the trunk.”
“What?”
“I said we were going to make it look real.”
The air was suddenly thick and heavy, and Maryse shook her head. “I can’t.”
“If you don’t, we may never get to your daughter.”
Oh, God.
She eyed the closed trunk lid. Even from the outside, it looked small. And airtight.
For Camille, she said to herself. You can do this.
Wishing she could do anything else, she swallowed against the tight, raw feeling in her throat, and she held out her hands. Dee seemed indifferent to her suffering. She bound her wrists, then guided her to the car, where she popped open the trunk and helped Maryse in.
“It won’t be long,” she promised.
But as the lid slammed shut, Maryse had a feeling even five minutes would feel like an eternity.
* * *
From its spot in the dashboard cup holder, Brooks’s phone issued a beep that cut through his brooding thoughts. He cast a glance down at the electronic device. So far, it had been sending him steadily south. Straight out onto the highway for well over thirty minutes. Maybe even close to an hour. Now, though, the blip on the screen had stalled. For a second, he thought maybe the GPS had stopped working, and his heart seized. When he lifted up the phone, though, he realized that the cab must’ve come to a standstill. Sure enough, a message from the tracking app popped onto the screen, telling him the tracked object had been idle for more than five minutes.
Does it mean Maryse and Dee have reached their destination? Or is it something more sinister? Brooks shook his head. Don’t even consider it.
His foot still insisted on pushing down a little harder on the gas pedal. As the speedometer climbed, his cell beeped again, this time with an incoming call.
Masters.
Trying to sound cheerful—and failing to succeed even a little—he pressed the speakerphone button. “Small.”
“Bad news,” his partner announced without preamble.
“Tell me.”
“Neither Deanna Whitehorse nor Dee White really exist.”
“What do you mean?”
“Both names are aliases.”
“The captain did say she was wanted in connection with fraud.”
“Yeah. She’s unlocked an expert level of fraud, I think. The aliases are pretty solid, which is why no one caught on. Like, if I wasn’t specifically looking into her, I’d never have noticed. Passports, driver’s licenses, everything looks completely legit. Dee White is an upstanding Canadian citizen, who didn’t even exist until thirteen months ago. Then bam, there she is. Deanna Whitehorse is the same. A year ago, she was arrested on a Nank bust. Didn’t have a record, made bail, never showed up for pretrial. But guess what? She only started to exist a few years ago, too. Three, to be exact. Valid Social Security, valid driver’s license.”
“And before that?”
“Well, I plugged in a bunch of variations of the name and came up with another match. Anna White.”
“Let me guess... She had a short life span, too?”
“Uh-huh,” Masters agreed. “Sure did. Her identity was on the scene for about two years. Got picked up as a witness on—get this—a Nank-related incident.”
Brooks swore, then asked, “What about fingerprints?”
“Exactly where I went next. Weren’t any on file for Dee or Deanna. Anna, on the other hand, had a set. But because she was a witness...”
“No one bothered to run a check for a match.”
“Exactly.”
“But you did.”
“Yep. And Anna White has the very same prints as a woman named Anne Black.”
“Is Anne Black a real person?”
“Think so. Married name, but seems legit. Eleven years ago, Anne’s husband—Saul—was set to be arrested on an identity-theft charge. He was a dude with a pretty damned colorful history. Worked with a fraud unit for years. Then they caught him stealing info from his cases. Got fired, served some time. He met Anne through one of those write-to-the-prisoners programs. When he got out, the two of them got married. Set up shop here and there over the years, always seeming legit. Then some teenager got busted for a fake ID and rolled on them. Some kind of bust was set up. Things went badly. There was a standoff. Both Saul and his and Anne’s kid got killed in the cross fire.”
Brooks’s stomach churned. “There was a kid?”
Masters’s voice was suitably solemn. “Yeah, man. Unfortunately, there was.”
“Was Anne Black charged in any of it?”
“Nope. Couldn’t find anything that connected her to the fake identity ring—which was huge, by the way. Practically a passport production facility in their basement. It was under lock and key, though. Anne was reportedly unaware of its existence. Thinking that’s probably not true.”
“Probably not,” Brooks agreed. “Any thoughts on how this connects back to Maryse?”
“Not yet. But I’m going to dig around a bit more. Head up to the station and see what I can figure out.”
