Nate smiled sadly. “I know. Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “There’s a medical bag on her chair—I didn’t go through it, but there may be DNA evidence that tracks to the missing girls. And I found this.”
Nate showed her a business card. It was high-quality card stock, blank except for a handwritten phone number. “We’ll trace this,” he said. “May not lead anywhere.”
Neither of them believed that.
Siobhan rushed up to them. “We are so close to finding Mari! And you’re dragging your feet. What are we still doing here? What’s going on? Shouldn’t we go to the hospital? Call Angelo? Something?”
Nate said, “We are doing this the right way. Do not call Angelo—we get a warrant to trace his phone and find out where he is, then hopefully we get to Marisol as well.”
“What? She’s not a criminal,” Siobhan said.
“We didn’t say she was,” Lucy said. “She’s a victim, but she’s also in danger. And I don’t want either her or Angelo to know that the FBI is looking for her. Not until we bring her into protective custody.” She put her hand on Siobhan’s arm. “Trust me, Siobhan. We know what we’re doing. If she is so scared of the authorities that she wouldn’t go to them to save her sister, that she would abandon her baby at a church, she’s not going to believe we’re here to help her if we talk to her on the phone. We find her, convince her. You can help with that, Siobhan. But you need to do exactly what we say.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. But she didn’t look happy.
*
Lucy and Nate met with Assistant Sheriff Adam Villines in his office.
“Thank you for coming down again, I know it’s a long drive,” Villines said after Lucy introduced him to Nate. “And I appreciate the heads-up about Loretta Martinez. How did you track her down?”
“Siobhan Walsh, the photojournalist, told us she received an anonymous tip.”
“Do you believe her?”
“No,” Lucy said. Nate raised an eyebrow. “I should clarify, I believe she received a credible tip, and I didn’t push her to tell me who it came from. I’m certain it was the reporter Noah and I spoke with earlier this week. They’re friends.” She’d dug around a bit last night when she couldn’t sleep and learned Siobhan and Eric Barrow were the same age and had both been raised in northern Virginia. It stood to reason that they had known each other since high school.
“Were you able to get a guard on Martinez?” Lucy asked. “Our resident agency is working on minimal staff right now, but Noah said they can take over tomorrow.”
“We can cover her for the next twenty-four hours. Are you putting her under arrest?”
“Most likely, but I’m going to wait to hear her prognosis and see if I can get more information from her. And jurisdictional issues are between you and my boss,” Lucy said. “I don’t care who prosecutes her or which facility she’s housed in. I just need her to talk.”
“I spoke with the hospital staff. She’s already in surgery. X-rays showed multiple hairline fractures on her ribs and internal bleeding. She was unresponsive by the time she arrived at the hospital. You very well could have saved her life by showing up when you did.”
“Luck.”
“Or divine intervention,” he said.
Lucy believed, but she didn’t have any sympathy for Loretta and didn’t know if she wanted her to survive … except to interrogate her for information. She felt cold, and the fact that she had no remorse for these cold feelings disturbed her.
She said, “You called Noah with information. He’s been at the courthouse all afternoon and since we were here he asked us to stop by.”
“You might think this is odd, but if you knew my brother-in-law, you would understand.”
“You’ve lost us already,” Nate said. “Your brother-in-law?”