“She was at the airport,” Janine Bandencoop finally said.

Something pinched inside my gut. “Who was?”

“The girl you’re describing,” she said. “I know she came from San Diego.”

I stepped over Landon, who’d passed out again on the floor, and sat down on the sofa opposite her.

She leaned back in the sofa, as if I might strike her. When she realized I wasn’t going to, she took another breath. “I don’t know who brought her there or how she got there.”

“She was just left there?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I was instructed where to pick her up.”

“But you had to pay for her,” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

“The payment was made before she arrived,” she said.

“How?”

“I was given an account,” she said, the lines at the corners of her mouth tight. “I deposited the money there.”

“How much?”

“I don’t recall.”

I steadied my breathing. “So you met her at the airport.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I’d already arranged the match with the family in Minnesota. We arranged a meeting in a hotel. It was the same day. The girl was with me for less than an hour.”

I swallowed hard, choking down the urge to smash her head into the glass table. “So you met the Corzines then?”

She shook her head. “No. I was already gone by the time they arrived to pick her up.”

“I don’t understand.”

She folded her arms around herself again. “I did not have direct contact with the family. I placed her in a hotel room and then left. The family was then responsible for picking her up.”

I stared at her. “Sounds like you’ve got the system down.”

She didn’t say anything.

“So then what? You go back and make sure the room’s empty? The package has been delivered?”

She stayed quiet.

She didn’t need to answer. I knew I was close enough to getting it right. She was covering her tracks and took enough safeguards to make sure she kept her distance. It was what good criminals did.

“What did my daughter say to you in the time you were with her?” I said, my jaw clenched, my hands balled into fists.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Not a word. She was entirely silent.”

“Did you try to talk to her?”

She nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t respond. She barely looked at me. She may have been giving something to calm her nerves.”

I was being bombarded with emotions. I saw Elizabeth, sitting in the Phoenix airport, alone. Snatched from our front yard, driven across the desert, left by herself, then picked up by some woman she’d never seen before. Dropped at another hotel to be picked up by more people she didn’t know. It was nearly suffocating, letting the pictures form in my head.

I cleared my throat. “So you drove her to the hotel? Did she want to go?”

She thought for a moment. “She seemed indifferent. She didn’t speak. But she didn’t resist. She did what I asked. We left the airport, got in the car and drove to the hotel. I explained to her that the family she would be going with would be taking her to Minnesota.”

“Then what?”

She shrugged. “We went to the hotel.”

“But you said you didn’t meet the family.”

Her lips twitched. “Correct.”

I didn’t say anything.

She fidgeted with her hands. “I put her in the hotel room so she could wait for the family.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You left her alone in the room.”

“For just a few minutes, yes.”

I stared down at the floor for a minute. A million questions were running through my head. Why didn’t Elizabeth try to get away? Why didn’t she ask someone for help at the airport? Why didn’t she pick up the hotel phone? I could think of a hundred ways in which she could’ve tried to get away. I had to remind myself, though, that she was young, she’d been told we were dead and that she was probably in shock. But it still frustrated me. And it still didn’t answer the question as to who had taken her from the yard and what happened in between that moment and when she was told we were gone. The more things I was able to unearth, the more questions were left unanswered.

I looked up again at Janine Bandencoop. “So then they just picked her up and that was it?”

She nodded. “Yes. I made sure they showed up. I saw them pull up at the hotel. Then I left.”

“How’d they get into the room?”

“They were instructed to ask at the front desk for an envelope,” she said. “I’d left a key card to the room for them.”

Neat and clean. And awful.

I took another deep breath and stared across the table at her until she started to squirm.

“I want the account information,” I said.

“The what?”

“The account information,” I repeated. “The account that you paid into to buy my daughter in order to sell her.”

“I told you,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have…”

“I want the fucking account information!” I screamed at her.

She jerked back in the sofa, clearly startled.

“I don’t give a shit what you have to do,” I said, lowering my voice again. “But you will find that account information.”

“I never had a name,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I never had a name.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I want the account number. I want the initial email or whatever that came to you that indicated someone had my daughter and was offering her to you.”

“That was nearly a decade ago,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m fucking aware of that,” I said, staring at her. “I know exactly how long she was gone.”

She looked away from me.

“So I want anything related to my daughter,” I said. “Emails, message board notes, bank account numbers, the dollar amounts. All of it. Everything you have.”

I saw her teeth grinding, her jaw sliding back and forth. Her hands shook in her lap. She was scared of me. And she needed to be.

“It’ll take me some time to come up with the information,” she said. “I don’t keep records. I don’t keep files.”

“You have until tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow’s impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do that.”

“You have until tomorrow,” I said. “Or I bring my federal agent friend in here and we start tracking every fucking child you’ve ever bought and sold. You don’t believe me?” I smiled at her. “Check my name on the Internet. See how many kids I’ve found over the last few years. Read the rumors about what I’ve done to help families.” I paused. “And know that most of the rumors, especially the ones where I’ve hurt people to find who I was looking for, are true.” I glanced down at Landon. “You think he looks bad now?” I shook my head. “You won’t believe what I’ll do to him if I don’t get what I want from you.” I stood. “So. Tomorrow.”

“But I just can’t…”

“Then you’re going to jail tomorrow and your boys will end up in a ravine somewhere,” I said, staring at her. “It’s that simple.”

Her eyes moved to her son, still passed out on the floor.

I pulled my wallet from my pocket and dropped my card with my name and number on the table. “Tomorrow.”

“And if I get it to you,” she said, looking up me nervously. “If I get it to you, then you’ll leave me alone? No police, no FBI?”

I knew she wasn’t stupid. If she’d been moving kids for at least a decade, she wasn’t stupid. There were too many factors involved that could’ve gotten her caught if she was stupid. So she was smart in that way.

But I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question.

“I just want the information on my daughter,” I said, heading for the door.

“So we have a deal then?” she said, standing up. “I get you what you want and you go away and no one else gets involved?”

I opened the door. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she could’ve done all of this while being stupid.

“That’s right,” I lied. “No one else gets involved.”

TWENTY ONE

The other son was gone when I walked outside, either licking his wounds or looking to take revenge against me. I eyed the cul-de-sac carefully, checked in the back of the rental before I got in before driving off slowly. He was nowhere to be found.