“Good. You check in on the captain?”
“He’s fine. Seething. But alive.”
“All right. Call me if you come up with anything.”
“Will do.”
The phone went dead, and Brooks turned his attention back to the barren landscape in front of him. His mind, though, stayed on the details his partner had just provided. There was no doubt that this was the connection he’d been looking for. He just had to figure out exactly what it was.
With frustration just about drowning out his worry, he stomped on the gas again. The little blip on the GPS tracker still hadn’t moved, and if he was estimating correctly, he had less than thirty minutes to go before he reached it.
* * *
Underneath Maryse’s body—which had been shaking uncontrollably since the moment the trunk closed—the car finally rolled to a stop. For a second, the engine continued to hum. Then it cut out completely, and the lid popped open. She wished she wasn’t so relieved to see Dee’s face, but she couldn’t stop the feeling, and when the other woman reached down to help her out, she took the assistance gratefully, gulping in a breath of air as she did.
She wanted to cry. And stretch. And run. Instead, she made herself stay planted to the ground and took a slow look around as her eyes adjusted to the light.
“What is this place?” she asked.
But before the question was even all the way out, she spotted a sign.
People With Paper, it read.
Caleb Nank’s front. Her brother’s ex-employer. And the front for all the bad dealings.
Dee noted her recognition. “You know the company?”
“Brooks mentioned it,” Maryse replied cautiously, not wanting to say anything about Jean-Paul.
“There’s no need to be coy about it. Your detective is familiar with Nank’s enterprises. He told me at the house in Laval, remember?”
“Right.”
Something in the other woman’s smile made her want to flee, but she forced her feet to stay planted. She inhaled to steady her nerves, and a pulpy scent filled her nose. She looked around for the source of the smell, but all she could see was the back of a squat warehouse.
“This is just a small piece of the operation,” Dee explained. “A holding station for the boxes before they get shipped to the local companies. Cheaper to buy and build in the desert. No moisture to wreck the paper.”
“So this is an actual paper company?”
“Some of it is. On the surface, anyway. There’s a mill in Northern Nevada and about five of these warehouses.” Dee grabbed ahold of her bound hands and tugged. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Sorry about wh—”
A rough shove sent Maryse to the dry, dusty ground before she could finish. Startled, she tried to draw in a breath and instead got a lungful of dirt. Coughing and choking, she rolled to her side. The move earned her a kick in the ribs that was hard enough to make her cry out. A second kick turned the cry into a sob. Tears formed in her eyes and trickled down. She crawled over the ground, but Dee’s foot landed solidly on her ankle, sending a shooting pain up her leg and forcing her to stop. As a deep throb bloomed out from the point of impact, she blinked up at Dee, who now stood over her with an angry scowl on her face.
“Have to make it look real in case anyone’s watching.”
Maryse braced herself for a third kick. But it didn’t come. Instead, Dee reached down and pulled her back to her feet, then gave her another shove, this time just hard enough to make her stumble forward.
“C’mon,” the other woman said, pushing her toward a set of metal doors. “We don’t want to keep Nank waiting.”
Maryse did as she was told, hurrying across the dirt, her ankle protesting the whole way. Genuine fear—both of Nank and the woman who was able to so casually deliver a beating in the name of pretense—made her feet move fast. When they reached the doors, Dee grabbed her hands again, then stepped up and rapped on the metal. Her touch was confident and it sounded like code.
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
Tap.
Sure enough, there was a ten-second pause, and then an answer came from the other side in an identical pattern. When it was done, Dee reached up again, and this time she delivered two quick bangs. Then she pulled Maryse back, and the doors swung open. Two men stood on the other side. Each was dressed in an identical gray suit. They were both young and visibly fit, and neither looked pleased to see them. As one shifted to let them go by, Maryse spotted a gun—large, black and frightening—on his hip. She couldn’t fight a shiver.
“Gave her a pretty good beating,” the gunman said, just shy of smug.
“She was being uncooperative,” Dee replied indifferently.
“Better you than us,” the other man added. “I wouldn’t want to hit a girl.”
Now Dee smiled. “And that’s why you’re just a doorman.”
Two spots of color formed in the guard’s cheeks, but he didn’t retaliate. Dee smiled even wider, then guided Maryse up the dimly lit corridor, not speaking until they reached a second set of doors at the end.
