I leaned forward and peered at the paperwork. It was a flight log and passenger manifest for a private jet owned by Frank Braga, dated February 3rd, 2011. “What exactly is this?” I asked, furrowing my brows.

  “Braga is the head of one of the major southern mafia families. That’s his jet. On the same day the cult’s jet went down in the Sabine River in Texas, Braga’s jet flew out of a private airfield. Also in Texas. It landed in… guess where?”

  “Costa Rica?”

  “Bingo. Private airfield outside San José.” She smiled. “I thought that was a hell of a coincidence, so I dug deeper. See the passenger manifest? There’s over a hundred names there. None from the cult. Just guys Braga knows, I suppose.”

  “Right.” I pored over the list of passengers. Beck was right. None of the names were familiar to me.

  “Anyway, I started checking each one. For example, the top guy—Jared Rinaldi. Even though he’s on the manifest, his passport wasn’t used on that date. He definitely didn’t fly to Costa Rica that day. In fact, he’s never been there. I went through and checked every name on the list. None of them were actually there.”

  “So Braga helped Chastain and the rest of the cult guys escape the country on his jet? Using fake passports, I presume.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I leaned back and rubbed my chin. “So they sacrificed a few guys for the Sabine plane, and the rest got away on a second plane. I never even considered something like that.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think anyone did, to be honest.”

  “I always thought the Sabine River plane crash was a decoy to make it look like the men were trying to flee the country, in order to mask the fact that they were actually right here in the States. Guess I couldn’t have been more wrong.” My lips tightened into a thin line.

  Beck shook her head. “No, you were half-right. The Sabine plane was a decoy. Just not in the way we originally thought.”

  “I suppose so.” I yawned and rubbed my eyes.

  “There’s more.”

  I lifted my brows and looked back up at her. “Yeah?”

  “Remember our conversation two days ago?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  Jolie had been missing for three and a half days now. I’d barely eaten or slept a wink in that time, so all my previous conversations with Beck had turned hazy and distorted in my mind until they were nothing but jumbles of meaningless chatter.

  During this period, I’d been struck by the strangest paradoxical sensation. The hours ticked by excruciatingly slowly, because Jolie was away from me and every second without her was torture. Somehow, on the other hand, time seemed to be simultaneously speeding up. The days had blurred together and seemingly rushed by, as if my mind was torturing me by letting me know that Jolie was being taken farther and farther away with every second that passed while I remained helpless and ignorant of her location.

  It didn’t make any sense, but right now, nothing really did.

  “I asked you to tell me exactly how you got the cult to accept you as a member when you were trying to infiltrate them,” Beck reminded me.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “You said you’d dug into Chastain’s financials a bit, and you noticed he’d lost a fair amount of money in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. You used that information to weasel your way in by pretending you wanted to buy some land from him.”

  “That’s right.”

  She pulled out another file. “The good thing about having me on your side is that I can look into things in way more detail, because I have more connections.”

  “No shit. You’re a detective.”

  She smiled. “Anyway, on the surface, it looks like he did lose a lot of money back then. But I noticed a few tiny discrepancies. Dug deeper. I discovered that he actually didn’t lose anything. He probably just wanted money from you because he’s a greedy old bastard.”

  My brows shot up again. “Wait, what?”

  “Long story short, one of my connections is a forensic accountant. He owes me a favor, so I made him help out.” She leaned forward. “If you really get into Chastain’s financials, you can see that he started funneling money out of the States into a Costa Rican account as early as 1997. From his personal accounts and his companies.”

  “So he was building the backup place at the same time he was building New Eden here in Louisiana.”

  “Yup, I’d say so. Always gotta have a backup, right?” She rolled her eyes.

  I snorted. “Right.”

  “Anyway, he obviously didn’t want to attract too much attention with all the money-moving, because having the IRS or SEC sniffing around your stuff is basically like having the Inquisition coming after you. So he was only funneling out small amounts at a time. Small to him, that is. But in 2008, he took advantage of the GFC and funneled out a shit-ton of money. No one questioned one of the state’s wealthiest men suddenly losing a third of his fortune, because back then, things were shitty for almost everyone. A lot of rich people lost big.”

  “True.”

  “He masked it all as investments gone bad. Companies going broke and so on. Of course, they were just bullshit shell companies.” She shook her head slowly. “Anyway, my point is, he clearly wanted a lot of his money elsewhere, so if things ever blew up here, he and his cronies could leave and still have a ton of cash to play with.”

  “Makes sense.”

  She tilted her chin slightly to one side. “Now, this is actually a good thing for us. If his money is split in just two directions, which it is, then that means he only ever had two places to go. He’s already burned one of them, so that means he has to be in Costa Rica. It’s the only other place he has money.”

  I nodded slowly. “That’s true.”

