by Aimée Thurlo
Katrina cursed, then sat back down in her chair. “I’ll see if he has a moment.”
Ignoring Katrina, Amanda opened the adjoining door and went inside. Ron was comfortably seated in a leather chair, talking on the phone. As she walked in, he glared at her and abruptly finished his conversation. Clad in an expensive gray suit, Ron had almost achieved the look of old money. Now she knew how he’d earned it.
“You’re always busy, Ron. But so am I. I just have a few questions I want you to answer about Hope.” She took a seat across from his desk, the tiny listening device in her cupped palm.
“Then it can wait. Make an appointment and come back later.”
“No, Ron, it can’t wait, and I’m not moving.” She stood up suddenly and gripped the desk. Her hand below the edge, she quickly stuck the bug to the wooden underside. “I’m tired of having you always put me off. Hope is important to me, and I need you to answer one question. How could Hope’s birth father have signed those papers if he wasn’t even in the state?”
Ron shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Okay, so we did a bit of creative writing. You wanted the kid, didn’t you?”
“I still do, Ron,” she said softly.
“Then take my advice and keep your mouth shut. You got your baby and that’s what matters. Has someone been questioning you about this?”
“No,” she replied, keeping her expression neutral. “It was just a discrepancy I noticed while unpacking my private papers.”
“Then unnotice it, unless you want Hope’s sleazy father to find out and have her put in a foster home until the courts decide who gets her.”
“How can you be so cold-blooded about this?” Amanda stood up so fast her chair nearly toppled over.
“She was never my kid. The adoption was something I arranged to make you happy. I did love you once, Amanda.”
She felt the tears stinging her eyes. They were on two separate wavelengths. He would never understand her. “With you, it’s always the same. Things are more important than people.” She waved a hand over his desk, accidentally knocking over a photo. Amanda glanced at it. “Look what you keep on your desk. The snapshot of some cabin in the forest, not a person.” She shook her head. “I feel sorry for you. If things are all you value, things are all you’ll ever have.” She turned and left his office, passing Katrina without a glance.
As Amanda stepped out of the building, she looked around for Tony’s car. He was speaking to someone who looked like a street person on the other side of the parking lot. Then she saw Tony slip the man some bills and walk away.
Amanda was waiting for Tony when he returned to the car. “What was that all about?” she asked.
“Wally’s going to stay within range of the bug and monitor the tape for me.”
“Are you sure he can be trusted?”
Tony nodded. “He was a cop once. He dropped out after he was in a shooting incident. The exchange of gunfire claimed the life of an innocent bystander. It wasn’t his fault, but he never got over it. He sleeps in a little apartment behind his brother’s house, but he spends most of his days on the streets. He still works with law enforcement from time to time as an informant for some bucks, and he’s always been there for me, particularly whenever I’m pursuing a lead on Carmen. He knows me, and he knew my family.”
It seemed like Tony’s friends were all people who lived on the fringes of society, yet now she understood him well enough to know where he stood and trust his judgment. Tony had his own code of honor. He gave back what was given to him. He was as protective of his friends as he was lethal to his enemies. “I hope the listening device pays off. Ron is always so careful. I can’t see him ever letting his guard down.”
“That’s why you had to do it. Your presence would disconcert him. He’d lose some self-control and have feelings like anger, or jealousy, or both, without even being aware of it.” Tony shrugged. “By the way, where did you plant the bug?”
Amanda explained what she’d done. “I don’t think he ever suspected.”
“If my gut instinct is right, he does periodic sweeps of his office anyway. He’ll find it sooner or later, but hopefully it’ll be later.”
They were pulling out of the parking lot when Wally, the man Tony had spoken to, came around the corner of a building and waved quickly at them.
“You may have stirred up more than you know, Mandy,” Tony said. “I think we’re about to get a lead.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tony drove into the alley across the street. As he came to a stop, Wally approached them. “I’ve got something already. Your subject called a guy named Lonnie and talked about some kind of license form that turned dark when it was put in a copier. They’re useless now, and Vila used some very interesting adjectives to describe you.”
“Lonnie?” Tony mulled over the name. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“New talent,” Wally said. “Lonnie Sierra. He’s into counterfeiting, but he’s just a laborer, so to speak. Lonnie’s definitely not the brains of any operation.”
Tony shook his head. “Any idea where I can find him?”
“He works for the state government. It’s a clerical job, but it lets him access the paperwork and forms that become birth certificates and such. He walks off with blank originals and turns them over to his boss, who’s in the business of providing new identities. Of course, they also blackmail some of their clients, so the money keeps flowing—one way.”
“Thanks, Wally.” Tony brought out his roll of bills, but Wally shook his head and stepped back from the car window.
“Just find your daughter, man. It’s about time she came home.”
“You got that right.” As they got underway, Tony picked up his cellular phone. “We’re close, Amanda. I can feel it. I’m going to call Raymond. We’re going to need his help on this. There’s no way around it.” He paused for a moment. “We’re also about to find out if I was right about a leak in the Bureau. This is not the way I would have preferred to deal with this, but we’re under the gun here. We have no other options.”
