Cry No More Read online

  Susanna . . . and True?

  It made sense. She was going solely on instinct now, without a shred of corroborating evidence, but it made sense.

  She took one of the pistols out of the shopping bag, then put the shopping bag in the floorboard on the other side of her legs.

  “What’s wrong?” Rip asked. “Who was that?”

  “A man named Diaz.”

  He heaved a weary sigh. “I’ve heard about him.”

  “How?”

  “I overheard Susanna and True talking.” Rip stared out the window. “I’m guessing he knows about Susanna.”

  Startled, Milla stared at him, and kept her hand on the pistol. He rubbed his eyes. “She’s careless sometimes. She says things she shouldn’t, forgets how sound carries. Her home office, for example, seems to amplify sound. I’ve overheard conversations for years, but only in the past few months have things started to come together for me. She was talking to him on the phone one day, and—I don’t remember exactly what she said, but the meaning was pretty clear. Something about how much money they’d earned with the babies, though the hullabaloo about Justin had nearly gotten them caught. Earned. She actually said they earned the money.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Milla asked. “Go to the cops?”

  “Lack of evidence. Hell, no evidence. Just some phone calls that I heard only her side of. She asked True if he was sure this Diaz guy was coming up empty and they didn’t have to worry. I don’t know what True said, but it was obvious he took Diaz seriously. So I did some investigating on my own, did more eavesdropping, and found out there was going to be a transfer of some kind of cargo behind the church in Guadalupe. I know a few hard-asses in Mexico myself. I contacted one of them, told him Diaz would appreciate knowing about this, hoped it worked. Then I called you, used a fake accent and told you Diaz would be there. I didn’t know for sure, but there was a possibility. Guess I was right, huh?”

  Rip was the anonymous caller. He had to be; otherwise he couldn’t have known about that night. “He was there,” she said, her throat tight.

  Rip bowed his head. “When I found out what she’d done . . . I’ve loved that woman for twenty years, and I never knew her. It was the money, I guess. We were almost bankrupted paying back our student loans, credit card bills, you name it. She isn’t good with a budget. I’m not either, truth be told. That’s why we went to Mexico, to get away from the bill collectors for a year. The money situation got much better that year, and now I know why. She was selling babies. Hell, she delivered them, she knew their sex, age, general health.”

  And the poor Mexican women had traveled considerable distances to reach the clinic so they could have a real doctor in attendance during birth. The kidnappings would have been spread out over a sizable area, and who would ever think to ask who had delivered the babies? Since Susanna had had no contact with them once they left the clinic, she had never even blipped on the radar of suspicion.

  “She sold Justin,” Rip continued. “They got a lot of money for him. I’m sorry, Milla, I don’t know where they sent him. I’ve gone through all of her paperwork, but there’s nothing about what happened to the babies. I don’t think she cared.” Tears gathered in his eyes. “She said they’d kept you busy chasing your own tail for ten years. They’ve been hindering you every way they could.”

  “What are you going to do?” Milla asked, her voice thin. This hurt. She was shocked and hurt and angry. Susanna was lucky she wasn’t within reach at that moment, or Milla would have done physical damage to her.

  “I don’t know. Divorce, obviously. I haven’t left her because I wanted to be in a position to snoop. Can I testify against her? I don’t know if I can make myself do it.”

  “Diaz thinks she’s involved with black market organ transplants, that they’re killing people and selling their organs.”

  Rip stared at her, his mouth working soundlessly. Finally he managed to say, “She—she couldn’t do that. That’s beyond—”

  “The ‘cargo’ that was transferred in Guadalupe that night was a person.”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” All color washed out of Rip’s face and he closed his eyes. He looked as if he was going to vomit.

  Milla felt as if she might be sick, too. She checked the time and a spurt of adrenaline had her starting the car with quick, jerky movements. “We have to get to the cantina. Pavón might already be there.”

  “I thought you said he probably wouldn’t—”

  “There’s always a chance.”

  23

  Pavón reached the Blue Pig early; he wanted to be here when the bitch arrived, he wanted to watch her wait for him. Talking to her on the telephone had made his heart beat faster, and the excitement had given him an ache in the crotch that he wanted to rub. He had waited and waited, hiding out in that foul boat, every day that he spent cowering like a little girl eating at his soul. He needed to find out where Diaz was before he made a move on the woman, and that was not easy.

  But fortune had at last smiled on him. One of the fishermen mentioned to his cousin that the tracker Diaz had been to Matamoros looking for Enrique Guerrero. The news was both frightening and reassuring: it was good because this fisherman also said that Enrique had fled south, from which Pavón could assume that Diaz had followed; it was bad because he had no doubt Diaz would find Enrique, who could not be trusted to keep his mouth shut about anything. He would sell his mother to the devil to keep himself safe, though with Lola as a mother, one couldn’t truly blame him. Still, Pavón had to assume that what Lorenzo had known, Enrique knew. And what Enrique knew, Diaz would shortly know.

  There could not be a better time to sever the relationship with Gallagher, and disappear for good. There was a chance that Diaz would be content to go after the bigger fish, and leave the minnows alone. But he had a reputation for being both ruthless and relentless, letting no one escape, and Pavón couldn’t take the chance of looking up one day and coming face-to-face with that devil. His original plan was better, to take the woman and use her as bait to catch and kill Diaz. Only then would he truly be safe.

  So he sat in the cantina and waited—and waited, consoling himself with several bottles of Victoria beer. Where was she? Was he so unimportant to her that she wouldn’t bother to walk across the border to see him? He’d made it as easy for her as possible, short of presenting himself at her front door.

  He was on his fourth bottle of beer before he realized that perhaps she would not come into the cantina. Only whores did, or women looking for trouble. A good woman did not, and the bitch was a good woman.

  Swearing to himself, he got to his feet and was halfway across the floor to the front door when he suddenly reversed himself and went to the back. Fool! What if she was parked directly outside? That would be foolish of her, but it was possible. He definitely wanted to see her before she saw him, so he would go out the back door.

  He worked his way around, which was not easy, because here the buildings had been built flush against one another and he had to walk through the narrow, smelly back alley to the end of the street, then double back. He stayed in the shadows against the buildings and near other people as well; she would be looking for a lone man, not a group. Luckily this street teemed with people, especially at night, and most of them were men of the type a good woman would not like to meet.

  He moved carefully. She might be parked on the other side of the street, or facing him. He had to examine each vehicle—there! And so conveniently parked, on this side of the street, with her back to him.

  It had to be her. It was a woman with light-colored curly hair, so light a brown that it was almost blond. And the curls; he especially remembered the curls. Even at night and in silhouette they seemed to float around her head with a life of their own; they looked as soft and feathery as a baby chick. He wondered if her lower hair was as curly, and chuckled to himself because he would soon find out.

  For ten years he had not fucked a woman who was not a whore—no