Cry No More Read online

  Milla’s jaw set and she stared blindly across the night-darkened cemetery. She couldn’t let herself think that he might not be alive, so instead she imagined that he was living a normal, happy life, that he’d been found or bought or adopted by people who loved him and were taking good care of him.

  That was the theory, anyway, that he’d been stolen and sold to an illegal adoption ring that provided black-market babies to people in the States and Canada who wanted to adopt. These people had no idea the children they’d adopted had been stolen, that families had been devastated and parents left bereft. She tried to believe that. She tried to comfort herself by imagining Justin playing, growing, laughing. The not knowing for certain what had happened to him was the worst, and anything was better than thinking he was dead.

  So many of the stolen babies did die. They were stuffed into car trunks to be smuggled across the border, and if the heat killed eight out of ten, well, the ten hadn’t cost anything but effort, and the two remaining ones could be sold for ten, twenty thousand dollars each, maybe even more, depending on who wanted a baby and how much they could afford. The Federales had tried to comfort her by telling her that extra care would be taken with Justin because he was blond and blue-eyed, and therefore worth more. Oddly, it was a comfort, though her heart ached for the tiny Hispanic babies who wouldn’t receive that extra care because they were dark.

  But what if—what if he was one of the unlucky ones? Did the bastards who trafficked in stolen babies and ruptured lives even take the time to bury their tiny victims? Or did they just toss them in a ditch somewhere, to be eaten by—

  No. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t let the gruesome thought finish forming in her mind. If she did, then she would lose control, and that was the one thing she absolutely couldn’t do right now. If the tip played out and someone actually showed up at this secret rendezvous, she had to be ready.

  Scanning the cemetery once more, she picked out her destination tombstone, one heavier and more ornate than the others, with a nice thick base that would completely conceal her if she was lying down. She got down on her stomach and belly-crawled the rest of the way, lying prone and positioning herself behind the tombstone so that she was at a slight angle and could easily move her head just a little to the right and see the entire width of the church, as well as down the right side of it. Now all she had to do was wait.

  The minute hand on her watch crawled around. The hour hand moved to eleven, then past. Finally, at eleven thirty-five, she heard the sound of a car engine. She was immediately alert, though she knew it could just be a farmer heading home from the cantina. She watched closely, but there was no flash of headlights, just the sound of the engine growing closer and closer.

  The dark hulk of a car turned at the far back corner of the church, and crawled to a stop about a third of the way down.

  Milla drew a deep breath and tried to control the sudden leap of her heart. Most of the time these tips led to nothing but a wild-goose chase, but this time the geese were actually within reach. With any luck, she was about to get her hands on Diaz.

  3

  With the scope she could see there were two men in the car, and her heart sank. Obviously others were supposed to join them, unless the meeting consisted of the two men sitting in the car talking to each other, which she doubted. She studied the two in the weird green light of the scope, but they remained in the car and she couldn’t get a good look at their features.

  She hoped Brian followed the same reasoning that she had and stayed in place. She hadn’t spotted him, though she had looked. Wherever he’d hidden himself, he had done a good job of it.

  The minutes ticked past, and she still didn’t see Brian. Good. He thought the same thing she did, that someone else would be arriving soon.

  Almost ten minutes later, she heard another car engine. The vehicle pulled slightly past the church, then backed into the narrow lane so it was trunk to trunk with the other car.

  Two men got out of the second car. The doors on the first car opened, and those two men got out as well.

  Milla trained her scope on the newcomers as they approached, facing her. The driver was a tall, thin mestizo, his black hair worn long and slicked back in a ponytail. The passenger was somewhat shorter, stockier. The moment she focused on him, her blood ran cold.

  For ten years she’d tracked the bastard. The day Justin had been stolen was mostly a blurred horror in her mind; the days afterward, as she fought for her life in the tiny rural clinic, were lost forever. But in the strange way time had of sometimes standing still, she had a few perfect, freeze-frame memories of the attack, and especially the face of the man who had wrenched Justin from her arms.

  She wouldn’t recognize her little boy now, but the man who had taken him . . . she’d recognize him anywhere. She clearly remembered the sensation of his eyeball popping under her digging, clawing fingernails, remembered the bloody furrows she had raked down his left cheek. She had maimed him, marked him, and she was viciously glad. No matter how the bastard aged, she would always know him by the damage she had done to his face.

  After ten years, he was walking straight toward her. His left eye socket was empty, the lid scarred and twisted. Two deep lines were clawed straight down his face.

  It was him.

  She could barely breathe. Her lungs ached; her throat ached; her vision blurred with rage.

  Don’t move if there are more than two of them, she’d told Brian. He was smart; no way would he figure just the two of them could handle four men, all of whom were possibly, probably, armed.

  But the bastard was here, right in front of her. She’d known this could happen, and still the force of her reaction was so violent it almost blinded her. Red mist swam in her vision, and there was a roaring in her ears.

  Her muscles were shaking with intensity. She wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands. A small part of her brain knew it was insanity, but almost as if her hand didn’t belong to her, she felt it reaching for the pistol in her pocket, and she began to rise.

  She never even made it to her knees. Something hard and heavy hit her in the middle of the back and smashed her to the ground, smothering all movement. Several things happened simultaneously, so fast she had no time to react. Legs hooked around her legs and held them tight, a hand clamped over her mouth and jerked her head back, and an iron-hard arm locked around her throat. In what felt like a fraction of a second, she was immobilized.

  “Move or make a sound, and I’ll snap your neck.”

  The voice was cold and menacing, the words spoken so low she could barely hear them, but she understood them perfectly. The arm cutting off her oxygen was plain enough on its own. She was pinned to the ground, unable even to bring her hands up to defend herself.

  Dizzily she tried to think. Was this a scout, maybe, sent ahead to make certain the meeting place was unobserved? But if it was, he would have seen Brian, too, and common sense would have dictated he take out Brian first. Maybe he had. Maybe Brian was lying dead on the other side of the cemetery, his throat cut or his neck broken. But if this was a scout, why had he told her not to make any noise?

  He couldn’t be with the four men. Whatever his interest was in the meeting, he was there for his own reasons. So maybe Brian was still alive, and maybe, if she was very still, she’d make it through with her spinal cord still intact.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred and she managed a small gasp. The arm around her throat loosened the tiniest fraction, but it was enough for her to drag in some air.

  Her head was arched back at such an angle she could see the four men only out of the corners of her eyes, and without the night-vision scope she couldn’t make out details. They had opened the trunks on both cars, and two of them now were dragging something out of the trunk of the second car and transferring it to the other trunk.

  The rock in her pocket was digging into the sensitive area where her leg joined her hip. Her breasts were flattened painfully into the dirt, a