“We have to find one. You can’t call Raymond. If we get him involved, he’s going to find out that there are discrepancies in Hope’s adoption records. I’ll lose my child.”
“No, you won’t lose Hope. The papers may have to be drawn up again, but her birth mother did give her up for adoption. There’s no one to contest custody.”
“Except for the birth father.”
“If he’s still around,” Tony countered. “And if he even knows about Hope. They’ve been threatening to get him to turn up and make trouble, but he hasn’t been in the picture in what, three years? Even if he finds out about a daughter, it’s not likely he’d try to establish a claim after all that time.”
“You’re probably right, but this whole thing makes me uneasy.”
“You’re borrowing trouble, and your fears are being used against you. Your child is safe, and I’m getting close to finding mine.” He took a deep breath, then let it out again. “You can’t have it both ways, Amanda. You’ve told me you don’t approve of my vigilante tactics, but now you want to circumvent the law and withhold evidence.” He paused for several moments. “There’s another side to this, too. If Ron finds out you’re trying to prove he’s protecting the kidnappers, he may blow the whistle on Hope’s paperwork and try to weasel out of it somehow. The problem is, he’d claim you knew about the forged signature, and you’d be put on the defensive trying to prove you didn’t. It could get dicey then. That’s why we need to bring Raymond in on this. Your best chance is to put all the crooks in jail at the same time.”
“All right,” Amanda agreed. “Let’s finish it.”
Tony dialed Raymond’s number at the Bureau. After a brief wait, he heard his ex-partner’s familiar voice. Tony filled him in quickly on what he and Amanda had uncovered. “If Sierra’s involved, we have to smoke him out. Unfortunately, what I’ve given you isn’t enough for a search warrant, because the bug was illegal.”
&nb
sp; “I wish you’d played this by the book.”
“No time for that, even if I’d been able to get a warrant. But I’ve got an idea. Why not pull a bluff? Send a couple of your boys over there and roust Sierra. Then keep one guy near to see what he does after your boys leave.”
“I still couldn’t legally confiscate the papers.”
“But you’d still confront the supplier and put the ring out of business for a while. And if you squeeze Sierra enough, he may cut a deal.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
Tony placed the receiver down. “I don’t know how you want to play this, Mandy, but I’m going to find out where Sierra lives and go over there. I want to see this thing going down.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Somehow that’s what I thought you’d say.”
* * *
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER Tony parked uphill from a simple adobe residence located in an isolated canyon. Sierra’s number and address had been listed, so finding him had posed no problem. He waited, binoculars in hand, for the Bureau team to finish setting up Lonnie Sierra.
Minutes dragged by as the agents remained inside. After almost an hour had passed, the pair of agents stepped outside, got into their car, and drove off. Once around a curve, the car slowed down and the passengers jumped out. One of them was Raymond.
“Now we wait to see what Sierra does,” Tony said.
Fifteen minutes went by. They could see Raymond watching Sierra’s house from behind a stand of piñon trees.
Before long, Amanda heard Tony mutter something under his breath. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Sierra is on the move. He’s taking boxes out to his car. They’ve got him now.”
Tony and Amanda watched from their position as the FBI car returned and the agents moved in. Sierra bolted for his truck in a flash, firing off a shot with a handgun in the direction of the approaching car.
“Good,” Tony said. “He’s given them probable cause now.”
Moments later, Tony’s cellular began to ring. Tony picked it up. “Yeah, I’ve been watching the show. I’m uphill from you,” Tony said, then chuckled. “No way I was going to stay away. What’s the surprise? You know me well enough to expect it.”
“I’ve anticipated you, buddy boy. Like you said, I know you too well. I saw you and Amanda up there half an hour ago.” Raymond sounded amused.
Tony cleared his throat. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously. “Exactly when did you anticipate me?”
“You know exactly what I mean. It’s like the photos of that doctored file I let you sneak out of my office. The camera you hid in my jacket pocket was small, but not that small. What you got was government approved. I figured that it was the least I could do to keep your butt out of jail.”
“You mean you knew all along I’d have to do a number on you?”
“Knew and preempted you. You’re not in deep with the Bureau, not like you thought anyway. What you ‘stole’ from my office had been prepared especially for you. Things have been much more official than you realized, all the way down the line. You want to come down?”
“To throttle you, sure,” Tony growled.
Raymond laughed. “You can always try. I could use a light workout.”
Tony filled Amanda in as they drove down to meet Raymond. To his surprise, Amanda started laughing. “I fail to see the humor,” he growled.
“I hope you always remember this, Tony. You don’t always have to deal under the table to get what you want or need. You underestimated the value of friendship from the very beginning.”
His voice dropped to a deep murmur. “Maybe. But I never underestimated you, or the power of the feelings that have grown between us.” He reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips.
The kiss sent a thrill through her, but before she could respond, Raymond rushed over to meet them, and for once, he was smiling.
