In Desperation (3 page)

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

S
tartled from sleep, Jack Gannon was trying to grasp why he'd awakened and where he was when the bedside phone rang again.

Hotel. Mexico. Still in Juarez.

He answered.

“
Buenos días,
Señor Gannon. As requested, this is your wake-up call. Your breakfast will be delivered shortly.”

“Thank you.”

Groaning, he hung up and reached for his cell phone to check for messages. Was there anything from Isabel, the other WPA bureaus or headquarters in New York?

Nope. Nada.

He shaved, showered and had just finished dressing when his breakfast arrived at the same time as his cell phone rang. Gannon set the tray on the desk, gave the server a tip and took his call.

“Jack, this is Isabel Luna. I've learned from a good source that a power struggle is going to explode within one of the major cartels and that assassins may be used.”

“Do you know where or when?”

“Not for a few days at least. I'm trying to get more information. Can you meet me at
El Heraldo
at 9:00 a.m.?”

Gannon glanced at the bedside clock. He had time to do some work.

“I'll be there.”

This could be the key to getting access to a cartel assassin, but he decided against alerting his editor in New York.

Better hold off until he had something nailed down.

He switched on his laptop and took a hit of coffee. As he ate his toast, sliced bananas and oranges, he reviewed the WPA's summary for the pickup of his last story. His profile of Juarez's drug war victims and the morgue was used by some two thousand English-language newspapers and websites in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, parts of Africa, Europe, Central and South America and the Caribbean. The
Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Vancouver Sun
,
Irish Times, Sydney Morning Herald
and
South China Morning Post
were among those who gave it front-page play.

Not bad, he thought, checking his email box for the address tag at the end of his story. Most reporters hated this feature because, while much of the spam was filtered, what you mostly got were emails from religious nuts, political zealots, scam artists, idiots and nutcases. A story rarely yielded a solid lead to another story, but it did happen.

You had to check.

Typically for Gannon, an article would attract about a hundred emails. He was adept at getting through them.
Like panning for gold
. He'd sorted about half, flagged three to consider later. Before continuing he reached for his coffee and locked onto the subject line of one email:

Your Sister Cora Needs Your Help Now.

He froze.

Cora? After so many years?

He set his coffee down, swallowed, then opened the email.

 

Dear Jack:

Reaching out to you like this is extremely hard, but above all I want you to know that in my heart for all these years I thought of you, Mom and Dad every day since I left Buffalo. Losing touch with you was one of the most painful mistakes I've made in my rocky life. You don't know how many times I came close to calling you but I couldn't find the strength.

I told myself I was stupid and as time went by I wanted more than anything to call you, to try to make things right with my family, to be sure you knew everything about me before it was too late. I had planned to do that once I started to get my life together and in the last few years I was getting things together, I really was.

Jack, I can never make up for hurting you or the lost years and I understand if you hate me and ignore my plea for help.

But I pray to God you won't.

I'm in trouble, Jack. It's an urgent matter of life and death and I believe you're the only one who can help me. This is not a hoax. I am your sister, and I've been following your reporting career for all these years. I was the one who told you to follow your dream, took you to the library and got Mom and Dad to buy you that old Tandy computer so you could write. And now you're with the World Press Alliance traveling the globe. I'm so proud of you but I need your help.

Jack, I'm begging you to contact me as soon as possible.

God bless you.

Your big sister,

Cora

 

Gannon felt the little hairs at the back of his neck stand up.

Cora.

It had been more than twenty years since she had walked out of their lives. Anger, love and unease swept through him as he looked at the contact information she'd left: email, cell phone, home phone, office phone and home address.

She was living in suburban Phoenix.

Well, to hell with her,
he thought.
It was too late. Mom and Dad were dead. They'd died brokenhearted. The wounds were too deep. Besides, she probably wanted money, or an organ, or something
.

Call her
.

Because there was a time he'd loved her with all his heart. It didn't matter that she had left his life; the truth was she'd had an effect on it. The truth was, no matter what, she was his sister.

I'm in trouble, Jack. It's an urgent matter of life and death…

Before he realized it, he was gripping his cell phone and calling. He stepped out onto his balcony and into the morning heat bathing the city as the line clicked through.

“Hello.”

A woman had answered.

“Cora?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, emotion rising in her voice. “Is this Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, is that really you?”

He went numb at the sound of her voice, somehow different with the passing of time, yet somehow the same as it pulled him back across two decades to Buffalo.

He is twelve and trembling in his bedroom; his heart is aching. He flinches as doors slam and screaming rages in an Armageddon between Cora, Mom and Dad.

“We know you're taking drugs, Cora!”