“Your brother did that job,” she said.
Maryse just about fell over. “What?”
“Jean-Paul,” Dee replied. “He was a guard like those guys back there.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes. Good kid.”
A lump formed in her throat, thinking about him. Maybe he was a good kid. Or at least not overly bad. Sometimes, it was hard for her to separate the path he’d taken from the one he’d been on when they were growing up. It was something she’d tried hard to reconcile over the last six years. The revelation provided by Brooks—that Jean-Paul had been a confidential informant—helped. Still.
Six years.
It was such a long time.
Wait.
Maryse’s feet dug into the tiled ground.
“You knew him?” she repeated.
“I just said I did.”
“When he worked for Nank?”
“Yes.”
“But that was six years ago.”
“Yes.”
Maryse’s mouth was growing steadily drier, her pulse increasing quickly. “Didn’t you tell me in the car that you just met Nank?”
“I don’t think I said that specifically.” Dee’s hands closed on the rope that held her. “Let’s keep moving.”
“And if I say no?”
“Where are you going to go?”
The other woman was right. If Maryse thought she’d had no choice before, she knew it for sure now. Dee held every single card. From the knife, to the location, to whatever secrets she carried in her head, she had everything. All Maryse could do was hope that she was at least telling the truth about taking her to Camille. She stepped along, her mind and body both protesting. Dee pushed her through the swinging doors, which led to a small staircase. At the top of those was a third door, this one made of tinted glass. They moved through it, too, and Maryse found herself staring through an equally darkened sheet of glass. The panel was just one piece of a completely enclosed walkway that spanned the length of the warehouse. Below it were hundreds—maybe thousands—of boxes and a dozen or so employees moving through the open spaces, checking things off on clipboards as they inspected the cardboard containers.
Dee moved her forward again and said, “They’re legitimate workers, mostly. Ninety percent. Good pay. Decent benefits. Hard to fault that.”
“And the other ten percent?” Maryse asked.
“They know a little more, so their pay and benefits are even better.”
“And you?”
“Let me introduce to you Nank himself.”
They’d stopped now, and they stood in front of a final door. Maryse’s head spun, anxiety spiking and making her chest squeeze.
You can do this, she said to herself. Go in there and ask for your daughter back. Beg if you have to.
The sweat was already starting to drip down her face, the dirt from her tumble outside following it. So when Dee opened the door, and Maryse inched forward, it was in near blindness. Being sightless did nothing to ease the building tension in her rib cage. She wanted to turn and run. She had to force each step. As she moved into the room—an office, she noted vaguely—she used the memory of Cami’s sweet face to keep herself from simply freezing to the spot. But as she made herself glance around, made herself look at the heavy desk and wide-backed office chair, confusion took the place of fear.
“There’s no one in here,” she said.
Dee moved around her to lock the door, then smiled and seated herself at the desk, speaking in a conspiratorial tone. “We’re in here.”
“I don’t understand.”
The other woman glanced around like someone might be listening, making Maryse wonder if she was more than a little crazy. There was no one in sight. In fact, there was almost nothing in sight. No filing cabinets, no intercom system. Just the desk, chair and the computer.
“It’s me,” Dee said.
“What?”
“I took Camille, Maryse.”
“Why?” She heard the desperation in her voice, but she couldn’t curb it. “You were a mother! You told me!”
“That’s right. I was. But your brother took that from me.”
“My brother is dead!”
“No one knows that better than I do.”
“You killed him?”
“Yes. And I thought it would be enough.”
Maryse’s head was spinning, trying to make sense of what the other woman was saying. But she just couldn’t. Her brother had taken motherhood from Dee White? How?
“Camille isn’t your daughter,” she whispered.
“No.”
Thank God.
For a second, she sagged with relief. But it was short-lived. Then anger took over. This woman had killed her brother. Taken her daughter. Told her a hundred little lies and made her feel sympathetic.
Without thinking, Maryse lunged forward. She forgot about her tied hands and her injured ankle. She forgot that she needed Dee alive so she could get her daughter back. She just wanted to hurt her, to give her a tiny taste of the pain she’d been enduring for the last day and a half. She’d never felt such a terrible fury. And giving in to the urge to channel it destructively brought her down.
She fell forward. Her chin smacked the desk. For a second, the world blurred. Then it disappeared.