He handed Spector back her optics.

  She glanced expectantly at Buckley and was confused by the look in his eye. Where she thought she would see frustration and even desperation, she saw something else entirely.

  She fingered her pistol and asked, “So do we go after Cain, retreat from her, or wait for her to try to find us here?”

  “None of the above. I have a far better idea.”

  Chapter 55

  MERCY SAT ON HER HAUNCHES and studied the rear of the house through the binoculars. The place was almost entirely built of stone with a few odd timbers and other materials thrown in for interesting architectural measure. It was private and well shrouded from the street with no close neighbors. A good pick if you were doing something bad, she thought. The Escalade was parked in front of the three-car garage. She could see the driver still inside scrolling down his phone. What she couldn’t see, through the tinted side windows, was whether Marbury was still in the SUV or not. She doubted it. Why come here just to sit on his butt in the driveway?

  She had sounded more confident with Blum than she felt right now. While it was true she could go toe-to-toe physically with just about anybody, she really didn’t know what she was doing here. And it wasn’t like her brief stint as a cheap security guard had prepared her to become a crackerjack sleuth. She did have some experience with breaking and entering, though. And if it had been dark she would have been more comfortable trying to get inside the place through a door or window. Plus a home like this had to have a first-class security system, though it might be turned off now since it was daytime and people were inside.

  Mercy decided that she was doing no good just squatting here like a lump, so she moved forward, keeping low and trying to stay out of the sight line of the row of windows on this side of the house. She passed by a pool that had its winter cover on. She stopped behind a clump of bushes and waited to see if anyone had seen her and was about to sound the alarm. That didn’t happen, so she relaxed and looked around, trying to use her common sense and natural observation skills, which she had cultivated over the years. In the places she had lived, correctly gauging the mood of a room and the violent predilections of various people had saved her on more occasions than she cared to remember.

  She wondered if this place had been recently rented for the short-term, because the pool chairs, chaises, and tables around it were covered and stacked up. The place had the feel of having been shut down for the season. The Escalade had not pulled into one of the garage bays, meaning it probably didn’t belong to the place, she reasoned.

  She poked her head over the top of the bush and scanned the house using her optics. She couldn’t see anyone through the windows. But then she ducked down as Marbury came into view. Mercy slowly lifted her head up once more. He was talking to someone, and in the next moment Mercy saw clearly who that was. She had never seen him before, but he seemed like someone of importance.

  He was in his forties, tall and lean and very well dressed, right down to the pocket kerchief. Mercy could make all this out because the lights were on in the room and the man came to stand by the window to look out for a minute or so. The way he was talking and gesturing with Marbury made Mercy conclude that he was the boss and the lawyer the underling. She supposed lawyers always made good underlings. Mercy had had several run-ins with lawyers, and none of those occasions had turned out well for her.

  But there was something familiar about the boss man, in the jaw and eyes, yet Mercy couldn’t place him. She dropped her head once more, then decided to get down on her belly and stare up from under the bush.

  The man was talking while continuing to gaze out the window. Mercy didn’t like that look. It was too observant, she decided. This was a man with something on his mind. And she knew what that was: Lee Pine. He had her somewhere, maybe here; she could just feel it. They were in cahoots with Desiree somehow.

  When the man moved away from the window, Mercy left her hiding place and sprinted toward the house. She planted herself against the stone wall and waited for a few moments. She had spotted a rear door that was hidden enough from view to hold possibilities.

  Keeping flat against the side of the house, she reached the door. It was locked, which was not surprising. She looked toward the part of the house where the two people were and gauged it to be far enough away for her to safely attempt what she was about to.

  She put one foot on the doorknob, stepped up, and grabbed hold of the home’s façade, where there was enough irregularity in the stonework to provide a space for her strong fingers to grip. She did a pull-up and then brought her weight down fully on the doorknob. She felt it bend but not break. She did this same maneuver twice more, and the knob sheared off.

  She dropped to the ground and looked at her handiwork. With the knob gone the inner workings of the lock were revealed. She stuck her finger in the hole and, using considerable strength, managed to move back the mechanism controlling the lock.

  She gave a push and the door swung open.

  The next moment she was inside and her gun was out. She surveyed the area.

  Her speculation that the place had been closed down seemed to be verified by the stuffy air and the dust covers over the furniture. She quickly and quietly searched the rooms on this level. When she was done Cain listened for a few moments until she heard the footsteps overhead together with muted voices. She found the stairs and took each riser with care.

  She heard more footsteps and more muted voices. She froze and waited for a bit. Mercy suddenly realized that she had no idea what her sister sounded like. She quietly slipped back down the stairs and waited at the bottom in case whoever was up there decided to leave this way.

  Five minutes later and growing impatient, she made her way up and reached the door at the top of the stairs.

  Mercy inched it open and peered through the crack. What she saw was an expansive space, lavishly decorated, but again with the furniture covered. She opened the door enough to squeeze through and bent low, surveying the field in front and behind her.