“You don't know anything! Stay out my life! I'm almost eighteen!”

“Please, honey, listen! We love you!”

“I'm leaving to live my own life! I'm never coming back!”

Cora left, all right. And no matter what they did, or how hard they searched, they never saw her again.

She'd become a ghost.

Now that ghost was pleading across a lifetime, over a phone line between Phoenix and Juarez, Mexico.

“Jack?”

“Yes, I got your email.”

A long crackling filled the chasm that yawned between them.

“Jack, they took my daughter! Help me!”

“Your daughter? You have a daughter?”

“Yes, and two men dressed like police officers came to our house last night and took her!”

“Call the police.”

“
No!
They said they'd kill her if I went to the police!”

“What?”

“They said the man I work for owes them a lot of money.”

“Who do you work for? What the hell are you involved in?”

“Listen, I think the kidnappers are drug dealers. It's like the stuff you're writing about now in Mexico.”

“Damn it, Cora, are you still screwed up with drugs after all this time?”

“No, Jack, I've put that behind me. I'm a secretary for a courier company. Jack, I don't know why they took my daughter!”

“What about your husband? What's he doing to help?”

“I'm not married.” Cora released a great sob as she continued. “I don't know why they took Tilly. That's her name, Tilly. She's all I have!”

It was their grandmother's name.

“She's my little girl. She's eleven years old and they said they'll kill her if I don't help them get their money back. Help us, please! I don't know what to do, or who to turn to!”

Gannon hesitated.

“Jack, she's your niece!”

My niece
.

Gannon's breathing quickened as he looked out at Juarez, trying to comprehend what was happening. In a matter of minutes, he'd gone from being alone to having two people in his life.

Two people who desperately needed him now.

It was a ninety-minute flight from El Paso to Phoenix.

He could be there in a few hours.

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

F
our hours after Cora's call, Gannon's Southwest flight landed in Phoenix. Now, as his 737 taxied to the gate, he resumed questioning the wisdom of setting aside his story in Mexico to rush to Arizona.

Am I making a mistake?

He had tried to reduce his risk. Before lifting off, he'd called Isabel Luna at
El Heraldo,
telling her that he had to leave Juarez for an urgent personal matter in the U.S. Now, in the seconds before the pilot cut the engines, Gannon emailed Melody Lyon in New York, informing her that he'd temporarily left his assignment to fly to Phoenix. He knew that wouldn't go over well and by the time he stepped from the jet, Lyon had called him to confirm it.

“What the hell are you doing in Phoenix? Your assignment's in Juarez.”

“Something came up.”

“Who authorized this trip?”

“I'll pay for it.”

“I don't care. I want you in Mexico. That's your story.”

“I know, but—”

“I was under the impression that you were working on securing the assassin's profile. The WPA needs that
story, Jack. The Associated Press and Reuters have been killing us. Why are you in Phoenix?”

He couldn't reveal the truth—damn it, not yet. Hard-pressed, he searched the terminal for an answer.

“I have an inside lead on a possible kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping in Phoenix? I haven't seen anything on it.”

“No one knows. It's just emerging.”

“Did you alert our bureau there?”

“No. Not yet. Melody, don't tell anyone anything yet. Let me follow this.”

“Is this connected to the drug wars?”

“Maybe. I'm not sure what this is. I have to check it out. If it falls through, I'll be back in Juarez tonight. All I'm asking for is a little time, please.”

“I'll give you twenty-four hours and I want updates, Jack.”

As Gannon's cab wove through the east valley suburbs, doubt continued gnawing at him. Ever since he'd broken a global exclusive out of South America and the Caribbean a few months ago, senior WPA editors had been pressuring him to deliver another big story.

So what was he doing here? Was he making a mistake by ignoring a potentially huge story out of Mexico?

And for what?

Cora.

It was tearing him apart. His sister was a stranger to him. She was messed up when she'd run away from their family. It had devastated their parents. How could he forgive her for what she'd done?

And now this.

What if she was still messed up?

But she had found him, now, after all this time. Something he'd buried deep and long ago warmed to that fact. And she had a daughter, his niece. How could he turn his back on them? They were family. That's what he told himself as his cab turned down Cora's street and came
to a creaky stop in front of her address. Gannon paid the driver, approached the house with his stomach tensing and rang the bell.

Twenty-two years since he'd seen her
.

The door opened to a woman in her late thirties.

Cora.

The sun lit her face, made a bit fuller by time. The way the corners of her eyes creased reminded him of their mother and father. A bittersweet smile blossomed as she spoke his name.

“Oh, Jack!”