  “Obviously he can never touch the fortune he left here, because then we’d all know he was still alive. Besides, it was frozen by the government anyway, given the nature of his crimes. That’s why Jolie never inherited it, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, he’s never tried to touch it or get it unfrozen. So I can only conclude that the cult is definitely in Costa Rica. Like I said, it’s the only place Chastain has accessible money. That narrows down our search quite a lot.”

  “Well, now I’m kinda glad I didn’t kill Lauren,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “She really gave up the goods.”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Beck said in an acid tone, brows dipping.

  She stood up and turned around to pour herself another cup of coffee from the warmer jug behind her desk. “We still have a fairly long road ahead. Even though we know the cult is in Costa Rica, we don’t know exactly where,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “But it’s still a great start.”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  She sat back at the desk, wrapping her hands around the new mug. “One thing I’m wondering, though—what if they plan on keeping Jolie here in the States?”

  My forehead wrinkled. “Why would they do that?”

  “Well, we know they’re able to travel here. Tom Anderson got in, after all, along with whoever’s taken Jolie now. I’m guessing they use fake passports and only send one or two guys at a time, so nothing seems suspicious, but still… they’re clearly able to get here. So what if they don’t intend on taking Jolie out of the country at all?”

  I shook my head. “Tom told me that Jacob Chastain wanted Jolie to be brought to him. He’s too smart to risk coming back here. Probably too cowardly as well.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay. So you think they’ll definitely try to get her out.”

  “Yup.” My brows knitted together a second later. “Although you might be right. Maybe Chastain isn’t that much of a coward. Maybe he will come back here. Who knows?”

  “We’ll explore all possible angles. But I’d say you’re right. It’s more than likely they’ll try to take her out of the country.”

  I looked down at the desk as horrible images filled my mind. What if the men had already transported Jolie to Costa Rica and killed her?

  My concerns must have been written all over my face, because Beck instantly seemed to know what I was thinking. She pushed the mug away and reached over to pat my hand. “I know you’re exhausted and stressed as hell, but I can tell you something that might ease your mind a tad.”

  “What?”

  “Criminals in this situation usually lie low for a few days. They don’t want to take their victim and hop on the first plane out. Too obvious. They want to wait until the heat is off them a bit,” she said. She held up one palm. “I know this is just a small comfort, but that means it’s likely that Jolie either left the country within the last few hours, or she’s still here. And like you said, her father wants her to be brought to him. That means no one’s gonna kill her until she’s there. So there’s a very, very good chance she’s still alive and well.”

  “I guess that means we have some time, then,” I said, staring at the stack of papers again.

  I was hopeful, but at the same time, my chest was heavy from all the stress. Even with the extra few days, what if we were still unable to find Jolie in time to help her? How would we even find her in the first place? Costa Rica wasn’t big, but it wasn’t the size of a postage stamp either. People could disappear there easily enough. In fact, they could disappear basically anywhere, if they really wanted to.

  “I know how stressful this is for you,” Beck said. “I’ve been trying my best to think through all this stuff without putting too much on you. So—”

  I held up a palm. “Just so you know, I appreciate everything you’re doing. Really. I’d be totally fucked without your help,” I cut in. “I know how much you’re putting on the line, too. You could ruin your career over this shit.”

  “It’s fine. Really. I’m doing it for myself too, remember?” She smiled patiently. “Anyway, I was going to say, we should look at airport surveillance footage from the boarding gates of every flight leaving for Costa Rica within a hundred miles of here. Two hundred, to be safe. We might be able to spot them. That way we’ll know if they’re actually leaving the country. We might even be able to directly track them after their flight.”

  I frowned. “Wouldn’t they take another private plane, courtesy of their little mafia friends?”

  She shook her head. “Like you said earlier, Chastain is a smart guy. He’d know that we’re frantically searching for Jolie by now, and he probably thinks we’re only going to focus on private planes, seeing as that’s how he escaped in the first place. I’d say he knows we’ve figured that out by this stage.”

  “So you think whoever has Jolie will fly commercial just to throw us off.”

  “Yep. Exactly.”

  “How, though? Jolie could just scream her head off at the airport and alert security.”

  Beck sucked her teeth. “Easier said than done. There are ways to force victims to cooperate. Threats, intimidation. Even drugs. Whoever has Jolie will likely make it clear to her that if she so much as tries to attract any attention, she’ll pay for it.”

  “I suppose so.” My jaw clenched. “So can you get this airport footage?”

  “Yes. It’ll take a while, though, because I have to do it through unofficial sources. Mind sitting tight for a few more hours while I work on getting it?”

  “Sure.”

  She jerked her head toward the couch on the other side of the office. “You should try to have a nap. Seriously.”

  “I can’t.”

  She stood and put her hands on her hips. “You need energy to find Jolie, and you’re not gonna be up to anything while you’re running on fumes. Especially when you’ve only just recovered from a gunshot wound.”

  She had a point. Grudgingly, I headed over to the couch.

  As I lay my head against one of the arms, Beck gave me a faint smile. “We’re going to find her, Mason,” she said. “I can feel it.”

  I returned her smile. “Yeah. We are.”

