No Witness But the Moon(60)
“I wish it were that simple,” said Adele. “To pay for her passage, her family took out a loan and now some gangster is trying to collect on it. The girl is the collateral.”
“If the family gives me a cell phone contact for this loan shark,” said Vega, “I can get one of my guys to run a trace and maybe set up a sting. If it crosses state lines, I might even be able to pull the FBI into this. Who’s the family?”
Adele hesitated. “Is it risky? To the girl or her family?”
“It was risky the moment they decided to smuggle her over here,” said Vega. “It was risky the moment they started working with gangsters. So yeah, of course it’s risky. The police don’t make guarantees, Adele. Give me the family’s number. I’ll contact them.”
“The mother’s afraid to work with the police.”
“If she wants help, she’s going to have to trust somebody.”
“She trusts me.”
“Then the question is, do you trust me? Or is that the deal breaker these days?”
Her silence told him everything he feared.
She turned away and looked out her kitchen window at the blackness of her backyard. Something shifted in her face. Her eyes narrowed and took on a singular focus. All the color seemed to drain from her skin. A small gasp escaped from her lips.
Vega came up behind her and stared out at the yard, trying to understand what had spooked her. For a moment, all he noted was the reflection of their faces in the glass. It took him another second or two to comprehend what Adele had seen—or rather, what she hadn’t.
“Where’s Sophia?”
Chapter 22
Adele turned to Vega. “I don’t see Sophia outside.”
Vega raced to the back door and opened it. “Sophia?” he called out across the yard.
Silence. No little girl laugh. No jingle of dog tags. Vega ran into the backyard and called her name again. Adele grabbed her coat and shoes and Vega’s jacket from the coat rack in the foyer and went out the front door. Maybe Sophia and Diablo were in the driveway.
“Sophia!”
Nothing. Vega ran around front to find her. He held up his hands. “She’s not in the backyard either.”
“She wouldn’t just leave like this.”
Vega stuck his thumb and middle finger in his mouth and made a loud, long whistle. They both listened but all that greeted them was the hum of a car on an adjoining street and the disembodied voice from a television when a neighbor opened a door.
Adele tried to calm the panicky flutter in her chest. How far could they have gone? It was a safe neighborhood. Well-lit. Plenty of people on the block knew Adele and Sophia.
But it was winter. And dark. People were inside. Who would notice a stranger? An unfamiliar car? A moment of youthful indiscretion?
“Where could she be?” Adele could feel the cinch in her vocal cords, the tight knot of worry that had traveled from her throat to her chest. What kind of mother was she to get so carried away arguing with her boyfriend that she hadn’t noticed her child running off into the night?
“She took Diablo on the leash, didn’t she?” asked Vega.
“Sure. But she wouldn’t just wander off with him.”
“Maybe she lost control and chased him.” Vega grabbed his jacket from Adele. “Stay here. I’ll find her.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No,” said Vega. “Better we split up. You go left and I’ll go right and if we spot them, we can check in by cell, okay?”
“Okay.” She walked quickly down the sidewalk calling out her daughter’s name. She’d walked this short distance thousands of times in her life—when Sophia was a baby in her stroller and later when the child was learning to ride her bike. She’d walked it to cool off after fights with Peter. Or just to get fresh air on a nice spring day. But the terror in her step now obliterated every past journey. It was as if she were walking the block for the very first time. Every buckle in the sidewalk, every shadow of a tree or lip of a driveway felt foreign to her. The sharp bite of air felt serrated in her lungs. She was breathing too hard. Or maybe the problem was, she wasn’t breathing at all.
She felt as if she were watching herself from a great distance. She was in a movie playing Adele looking for her daughter. This couldn’t really be happening. She tried to push the darker thoughts from her head. Vega was clearly a target right now. Someone had just slashed Joy’s tires because of what he’d done. But surely no one would hurt a child.
Surely.
She was a block from her house when her cell phone rang. Relief flooded her body when she heard Vega’s voice. “You’ve got them?”
“I’ve got Diablo. He’s by himself.”
“Oh no!”
“His leash is still attached. He seems to want me to follow him. I’m on the corner of Pine and Sequoia heading toward Spring. Can you catch up to us?”
“I’m on my way.”
It felt like an eternity before she caught up with them. Spring Street was a road full of capes and ranches on quarter-acre plots of hyperpruned bushes, swing sets, and stubby fruit trees. It dead-ended beside a deep thicket of woods and streams. Adele never let Sophia play near the area. In summer, teenagers and homeless people congregated in those woods. The police made regular sweeps to clear out the vagrants and trash left behind. But this time of year, the woods were dark and silent, the bare limbs like iron bars to a prison that no one was meant to enter or leave.