The American was weak. She strained to listen to him, barely hearing his words when the sound of his voice echoed off the stone walls.
“He’s got n-no right to do w-what he did to you.” He grimaced with the pain of speaking. “What’s your name?”
“Estella Calderone. And you are Garrett Wheeler, is that right?” She’d heard his name when he was being tortured, before Guerrero had come looking for her.
The American barely nodded.
“If we are to die today, then it is good we know who we are.” She felt a single tear roll down her cheek. “But in God’s eyes, no names are necessary.”
He knew the girl was scared even though she was trying to sound brave. It was one thing for him to withstand torture, but seeing what they had done to Estella had ripped him up. Any plans he had for revenge had been challenged the minute Ramon Guerrero touched that girl with his knife. It left him with a burning question that he had not yet found an answer for.
How badly did he want to kill the man who had taken everything from him?
La Pointe, Wisconsin
“So this is where it happened?”
Sitting outside in the passenger seat of Chief Cook’s patrol car, Jessie stared through the windshield at a dilapidated old clapboard house that was set back into the woods, off an unpaved road. The yard was overgrown, with vines and weeds making an effort to reclaim the property.
Massive old trees dwarfed the abandoned house, casting the place in shadows. And old crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind, a sad reminder of what had happened. A strong feeling of déjà vu hit Jessie, even though a day ago, she would’ve sworn she’d never been to La Pointe.
“Yeah,” the chief said. “It’s been on the market a few times, but they haven’t had much luck in selling it. In a small town, rumors get more exaggerated as time passes. And it’s damned hard to whitewash a murder.”
“Well, that’s true enough.” Jessie got out of the squad car, keeping her eyes on the old house. “What was her name? The woman who was murdered here.”
“Angela DeSalvo. She was twenty-eight years old.” When the chief got out of his car, he had a file with him. After Jessie got caught staring at the manila folder he had under his arm, Chief Cook added, “I was a rookie at the time. Didn’t know her, but she was a pretty little thing by all accounts.”
After an awkward silence, he said, “Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you where it happened. And you can ask your questions.”
She nodded and walked in silence to the front steps. When she got closer, she stared up at the second-floor windows. One in particular caught her eye. Something about it was familiar, but it also stirred a tight knot in her belly.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the chief said. “You okay?”
Without taking her eyes off the window, she replied, “Yeah, guess so.”
When they got inside, the chief didn’t say a word at first. He let her walk through the musty old rooms by herself, with her boots echoing in the emptiness. And every time a flash of memory hit her, she shut her eyes and clung to it as if she’d lose it forever if she let go.
Too much was familiar. As she walked through the rooms, too many recollections bombarded her for the unsettling feeling to be purely coincidental.
“I think I’ve been here . . . before,” she whispered, hardly realizing that she had spoken at all. “Where did it happen?”
“Up here,” the chief called to her from another room. When she joined him, he pointed up a set of stairs.
As Jessie followed him, her stomach tightened, especially when she got to the second floor and made the turn she knew would come. If Chief Cook hadn’t been leading the way, she still would have known where to go. That window she had seen outside had been important to her for a reason.
She’d been there before.
“She was found in her bedroom. Right there.” He didn’t need to point to where Angela DeSalvo had died. Bloodstains marred the old floorboards. The pooling wasn’t red anymore. It had turned dark brown with age.
When Jessie knelt by the stain and put her hand to the floor, she felt an overwhelming sense of loss. And flashes of violent images came from nowhere, bombarding her with a past she didn’t realize she had buried. The darkness of it gripped her hard. And she fought a lump in her throat. She didn’t want to break down in front of the chief, but a part of her didn’t care.
“You ready to see a photo?”
Jessie looked up in shock, unsure what to say. After she took a deep breath, she stood and waited for him to fish out a photo from his file. When he handed it to her, she looked into the face of Angela DeSalvo.
“Oh, my God.” Jessie couldn’t help it. She gasped with a hand to her lips, her fingers trembling.
“You recognize her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not . . . sure.”
The woman in the crime-scene photo stared back at her, forever immortalized in black and white, a look of shock frozen on her face. The photo was a close-up, and a dark pool of blood was congealed under her head. Despite the image being graphic, Jessie had lied to the chief.
She’d recognized the woman from the many times she’d come to Jessie while she slept.
A flash of her smile and the sound of laughter jarred Jessie from her stupor, memories of the only happy moments she had when she was a child. The woman in her dreams had played with her in a park, on a swing.
When Jessie heard a steady squeaking sound coming from outside the bedroom window, she turned her head, trying to listen for the noise, and her breath caught in her throat.
“What’s that?”
It took the chief a minute to realize what she was asking.
“That squeaking sound is from an old swing out back. You want to go see . . .”
Jessie didn’t wait for him to finish. She ran down the stairs and headed for the backyard until she stood next to an old rusted swing, blowing in the breeze. The play set stood under a large tree, squeaking every time the wind blew. An eerie trigger for her memory.
Jessie knew right then that she had been there before. This had been where Angela DeSalvo had pushed her on the swing. That memory hadn’t been from a park. It had come from right there, within steps of where Angela would later be murdered.
“Was she my mother? Can you tell me that?”
Avoiding the chief’s eyes, Jessie looked down at the swing as she wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. He’d never answered her before when she questioned him on the DNA found at the scene, but now she had to know.
“Not sure how to answer that.” The chief’s voice was low. Feeling numb, she really had to listen to hear him when he said, “Biology doesn’t always determine a real parent, but if you’re asking if your DNA is a match to Angela’s . . .”
Jessie found that she was holding her breath, waiting to hear what he’d say.
“ . . . I’m sorry to say . . . No, her DNA didn’t match yours.”
Jessie was crushed. She couldn’t help it. If Angela’s DNA had matched, it would have meant her mother was dead, which would have felt just as bad. Yet without having a biological connection to Angela, everything she thought she knew about the sliver of memory she’d always associated with her mother was gone.
She had a strong feeling that Angela had loved her, but if she wasn’t her mother, then who was she?
And why had she crossed paths with a killer?
Chapter 6
Guadalajara, Mexico
Situated twelve miles southeast of the city, Guadalajara International Airport had only one terminal, with domestic and international flights coming into the same facility. That meant more traffic for Alexa to blend into. A tall blonde would have stood out in a sea of brown skin and dark hair, but after the dye job from last night, she was a brunette. Having changed disguises at the last two layovers and scrubbed off her fake tattoos, she now looked like a conservative schoolteacher on vacation.