She engulfed him on the step, nearly knocking him backward. She held him tight as she sobbed. Gannon felt something in his throat rising, his eyes stinging, for he never believed he would ever see her again.

They went to her kitchen and in the brief awkward quiet punctuated by Cora's tears, they studied each other. As her red-rimmed eyes took stock, Gannon felt as if he was twelve again, holding the attention of his hero.

“I knew you would grow up to be a tall, handsome man.”

She had become a fine-looking woman, a mother, he thought.

“Help me find Tilly.”

“I'll do what I can,” he said, absorbing all the changes in her as each of them grappled with the time that had blurred their memories over two decades.

Cora offered a weak smile, worry lines cutting deep around her mouth, replacing the gleam that had always lifted him before the day she walked out on everything back in Buffalo. A tsunami of remembrance, outrage and regret rolled over him, and Cora saw his mood dim.

“I've been a terrible sister.”

“You should have come home.”

“I wanted to. So many times, but I couldn't face you, Mom and Dad.”

“They died not knowing about your life, your daughter, their granddaughter.”

She turned away.

“I know. I saw it in the
Sentinel
on the internet.”

“Then why didn't you come to the funeral?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn't.”

“Why? If only you had come home before they were killed. You could have worked things out with them. They searched everywhere for you.”

“I just couldn't.”

“Why? That's what I don't understand.”

“It's too hard to explain. Please don't judge me.”

“Judge you? Cora, I don't even know you.”

She turned to the counter for a tissue box.

“I go by Cora Martin.”

“Martin? Did you get married?”

“No, I changed it because of, well, because of mistakes.”

“Is that why you didn't want us to find you?” He shook his head in disappointment.

“Jack, it's not easy to explain. You have every right to resent me,” she said. “I'm not seeking forgiveness, but resentment can be a poison. I mourn the time we've lost. I regret choices I've made. Don't take your anger out on me now, Jack. I need your help. I have to get Tilly home safe.”

“Tell me what happened.”

Gannon took a long, deep breath and Cora related every detail from the night before. He listened, saying little until she'd finished.

“I don't know why this is happening to us,” she said. “I don't know who to turn to, Jack. I thought you would have sources, people who know about this stuff and that you would know what to do. Help me find out who took her. Help me get her back.”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“No. They said they would kill her if I went to the police.”

“Are you involved with drugs in any way, Cora?”

“No.”

“But you were?”

“Yes. I used drugs, yes, but that's all in the past. I've changed my life.”

“No one from your past would do this?”

God, I hope not. They told me I would never be free from what I did. Never. They told me I would always be looking over my shoulder. I can't tell Jack. I can't tell anyone. I have to protect Tilly.

“Cora, does this have anything to do with your past life?”

“No, I've been living a clean life, a good life, for years.”

“What about Lyle? You say you're dating. What do you know about him? Is he involved in drugs?”

“If he is, he's hidden it all from me.”

“Can you find him?”

“I've been trying and trying. He's disappeared.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Only you—and I called Tilly's school.”

“You told her school she was kidnapped?”

“God, no, I said she wouldn't be in today. Only you know what's happened, Jack.”

“From what I know about these things, they usually involve a drug debt. The cartels will kidnap someone close to get their money. That looks like the case here.”

“Maybe it's all a mistake?”

“Call the police, Cora.”

“But they said—”

“You have to call them, or it looks like you're involved.”

Cora put her hands to her mouth, nodded, then reached for her cordless phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed 911.

“I need the police. My daughter's been kidnapped…”

As she stayed on the line confirming her name and address, Gannon walked through the house, finding Tilly's room. Police would soon process the room but he wanted to see it, to get a sense of his niece.

Her white-and-pink bed was unmade, left the way it was when the invaders abducted her from it. On the wall nearby there was a cork bulletin board plastered with birthday cards, a drawing of two people holding hands called
Mommy & Me,
and photos of Tilly with her friends, their smiles and eyes blazing with adolescent zeal.

She sure resembled Cora.

Under the board was Tilly's desk. Math, history and science textbooks were stacked neatly on it to one side. Also on the desk he saw Tilly's homework: a handwritten essay. He began reading it:

“…how they must work together to do all they can to survive…”

The significance of her words jolted Gannon. He studied Tilly's neat cursive style, the forward slant, the generous looping of the
g, y
and
p.
He recognized that it was precisely the way he wrote.

A family trait.

It hit him full force that Tilly was his blood and that he was her uncle. That's when he heard something for the first time since entering the bedroom.

Ticking.

It was coming from the metal clock with a clown's
face on her dresser. It grew louder, with the exaggerated smile of the clown screaming to him that time was ticking down on his niece's life.