“Drugs are a substantial part of the billions in black money that rolls around the globe every hour. Illegal arms dealing is another chunk. Corrupt, legally constituted governments are responsible for the majority.”

Although Steele hadn’t emphasized the words legally constituted, Grace got the point.

“I know,” she said. “Legal doesn’t always make it right. But it’s better than the opposite, violence and anarchy.”

Steele nodded. “On that we agree. You’ve explained your son’s situation and your own desires. What of your husband?”

“Ex-husband. We’ve been separated-a personal rather than a legal state-for some time. The divorce was final a few weeks ago.”

“Does Hector know this?”

“I told him. He still thinks I know or can find out where Ted is.”

“Can you?”

“If I could, I wouldn’t be here. Ted and I may share an address in La Jolla, but he hasn’t spent three consecutive days there in years. Other than an e-mail or two, and a voice mail, I haven’t heard from him in three weeks.”

“Did any of the communications suggest he was in difficulty?” Steele asked.

“No.”

“Was the divorce adversarial?”

“No. We’re adults and we behaved like it.”

Steele lifted his eyebrows. “Could Hector be your ex-husband’s stalking horse?”

Grace frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You say the divorce was amicable-”

“It was.”

Steele ignored the interruption. “-yet you’re a beautiful woman in the prime of life, with a very successful career and a brilliant legal future. Quite a catch by any measure, whether it be physical, intellectual, or social.”

She blinked, surprised by his summary. “I don’t see myself that way.”

Steele’s smile was a lot younger than he was. “I know. It’s part of your allure. By nature men are possessive creatures. Losing you must have stung. Ted wouldn’t be the first divorced man to get even with an ex-wife through a child. Revenge isn’t a pretty emotion, but it’s very powerful.”

Grace looked at her hands. Her nails were short, well kept, businesslike, naked of polish. Hardly the hands of a femme fatale. And if Ted had been hurt by the divorce, he sure never showed it.

Looking back, their marriage had died long before the divorce legally buried it.

“Does it matter why Ted did what he did?” she asked finally.

“It might. Revenge can be a more powerful motivator than fear.”

“Then you’ll have to ask Ted when you find him.”

“Is that what you want?” Steele asked. “For us to find him?”

“If that’s what it takes to get Lane home safe, yes. But I was thinking more along the lines of having one of your, ah, employees go to Ensenada and bring Lane home. To be blunt, I want your best Latin American kidnap specialist-Joe Faroe.”

MANHATTAN

SUNDAY, 2:15 A.M.

“COVERTLY REMOVING LANE FROM Mexico is the most dangerous of your options,” Steele said neutrally.

“What’s the safest?” Grace asked instantly.

“Find Ted, find the money, and return it.” Steele ignored the phone ringing on his desk. “Tell me about Hector Rivas Osuna and Carlos Calderon.”

“They’re both rich and well known, but for different reasons. I suspect you know more about both men than I do.”

“My files don’t have anything new to teach me. You do, Judge Silva.”

Grace stared at the image of Steele while she organized facts in her mind. “Carlos Calderon is one of the most prominent men in Tijuana, and in northwest Mexico for that matter. He’s the oldest son of a major Mexican politician, a former minister of the interior. His father, Higoberto Calderon, was a member of the ruling class, a kingmaker, very wealthy and very powerful. He passed all of it on to Carlos.”

Steele nodded. “Hereditary power. Is that how Ted met Carlos? Mutual financial interests?”

Grace looked at her short nails. “Carlos and Ted have been friends and associates for a number of years. Carlos owns a bank as well as other businesses. My husband owns and runs an investment fund with worldwide holdings. Their interests naturally coincide.”

“From your description, Carlos and Ted are rather like mirror images across the border. Both are wealthy. Both are well connected politically. Both have known you for a long time.”

Silently Grace absorbed the fact that Steele knew she’d gone to high school with Carlos Calderon. “His grades were worse than mine.”

Steele smiled. “It was the same for everyone at Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart. To put it mildly, you excelled at what was and is an intellectually demanding private high school. Does Calderon still live in the United States?”

“No, but at least two of his sisters do. And his mother, I believe.”

“That leaves Hector Rivas Osuna,” Steele said. “How long have you known him?”

“If you know where I went to high school, you know that I met Hector for the first time today. Sorry, yesterday, by your time. It’s after midnight in Manhattan.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’m not as much into global time as you are.”

“Globalism is at the very heart of St. Kilda Consulting. What do you know about Hector?”

“He’s almost courtly for a thug, ugly, ruthless, intelligent, a careful dresser in his own cowboy style. He has the crude charisma that a few criminal leaders achieve. I suspect he had it before he went into crime. Triple testosterone. Whatever. He doesn’t respect anyone’s law except his own. He has frightening insight into everyone’s own special weakness. In my case, my son.”

“What about Hector’s business?”

“Put ROG into Google and see what you come up with,” Grace said roughly.

“I’m more interested in what you know.”

She shrugged, hating every second of the conversation, every word that dragged her closer to the barrio gutter her grandparents, parents, and she herself had spent lifetimes trying to crawl out of.

The gutter Lane was trapped in.

Two days.

And one of those was halfway gone.

“The Rivas clan has long been said to control the smuggling trade in Tijuana.” Grace’s words were as tight as the line of her shoulders. “That accusation has never risen above the level of hearsay, in Mexico or in America.”

“Rumors, shadows flickering on the cave wall,” Steele said. “You dismiss them. Is that because the rumors have never achieved judicial proof in either country?”

“What I believe personally and what I believe wearing a judge’s robe are two very different things. You’ve already heard my personal take on Hector.”

Criminal.

“Tell me about your view of the relationship between Calderon and Hector,” Steele said. “What do you know and what do you suspect?”

“What relationship? There isn’t one. Carlos is a businessman and-” Abruptly she stopped.

For a moment she looked past Steele to the glass walls. Far off to the north, through a gap in the picket line of lighted high-rise buildings, was the place where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had once stood. Their absence was a monument to the way the world could change from one moment to the next.

Her world certainly had.

“Sorry,” she said finally. “That was an old reflex, very deep. If you deny the monster in the closet, it doesn’t exist, does it?”

Steele waited with the patience of a former diplomat.

“Everyone,” Grace said, “agrees on one thing about St. Kilda Consulting-what happens here stays here.”

Steele nodded.

Her mouth turned down. “In any case, I doubt my former client is in a position to object if I talk out of school. Ten years ago, before I was appointed to the federal bench, Ted talked me into doing some legal work for Carlos Calderon.”

You owe me, Gracie. Without me, you wouldn’t be considered for a federal appointment. I’m raising your bastard. If you don’t want Lane to know, you’ll climb off your high horse and do something for me for a change.