  She started to take a step forward but then stopped. She hadn’t heard any more footsteps or voices in quite a while. She straightened and started to race forward when she heard the vehicle start up.

  She made it to the window in time to see an SUV roar out from somewhere and disappear between the hedges that lined the driveway. A moment later the Escalade followed suit.

  “Damn,” exclaimed Mercy. She was torn between searching the rest of the house and rejoining Blum. Finally deciding that if her sister was here, they wouldn’t leave her behind, she left the way she had come. She ran flat-out to where she had left Blum in the Porsche in the church parking lot.

  Only neither the SUV nor Carol Blum were there any longer.

  Chapter 56

  PINE LEAPT OUT OF THE ANCIENT TRUCK before it even stopped in front of the hotel.

  “Thank you,” she called over her shoulder.

  The elderly woman tooted her horn, leaned out the window, and cried out, “Thank you, missy! Most fun I’ve had in years!”

  Pine raced into the lobby and ran up to the front desk where the same woman from the night before was standing.

  “My God, Agent Pine,” said the woman. “They’ve been looking everywhere for you. We thought you had been kidnapped.”

  “I was but I got away.”

  “You’re hurt!”

  “What?”

  “Your face. It’s all bruised.”

  Pine touched the side of her face where she’d gotten kicked. In the spike of adrenaline during her escape, she hadn’t even remembered it or felt the pain. Now it all came rushing back to her. She rubbed her oblique where she’d been struck the first time. It was swollen and hurt like hell. Whoever had done it packed a wallop.

  She refocused and said, “Where’s the woman I was with, Carol Blum?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. The FBI are here. They’re in the dining area. An Agent McAllister?” She described him.

  Pine hustled to the dining area and spotted a man who had to be Drew McAllister, and a tall, younger man with him. They were sitting near the back of the room. She ran over and they both gaped when they spotted her.

  “Agent Pine?” exclaimed McAllister as he jerkily rose from his seat.

  “That’s me.”

  “I just got a call from Tate Callum and heard you got away.”

  Pine gave them a thirty-second down-and-dirty on what had happened to her and how she’d escaped. “I’m hoping the guys I trussed up can lead us to what’s going on.”

  McAllister, surprisingly, shook his head. “That won’t be happening. Callum told me that when they arrived at the address you gave them the men were gone.”

  Pine groaned. “Shit. Someone must have come and gotten them loose, because they weren’t getting away on their own. And they were both unconscious.”

  He jerked a thumb at his partner. “This is Neil Bertrand.”

  Pine nodded at him. Bertrand said, “They roughed you up?”

  Pine rubbed her swollen face. “I wasn’t as cooperative as they would have liked.”

  McAllister said, “Look, we came down here to talk to you about Tim Pine, but since all hell has broken loose, maybe we need to pitch in on this thing first, whatever it is.”

  “Thanks, right now I could use all the help I can get.”

  “The locals will process the house where you were kept. They might turn up something.”

  “I need to call my friend, Carol. I left my phone in my room. I’ll be right back.”

  “No, we got it right here. Ms. Blum turned it over to me. She’s been trying to contact you.” He handed it to her.

  Pine snatched up her phone and unlocked it. There were several earlier calls and messages from Blum. She was obviously frantic about Pine’s disappearance. She called Blum’s phone, but it went right to voice mail. Cursing, she texted Blum, but got no reply.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told McAllister.

  She ran up to her room and grabbed her ID and guns from the room safe, then ran back down to the lobby and reentered the dining area.

  “When did you see Carol last?”

  “This morning right when we got to the hotel. She was the one who told us about your disappearance. But I don’t know where she went after that.” He glanced at his partner. “Neil, check into that.”

  Bertrand rose and left.

  Pine sat down in his seat and looked at McAllister.

  He said, “Blum thought it might be Desiree Atkins’s drug ring associates who took you. What do you think?”

  “That’s not it. The man who’s leading this up spoke to me. I can’t ID him because I was blindfolded. But he told me that if Desiree Atkins got bailed out they were going to get to her and make her talk. That doesn’t sound like her drug ring partners, if there even are any.”

  “Did he say what sort of information he wanted from her?”

  “He wanted to find somebody.”

  “Find who?”

  “Eloise Cain.” Pine drew in a long breath. “Who is the same woman I’m looking for.”

  “Did he say why he wanted to find her?”

  “He said that she had killed his brother. He wanted revenge, I suppose.”

  “And why would she kill his brother?”

  “The man said his brother deserved it. But that it didn’t matter because it was family. He clearly wants Cain dead.”

  “And why were you looking for this Eloise Cain person?”

  Pine knew this question would be coming.

  “She’s a person of interest in a case I’m working.”

  McAllister looked put out by this. “That’s what I tell my bosses when I don’t want to loop them in yet. Is that really the best you can do under the circumstances?”

  Pine looked at the man and held his gaze. “I just need you to trust me on this one. It’s complicated, and we just don’t have the time. Please.”