“On top of the boxes the suspect was hauling out, I found an interesting list of names,” he told them. “Seems like the forgery ring has a number of ‘friends’ who have been bribed or blackmailed to look the other way. That’s how they’ve obtained original documents without getting caught. We also found several blackened copies of drivers’ license forms. Guess they just discovered the paper you gave them doesn’t perform well when exposed to the heat of a copier.” Raymond grinned.
“So the people who know about Carmen will be contacting me again.”
“With luck, yes. We’re going to try our best to keep this arrest under wraps, but there’s no telling how long it’ll be before word gets out.”
“Did you find any leads to the others in the ring?” Tony asked.
Raymond handed him Sierra’s list of people associated with the forgery ring. “Anyone here whose name stands out for you?”
He nodded. “Jeremy Purcell. You know him, too. He’s the guy who configured the age-progression software the local police and the Bureau field office here use. He’s been helping me generate the sketches of Carmen for my flyers.”
“He’s not legit, not as of two weeks ago. I just learned he’s in the base lockup in Albuquerque. He tried to break into a government computer, the Department of Defense’s, no less, and they backtracked to his home. The DOD guys want him raked over the coals. They’re out for blood.”
“I’m going to have to have a chat with him,” Tony said.
“He’s not a very talkative fellow.”
“If he’s being paid, I want to know by whom. If it’s blackmail, I want to know why. I have a bad feeling about this.”
It wasn’t until they were in the car that Tony noticed how quiet Amanda had become. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see what’s happening? We never find answers, just more questions.”
“We found one answer. Though it’s very bad news, I’m glad to find out now. I might have been hitting my head against a wall for years.”
“You mean because of the age-progression software?”
He nodded. “There’s no telling when this guy went bad. I may have been handing out an age-progression image of Carmen that has been tampered with.”
“That doesn’t seem likely. Other children have been found using those images generated by the same software, right?”
Tony nodded slowly. “I may be borrowing trouble, but I’ve got to check it out.” Tony dialed Raymond’s pager. “Before I try to talk to Purcell, I’d like to have you check out that age-progression software,” he told Raymond.
“Good idea. Then we’ll know exactly where we stand. I’ll meet you over at the Bureau office,” Raymond said. “Because of your cooperation in the sting at the DMV, it’s okay for you to come openly.”
“Good. Let’s just hope like hell I’m wrong.”
Tony gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands began to ache. The possibility that he’d wasted months or even years circulating an image that didn’t resemble his daughter filled him with rage. The kidnappers had managed to outwit him at every corner. But that was about to stop. He was about to become their worst nightmare.
* * *
AMANDA STOOD BEHIND Tony as the technician at the Bureau ran two test photos. Both came up reading negative for faults.
“I guess I worried for no reason,” Tony said.
The three men relaxed visibly. Raymond managed a smile. “We were all concerned. The implications could have affected a lot of parents and a huge number of cases still pending.”
Amanda glanced at Tony, hating herself for the thought she was about to bring up. She could see no other way of pointing it out, either, except by being painfully direct. “Gentlemen, I really don’t know much about this type of software, but is it possible to alter only a portion of the program, or trigger a false image by entering a key word? For instance, I noticed that you enter the name of the missing child at the beginning of the process, before the image is generated.”
Tony looked at her, nodding. His eyes grew dark and he, obviously,
understood where her conjectures were leading.
Amanda continued. “Suppose the name, Carmen Ramos, initiated an altered image, while all the other names entered created what they were supposed to do. It would allow your test images to come out right—and the altered one to remain undetected.”
Tony looked at the technician. “Is that possible?”
The technician, a small blond-haired man with thick glasses, sat up abruptly. “It is possible for an expert programmer to alter software to do almost anything with the appropriate command. Since our software requires a name entry, what you’ve suggested is entirely possible.” The technician turned around as one of the administrative assistants came into the room. “Patricia, do you still have your daughter’s baby picture?”
“Sure. It’s on my desk, along with the one that was taken of her this year. Samantha’s in the first grade now, you know.” She smiled proudly.
“We really need to borrow both those photos, if you don’t mind.”
“Will I get them back?”
The technician nodded. “We only need them for a few minutes. How about it?”
Patricia returned with them a few moments later. Amanda and Tony noticed that Samantha had beautiful blond hair and green eyes, just like her mother. “Damage them and it’s your life,” she said with only a trace of a smile.
“They won’t be damaged. Promise.”
The technician typed in Samantha’s name and age, then fed the baby picture into the computer’s scanner. The composite that appeared on the screen moments later looked remarkably similar to the first-grader’s photo.
“Okay,” Raymond announced. “Now repeat the process exactly as before, except enter the child’s name as Carmen Ramos instead.”
The technician nodded and began to type.
“Let’s hope I’m wrong about this,” Amanda whispered.
Raymond nodded, but Tony seemed not to hear. His gaze was fixed on the computer screen.
A few minutes later, a new image slowly came into focus. A dark-haired, brown-eyed girl appeared on the screen, and to Amanda, she looked just like the last image Tony had posted at the day-care center.
