Vanish

“I want to thank you,” he said. “Thank you for giving me back my family.”

There it was-just the wisp of a smile. It was more than he’d expected.

He closed the door, and gave a nod to Glasser. “Take him down,” he called out.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she said with a laugh, and she drove away, followed by a Boston PD escort.

Gabriel climbed the steps into the house. Inside he found Barry Frost conferring with Barsanti as members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team carried out Lukas’s computer and boxes of his files. This was clearly a federal case now, and Boston PD would be ceding control of the investigation to the Bureau. Even so, thought Gabriel, how far can they take it? Then Barsanti looked at him, and Gabriel saw in his eyes the same steel he’d seen in Glasser’s. And he noticed that Barsanti was clutching the videotape. Guarding it, as though he held the Holy Grail itself.

“Where’s Jane?” he asked Frost.

“She’s in the kitchen. The baby got hungry.”

He found his wife sitting with her back to the doorway; she did not see him walk into the room. He paused behind her, watching as she cradled Regina to her breast, humming tunelessly. Jane never could carry a tune, he thought with a smile. Regina didn’t seem to mind; she lay quiet in her mother’s newly confident arms. Love is the part that comes naturally, thought Gabriel. It’s everything else that takes time. That we have to learn.

He placed his hands on Jane’s shoulders and bent down to kiss her hair. She looked up at him, her eyes glowing.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Mila

The woman has been kind to me. As our car bumps along the dirt road, she takes my hand and squeezes it. I feel safe with her, even though I know she will not always be here to hold my hand; there are so many other girls to think of, other girls who are still lost in the dark corners of this country. But for now she is here with me. She is my protector, and I lean into her, hoping she will put her arm around me. But she is distracted, her gaze focused instead on the desert outside our car. A strand of her hair has fallen onto my sleeve and glitters there like a silver thread. I pluck it up and slip it into my pocket. It may be the only souvenir I will ever have to remember her by when our time together ends.

The car rolls to a stop.

“Mila,” she says, giving me a nudge. “Are we getting close? Does this area look right?”

I lift my head from her shoulder and stare out the window. We have stopped beside a dry riverbed, where trees grow stunted, tormented. Beyond are brown hills studded with boulders. “I don’t know,” I tell her.

“Does it look like the place?”

“Yes, but…” I keep staring, forcing myself to remember what I have tried so hard to forget.

One of the men in the front seat looks back at us. “That’s where they found the trail, on the other side of that riverbed,” he says. “They caught a group of girls coming through here last week. Maybe she should get out and take a look. See if she recognizes anything down there.”

“Come, Mila.” The woman opens the door and gets out, but I do not move. She reaches into the car. “It’s the only way we can do this,” she says softly. “You need to help us find the spot.” She holds out her hand. Reluctantly, I take it.

One of the men leads us through the tangle of scrub brush and trees, down a narrow trail and into the dry riverbed. There he stops and looks at me. He and the woman are both watching me, waiting for my reaction. I stare at the bank, at an old shoe lying dry and cracked in the heat. A memory shimmers, then snaps into focus. I turn and look at the opposite bank, which is cluttered with plastic bottles, and I see a scrap of blue tarp dangling from a branch.

Another memory locks in place.

This is where he hit me. This is where Anja stood, her foot bleeding in her open-toed shoe.

Without a word, I turn and climb back up the riverbank. My heart is racing, and dread clamps its fingers around my throat, but I have no choice now. I see her ghost, flitting just ahead of me. A wisp of windblown hair. A sad, backward glance.

“Mila?” the woman calls.

I keep moving, pushing my way through the bushes, until I reach the dirt road. Here, I think. This is where the vans were parked. This is where the men waited for us. The memories are clicking faster now, like terrible flashes from a nightmare. The men, leering as we undress. The girl shrieking as she is shoved up against the van. And Anja. I see Anja, lying motionless on her back as the man who has just raped her zips up his pants.

Anja stirs, staggers to her feet like a newborn calf. So pale, so thin, just a shadow of a girl.

I follow her, the ghost of Anja. The desert is strewn with sharp rocks. Thorny weeds push up from the dirt, and Anja is ru

“Mila?”

I hear Anja’s panicked gasps, see the blond hair streaming loose around her shoulders. Empty desert stretches before her. If she can just run fast enough, far enough…

The gunshot cracks.

I see her pitch forward, the breath knocked out of her, and her blood spills onto warm sand. Yet she rises to her knees and crawls now across thorns, across stones that cut like shards of glass.

The second gunshot thunders.

Anja collapses, white skin against brown sand. Is this where she fell? Or was it over there? I am circling now, frantic to find the spot. Where are you, Anja, where?

“Mila, talk to us.”

I suddenly halt, my gaze fixed on the ground. The woman is saying something to me; I scarcely hear her. I can only stare at what lies at my feet.

The woman says, gently, “Come away, Mila. Don’t look.”

But I ca

“It appears to be a female,” he says.

For a moment no one speaks. A hot wind swirls dust at our faces, and I blink against the sting. When I open my eyes again, I see more of Anja peeking out from the sand. The curve of her hip bone, the brown shaft of her thigh. The desert has decided to give her up, and now she is re-emerging from the earth.

Those who vanish sometimes come back to us.

“Come, Mila. Let’s go.”

I look up at the woman. She stands so straight, unassailable. Her silver hair gleams like a warrior’s helmet. She puts her arm around me, and together, we walk back to the car.

“It’s time, Mila,” the woman says quietly. “Time to tell me everything.”

We sit at a table, in a room with no windows. I look down at the pad of paper in front of her. It is blank, waiting for the mark of her pen. Waiting for the words that I have been afraid to say.

“I have told you everything.”

“I don’t think you have.”

“Every question you ask, I answer.”

“Yes, you’ve helped us a great deal. You’ve given us what we needed. Carleton Wy

“I do not know what more you want from me.”

“I want what’s locked up in there.” She reaches across the table and touches my heart. “I want to know the things you’re afraid to tell me. It will help me understand their operation, help me fight these people. It will help me save more girls, just like you. You have to, Mila.”

I blink back tears. “Or you will send me back.”

“No. No.” She leans closer, her gaze emphatic. “This is your home now, if you want to stay. You won’t be deported, I give you my word.”

“Even if…” I stop. I can no longer look her in the eye. Shame floods my face and I stare down at the table.