  * * *

  Beck came and woke me up a few hours later. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes as she dangled a USB in front of me. “This is it,” she said. “Boarding gate footage from every flight to Costa Rica within two hundred miles of here. Just in case, I got them to send the last three days, even though I don’t think they would’ve left right away.”

  “That’s gonna take a while to look through. It’s a lot of airports, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll copy the data from this drive and give it to you, so you can help. You’ve got a laptop, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good. Don’t worry too much if we don’t spot anything. Like I said, they probably haven’t left yet. We’ll keep checking every day.”

  I nodded and went to retrieve my laptop.

  Several hours later, Beck let out a groan. “I’ve got nothing,” she said, looking up from her desk. “How about you?”

  I shook my head. “I just finished going through the Gulfport-Biloxi stuff. They’ve got a flight five times per week which goes to San José via Miami, but I didn’t see anyone who looked even remotely like Jolie.”

  “Remember, he’ll probably have her disguised a bit.”

  “I know, but I didn’t see anyone.”

  She let out a frustrated puff of air. “Damn.”

  I furrowed my brows. “Hang on. Why are we only looking at airports within two hundred miles of here?”

  “They’re the most likely spots he’ll try and fly out from.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he’ll want to lie low, like I said earlier, but not so low that he’ll head thousands of miles away before flying out. In the end, his top priority is getting Jolie on a plane.”

  “But these guys are smarter than average, remember? Paranoid, too. So what if this one actually drove Jolie all the way across the country before flying out? He’ll probably assume we’re looking closer to home, so he might think it’s safer to fly from somewhere like New York or LA.”

  Beck’s forehead wrinkled. “Good point. He might be thinking along those lines,” she said slowly. “Christ, though… do you have any idea how much footage we’ll have to sift through?”

  “It’s worth it if we find something, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” She sat up straight and covered her mouth for a moment as she yawned. “Sorry, I’m just tired. I didn’t mean that it’s a bad idea overall, just that it’ll take a hell of a long time to go through.”

  “I know, but I really don’t have anything better to do,” I said, sagging back against my chair.

  “What about your company?” she asked gently, cocking her head to the side. “It must be weeks since you last went in to work. Could you maybe call and check in with them while I get my hands on all the extra surveillance footage? That might help you pass some of the time while you wait for me. Better than having you sitting around stressing.”

  “I appointed someone else as interim CEO after I got shot. He’s good. Doesn’t really need me to check in all that much.”

  “Ah.” She stood. “Well, I’ll go and request the footage now. You get some more rest in the meantime.”

  She returned a while later with two more USB drives. “Hope you’re ready for a long night,” she said, tossing one to me. “I had a triple espresso on my way back, so I’m wired.”

  I gave her a tight smile. “Let’s get on it.”

  We spent the next few hours analyzing every moment of every relevant piece of footage from hundreds of different airports. There was no sign of Jolie on any of it, but I didn’t let myself feel defeated. I couldn’t. I had to be strong for her, and I couldn’t give up the fight.

  If none of this showed anything, then we’d look elsewhere. We could check out private airfields and their flight logs, even though we’d previously vetoed that as an option. We could also get in contact with border security and ask them for help, as there was a chance Jolie’s kidnapper might actually be bold enough to try and cross the border into Mexico, then fly to Costa Rica from there instead.

  If that all failed, we could assume Beck was right earlier, and the cult intended on keeping Jolie right here in the States. I wasn’t sure what we’d do if it came to that, but I knew we’d find her somehow.

  I wouldn’t let her vanish.

  I wouldn’t let her die.

  Somewhere around midnight, Beck inhaled sharply. My eyes snapped up. “You got something?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” She squinted at the screen. “You said Jolie’s neighbor spotted a tall blond guy lurking around the building, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a blond guy in this footage from La Guardia, traveling with a woman. She seems a bit spaced out,” she said. “She’s got dark hair, but she’s about the same height and weight as Jolie. Could be a wig, right?”

  I hurried over to her side of the desk. “Where?”

  “This is when they first stepped into the shot,” she said, rewinding and then pausing the video. She pointed to the right side of the screen. “What do you think?”

  I frowned. “I can’t tell. Same body type, I suppose, but I can’t see her face. It could be anyone.”

  “I already watched it all. She never shows her face. Always has her head down,” Beck replied, shoulders slumping.

  “Wait.” I looked at the blond man next to the dark-haired woman. I couldn’t see his face either, but something about him seemed familiar. “Can you see his face at any point?”

  “A bit. Just the profile for a couple of seconds.” She pressed play again and jammed one finger down on the keyboard about a minute later. “There. Right as he’s handing the passports over to the gate attendant.”

  My muscles went rigid, and a sudden chill bit at my core. I would recognize that long, hooked nose anywhere. “That’s Danny Miller.”

  “You know him?”

  I nodded, heart thundering in my chest. “He’s from the cult.”

  Beck sprang up. “You sure it’s him?”

 

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