“Can you give us a way to reach you?” I asked.
“I have a cell,” Seitz said. “And I’ll write down the address of the hostel where we’re staying until we leave next Wednesday.”
We each gave Seitz a card and then left him and returned to Acosta. I offered him the use of Private Rio’s lab and our forensics team, which were FBI-and Interpol-accredited. Acosta politely but firmly turned me down.
“We’re more than capable of handling a crime scene, Mr. Morgan,” he said. “You’ll have the parents contact me?”
“Of course.”
Again with a police escort, we left the area, climbing back toward the ski lift that was our escape from the slum. It wasn’t until we were aboard one of the red gondolas that the claustrophobic feeling left me.
“One good thing?” Tavia said.
“What’s that?”
“No one seems to know who they really are.”
“I’m praying you’re right, but then why would they have been targeted?”
I pulled out my cell phone, looked at it and then at the head of Private Rio.
“These aren’t going to be easy calls,” I said.
“I imagine they won’t be,” she said. “My offer’s still there to talk with Questa’s and Alvarez’s wives.”
“Appreciate it, but I can be a big boy when I have to be.”
“Really?” she teased. “I’ve never once noticed.”
“And here I thought you were a world-class investigator.”
She tickled me. I winked at her and dialed a U.S. phone number with a 650 area code.
Chapter 13
THE PALO ALTO, California, phone rang three times before going to voice mail. A robotic female voice repeated the phone number, instructed me to leave a message after the beep.
“Andrew, it’s Jack Morgan,” I said. “Sorry to use your personal line, but please call me. It concerns the girls.”
Ten minutes later, after Tavia and I had left the gondola and climbed down the hill to look for a cab, my phone rang.
“Andrew?”
“It’s Cherie, Jack,” the girls’ mother said. “Are they sick or something? I told them that the water could be—”
“Cherie,” I said, interrupting. “The girls were taken by armed men earlier this evening. Their bodyguards, my men Alvarez and Questa, were shot and killed.”
“What…” Cherie replied in a soft, bewildered voice that trailed off.
I was starting to explain exactly what had happened when she cut me off, screeching at me, “Everyone said you and Private were the best! You told me to my face that you were the best! But the goddamned best would not have let this happen! Not to my babies!”
“No, Cherie, you’re right,” I said evenly. “I said we were the best, and today that’s not true. My men were ambushed by snipers. There was no warning, just two shots out of the blue. When I get off the phone with you, I have to call their wives and families and explain that they’re dead and never coming back, which is not the case with your girls. We are going to get them back.”
“How?” she demanded curtly.
“I don’t know yet, Cherie, but I promise you and Andrew that I will find them and bring them back to you.”
“Unless they’re already dead.”
“You can’t think that way.”
There was another long pause. I heard her crying softly.
“What is it?” she asked at last. “Ransom?”
“I would assume so, but no one’s been contacted yet as far as I know.”
“I thought you were going to give them aliases.”
“We did,” I said. “And no one we’ve spoken to has mentioned the family name. Everyone still believes they’re the Warren girls from Ohio.”
“Somebody doesn’t,” Cherie said. “This can’t be a coincidence.”
“How do you want me to handle their identity in the future?” I asked.
“Keep our name out of it as long as you can,” she said. “I have to tell Andy now. He told me that Rio was the wrong place for them to be, and I…I wouldn’t listen.”
“I can call him,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “He needs to hear this from me. And then, no doubt, we’ll be on our way to Rio in the jet. Immediately.”
My brow furrowed as I said, “Honestly, Cherie, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea right—”
“Sorry, Jack,” she said. “But when it comes down to it, the money aside, our daughters are all Andy and I really have.”
She hung up just as a cab pulled over. I climbed in after Tavia and made the calls to Alvarez’s and Questa’s widows. They were devastated. Questa’s wife collapsed and her sister told me she was taking her to the hospital. After hanging up, I leaned my head back against the rest, closed my eyes, and groaned.
Tavia said sympathetically, “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”
“Twice.”
“Lot of stress,” she said.
“Muito,” I said. A lot.
“I think I know how you could relieve some of that stress,” she said quietly.