I liked Skoczinsky well enough, I did. I didn’t have any particular urge to do the man harm . . . not until now. Right then I could’ve cheerfully pounded his head to a bloody pulp against the table without an ounce of remorse. Narrowing my eyes silently, I waited. It was something I was good at by now. The poker face I wore came with long years of practice, but card games had little to do with it.
Regardless, Saul seemed to take the hint. Uneasily, he shifted a bit in the chair. “One of the girls in the International Mall spotted someone yesterday who looked like the picture—not exactly, but close enough. One green eye, one blue. Hair was brown, not blond, but that wouldn’t be unusual. A lot of blonds get darker hair as they age. Kid looked about sixteen or seventeen, as Lukas would be. Paloma’s young, nineteen, but smarter than most anyone has a right to be. I trust in her. If she says he matched our specs, then he did.”
I was stunned, literally. A hammer slamming between my eyes wouldn’t have produced a much different reaction. A mall—he’d been in a mall. How could that be? It was as if the Holy Grail had shown up in a crane-operated arcade machine, surrounded by stuffed animals with the mechanical claw poised right above it. I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“In fact,” he continued, “I trust her enough to have followed him. She called me and I was there in fifteen. I picked them up before they hit the parking lot.”
“Them?” I was surprised my vocal cords were still working. For that matter I was surprised any of me was still working.
“It looked like he was on some sort of field trip.” He frowned, striking his fork lightly against the edge of his plate. “Some sort.” I could tell something had puzzled him as he’d watched the group. Before I could ask what, he elaborated. “There were fifteen of them—quiet, well behaved. Weirdly so. Not at all like normal kids turned loose in a mall. I thought private school maybe, something parochial with those ruler-wielding nuns.” Shaking his head, he instantly refuted his own theory. “But that wasn’t it. Their teachers weren’t nuns, that’s for damn sure. Not unless they were drill sergeants on their days off. These guys looked like guards. Yeah, sure, they were wearing typical teacher crap. Polyester blazers, cheap button downs, bad shoes. But it was just a look. Whatever link they have to the educational system is damn slim at best. Most of them looked like you.” He grimaced and added, “Sorry, minus the polyester of course.”
“Thugs, in other words.” With a shrug, I cut off whatever else he was going to say. That was just Saul, thinking the fashion commentary was more of an insult than comparing me to a chainik, a professional bully. I knew what I was. It would be rather futile to get pissed off when someone pointed it out. Plus, Saul was more than on the shady side himself when it came to “physical persuasion.” He simply concealed his a little better than I did. Maybe it was all about fashion sense. “Where’d they go?”
“That’s where it gets weirder.” Saul’s gaze was frank on mine. “Lukas . . . If this is Lukas, he wasn’t the victim of an ordinary child abduction. At least not ordinary in any sense I’ve seen before. They came to the mall in two vans, not a bus. I followed them about two and a half hours west to their school. Hell, if you could call it that. It was more like a compound, a fucking miniscule military base.” While my appetite had long disappeared, his was still in full force. Efficiently rolling another fajita, he made quick work of half of it in two bites. “I looked it over all I could, which wasn’t much. They got a gate straight out of Dade Correctional and a wall that would put that one in China to shame. The president should have their security.”
What did that mean? What did all of this mean? “Government?” I couldn’t imagine how the hell the government could be involved in Lukas’s disappearance. That made no sense whatsoever.
“That’s what I thought at first, but . . .” The waitress chose that moment to come back for a second round of water and flirting. The black scowl and flash of bared teeth I turned on her had her rethinking that in a hurry. Saul watched her go with a wistful glint in his eyes, but he knew better than to complain. Knowing how pivotal a moment this was for me and how unexpected, he also knew I was hanging on to my control by a fast-unraveling thread. “Keep it together,” he ordered quietly. “We might finally be there, so don’t lose it, okay? Stay with me.”