  He sat back and sighed. “I checked up on you before I came down here, of course. Nothing but superlatives. So for now, I’ll let this pass. But at some point, Agent Pine, I’m going to have to hear the whole story.”

  “I hope by then I’m able to give it. And I mean the whole story.”

  She left him there and went back up to her room. She left three more messages for Blum, both voice mail and text. Something was clearly wrong.

  Idiot. She hadn’t even checked to see if the Porsche SUV was in the parking lot.

  She rushed down to the lobby and headed to the exit door as a Lyft car dropped off a passenger in front. Pine pushed through the revolving door and stepped outside.

  Then she stopped dead and turned to look at the person who had just gone into the hotel through the revolving door.

  She was standing just inside the lobby and was now staring at Pine.

  The woman slowly walked back outside.

  And for the first time in thirty years the Pine sisters were staring at each other with only a few feet between them.

  Pine felt herself start to shake. The emotions welling up inside were unlike anything she had ever felt before. No, she thought, she was wrong. They were the same set of feelings that she had had when she’d learned that her twin sister was gone.

  “M-Mercy?”

  As Mercy looked at her, long-ago memories, plastered under years of Desiree Atkins–imposed hate, vitriol, and cruelty, came rushing back to the surface of her brain. It was like the dam had finally burst and all that was important was rushing back to her.

  “Lee? Is that really you?”

  Pine stared up at a face that was very much like and also unlike hers. Thirty years of life, much of it bad, had impressed itself indelibly on her twin. There was no getting around that. Long gone was the adorably pretty girl with the wonderfully long hair and penchant for frilly dresses and a mischievous smile that could make Pine laugh as if on cue. Yet in every other way, Pine knew that she had just found her sister.

  Tears were now streaming down Pine’s face and she made no move to wipe them away. “Yes, my God, yes, it really is me.”

  The women both stepped forward as though connected by the strongest of rope, and finally embraced for the first time in three decades.

  Chapter 57

  WHEN PINE STEPPED AWAY from her sister, she simply stood there staring at Mercy.

  “I really can’t believe this is happening. After all these years.”

  Mercy looked her twin over, her happy features slowly fading. “It’s been a long time. I doubt I’m like what you remember.”

  Pine’s smile slowly faded, too, as something strange and ill-defined seemed to spring up between the pair, like a border wall built of myriad and substantial components. But she told herself absolutely nothing was going to taint this moment. She was too happy, and she meant to show this to her sister. The smile came back even more forcefully. “The only thing that matters to me is that you’re alive and that you’re here, right now. Oh my God, this is the day I’ve been waiting for, for so long.”

  Mercy put her hands in her pocket. “Yeah, I can see that, sure. So, I heard you were in trouble.”

  Pine’s smile dialed back down. “Yes, I was. Then I got out of it.”

  Mercy checked out her sister’s swollen face. “But not without getting kicked around?”

  Pine crossed her arms over her chest, as she saw the euphoric moment of sisterly reunion seemed to be over. “Goes with the territory. I hope to pay them back at some point.” She stepped forward and rubbed her sister’s arm. “I know a little of what happened to you. And I’m so sorry. And I know how ridiculously inadequate any words are right now.”

  Mercy shrugged. “I survived it. I got away, too, just like you. They didn’t beat me.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “That’s what it’s about, survival.”

  “Yes, yes it is,” Pine said awkwardly. It was like they were two casual friends shooting the breeze over nothing really important to either of them. In the Hollywood version it would be all smiles, hugs, and tears. In real life, she suddenly realized it was far more nuanced. And complicated.

  And why in the hell are you just realizing that now?

  She said, “Look, I know the timing stinks, but I need to find my friend. She must be around here somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What?” Pine said sharply.

  “You’re talking about Carol Blum? I was with her. We went to see Desiree in jail.”

  Pine looked stunned. “You saw Desiree?”

  “Carol thought she might have something to do with your disappearance. You know, Desiree’s drug friends? We thought they were the ones who grabbed you.”

  “So what happened?”

  “While we were there this big muckety-muck lawyer from New York showed up to meet with Desiree. Carol was smart enough to figure out that Desiree didn’t call the dude in, so she wondered who did. So when he left the jail, she had the idea of following him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “This big-ass house. The dude met a guy there. I got into the house to see what I could learn. The place looked all shut down, you know, like the real owners had left to go someplace else. And maybe these guys were just using it. But then they all left and I was there all by myself. I felt like an idiot because I mostly didn’t know what I was doing. I hustled back to the car to tell Carol, but she and the car were gone.”

  “Gone? Do you think she went after them?”

  “I don’t know. Have you heard from her recently?”

  “No, and I just left multiple messages and got nothing back.”

  “Then I think something happened to her.”

  “They might have realized they were followed.”

  “Yeah, they might.”

  Pine looked around and found several people standing there staring at them and listening.

  She hooked her sister’s arm and said, “Let’s go up to my room and talk about this in private.”

  They rode the elevator up to Pine’s room. She used her key card to get in.