“Missing …?” The word fell numbly from Kate’s lips. “Missing since when?”
“He dropped your sister off at a squash club last week, then disappeared,” Cavetti said, tapping the photographs back into a stack and setting them down. “We don’t know where he is. You’re certain he hasn’t been in touch?”
“Of course I’m certain!” A wave of anguish swept over Kate. Her father was missing. His case agent had been brutally murdered.
“My mother! My brother and sister! Are they all right?”
“They’re safe, Kate.” Cavetti raised his palm in a cautioning way. “They’re under guard.”
Kate looked back at him, trying to figure out just what that meant. “Under guard!”
She slid off the stool, touching a hand to her face. Her worst fears had now come true. They had tried to get to her. They had killed Margaret Seymour. Now they might have found her family. Kate stepped over to the couch and lowered herself onto the armrest. She knew one thing: Her father, whatever he had done, loved his family. If he was missing, something had happened. He would never just leave.
“Is my father dead, Agent Cavetti?”
He shook his head. “The truth is, we don’t know. We’re going to assign a protective agent to you, Kate. Maybe somehow he’s okay. Maybe he’ll try to contact you. You may even be a target yourself.”
“I already was,” Kate said. Then she looked up with a start. “You said you knew about Tina.”
At first Cavetti didn’t respond. He just glanced a bit uncomfortably in the direction of Nardozzi.
Kate stood up and stared at them. “You knew about Tina, and you never even contacted me. You—”
“Kate, we know how you must have felt with that, but the police …”
In a daze she tried to connect the timelines in her mind. Tina was three days ago, Margaret Seymour, so they said, last Thursday. Her father … How could her father be missing since then? Why wouldn’t they have warned her?
“I want to talk to my family,” she said to Cavetti. “I want to make sure they’re all right.”
“I’m sorry, Kate. That isn’t possible. They’re in protective custody now.”
“What do you mean, they’re in protective custody?”
“Kate,” Cavetti said, helplessly, “the people running the Mercado operation would do anything to retaliate against your father. They may already have. The agency’s been penetrated. Until we know what’s happened, the worst thing we can do is compromise their security. This is the way it has to be.”
Kate glared back. “Are you saying they’re prisoners? That I’m a prisoner, too?”
“No one knows what Agent Seymour might have divulged, Kate,” Nardozzi said quietly. “Or to whom.”
It was as if a car had slammed into her head-on, a body blow of doubt and uncertainty, and she was reeling. Her father was missing. Margaret Seymour was dead. The rest of them were being kept from her. Kate looked at Cavetti. This was the person her family had bet their lives on. And he was lying to her. She knew it. He was holding something back.
“I want to talk to my family.” Kate met his eyes. “My father may be dead. I have that right.”
“I know you do,” Cavetti said. “But you just have to trust us, Kate.… They’re okay.”