Harry simply couldn’t learn the truth, because if he did know, then she worried he’d be no help to her at all.

* * *

• • •

I wake up in the closet again in my Mostar flat, and see that dawn is just now breaking outside. A soft rain falls outside the window. The events of the evening before rush back into my mind like a flood, and I turn to look for Talyssa Corbu. I find her sitting in the living area, in the same chair and at the same little wooden table where Liliana and I sat the day before yesterday. She’s wearing jeans and a dark blue pullover, just staring out the window at the weather, or at the police station across the street, I can’t tell which.

She still looks like a little girl to me. Freshly dyed red hair and small mousy features. Pale skin and tired but fearful eyes.

But she’s got balls of steel coming here alone to find out who killed her sister, I’ll give her that much.

I smell coffee, and this is a surprise, because I didn’t know I had any coffee.

I close my eyes and ask myself what I’m going to do. I’d spent a couple hours before falling asleep trying to figure out the best way to grab Vukovic without a rolling gun battle through the middle of town.

My plan to take him late at night after he got home from work had been a good one; so good, apparently, that four other people had been planning on trying it themselves, but the nighttime kidnapping option is off the table now. I don’t want to stick around Mostar all day to wait for him to come back home. The Hungarians will have already reported in to their leadership, so there might well be another vanload of assholes already on the highway heading down here.

Nope, I’ve got to do this today, at the first opportunity.

And I don’t think Corbu will be much help. She’s a bean counter, not a cop.

And that means I’ll have to do this shit alone. Why should today be any different? I think.

I shake off my moodiness, climb up to my feet, and walk over to the Romanian. She pours me a cup from a little copper pitcher she must have found in a cupboard in the kitchen. I sit down and sip the hot coffee and it’s strong and good, better than I could have made. I’m no aficionado but to me it tastes like Turkish coffee, something I’m very familiar with.

Her first words of the day to me are, “You sleep in closets?”

I shrug. “I’m weird.”

She doesn’t reply. I know she’s still trying to get some kind of a fix on me. Her analytical brain hasn’t put me together yet, and it’s twisting her in knots.

After sitting together in silence for a moment, I say, “I’m going to roll him up during the day today.”

“Roll him up?”

“Capture.”

Corbu is surprised. “While he is working? While he is armed?”

“Everybody I meet is armed.”

“I’m not armed. You took my gun.”

I sigh. “Every bad guy I meet is armed.”

The woman seemed to marvel at what I was planning on doing. Then, “How can I help you do it?”

“You won’t be there, not when it happens, anyway. But I need a place to take him. Somewhere outside the center of town. You can help me find a suitable location.”

“The place in the hills where we parked last night?”

“Not there, exactly, too close to the road. But up in the hills, for sure. Go back in the woods on the other side of the street from the overlook, see if you can find a building or a clearing or some barn. I need it to be well hidden.”

“So you can question him?”

And now we’ve come to the moment of truth. Clearing my throat, I say, “Talyssa . . . your idea of an interrogation probably differs from mine. I know men like this Vukovic, and I know what he will be able to resist. I also know what he’ll respond to. We’re going to have to do this my way to get anything out of him.”

Talyssa cocks her head. “You are saying . . . you are saying you are going to torture him?”

“There’s a good chance he won’t tell us anything if we ask nicely, which means this is going to get ugly. If you don’t want to be around to see it, I get it. I’ll ask him questions about your sister’s murder if you want me to.”

“Her disappearance,” she corrects.

“That’s what I meant.”

I can hear fresh nerves in her voice now. “Are you going to kill him when you have the information?” She thinks I’m a bad man, and she thinks I’m nuts. Yet still she seems all too eager to receive my help.

“I’m not going to kill him,” I say, but I know I might be lying. There are a lot of ways that this can go down. It will be a violent encounter when I take him, and if that son of a bitch draws on me, I’m going to put a couple of rounds through his heart and end him. But I’m doing my best to keep Talyssa on board, because I need her help.

Her continued suspicion is evident. “I still don’t know who you are, Harry.”

“I’m the guy here to screw with the people who run the pipeline.”

“But why? Why do you care? Did they kill your sister, too?” She says it sarcastically, but I can tell she needs to know something.

“No.” I think about making up a story, but decide against it. This girl is being straight with me, more or less. Not completely, I know there is a missing piece to her narrative, but I haven’t pushed her about it yet. Still, she deserves some truth. “Two nights ago I went to a farm thirty kilometers from here. I was doing a . . . a thing, but I discovered a room full of sex trafficking victims. They wouldn’t leave with me, afraid of what would happen to their families back home.

“I think there is a chance the women will be . . . will be punished for me showing up there. And I can’t just walk away from that. I need to try to help them somehow.”

She seems astonished by what I just told her. “The way station? You found the way station here? You saw the women?”

“I did.”

Corbu reaches quickly across the table to where her jacket lies over a chair and shoves her hand into a side pocket. Startled by the rapid movement, I rise to my feet, spin towards her, and go for the pistol inside my waistband on my right hip, all in one motion. I draw faster than her hand comes out. “Don’t pull it!” I say with authority. I don’t know what “it” is, but she’s going for something obviously, and I’m trained to do whatever’s necessary to avoid surprises.

She freezes solid, and the poor girl looks like she’s about to wet herself. In a stuttering voice she says, “It’s . . . it’s just a picture. I want to show you a picture.”