Lousiana Hotshot

Cassandra’s okay— it follows, right?
    But it didn’t. Cassandra was the one who’d had sex with Toes; the one with the missing mother.
Damn! Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I take Cassandra? Toes must have been going to
her
school.
    She could think of a million reasons why Tony wouldn’t answer his phone, why everything was probably just fine and dandy, but that did nothing to keep her heart at a normal pace. Should she check out Cassandra’s school? She looked at her watch. Pointless. School had been out for an hour. Tony should have reported in.
    She turned toward Pontchartrain Park. Maybe he was out of his car. But, no, that wasn’t their deal— they’d agreed to keep their phones with them.
    Traffic was nasty. It took a century to get to the lake.
    But she breathed deeply when she saw Tony’s car in front of the Scott house. Okay. Everything was fine.
    Half-smiling, she went to the door, rang the bell, and waited. She’d been there a long time when she remembered how far it was to the front of the house, how long she’d waited before. She rang the bell again, went through the whole thing one more time, and in frustration finally tried the door. It opened.
    Shocked, she poked her head in, trying to decide whether to call out or creep around. Oh, hell. If they were there, they already knew she was too. It hardly made a damn.
    She found that was a good thing because she was suddenly aware of her panic. Creeping was no longer an option. Her mouth opened and her feet stomped. “Tony? Tony, you here?” The answering silence was more frightening than a scream. “Cassandra?” She was racing, raging against that deathly quiet, willing it broken. She kept yelling as she ran through the house, so loud she started to get hoarse. “Tony, where the hell are you? How the hell could you do this?” Exactly what he had done she couldn’t have said, other than fail to answer. “Cassandra, come
out
of there!” No one answered.
    And when she reached the dining room, she knew no one would. Two chairs had been overturned on their sides, a pile of books knocked off the table, as if someone had come in, gotten this far, and met with resistance.
    Even after that, she couldn’t stop screaming their names, though she knew perfectly well that if they were there, she was about to find them dead.
    She found nothing. No sign they’d ever been here. They must have been taken out the front door and forced into a car.
    She righted one of the dining-room chairs and sat down, shaking, sweating, trying to get her thoughts together. But there was no choice. There was one thing to do and one thing only. She had to call the cops. And yet… and yet, there was something wrong with that plan, something that niggled at her. She did deep breathing and tried to get at it.
    Ah, there it was: They’d ask her her name and make her wait there.
    Still. It had to be done. She called Langdon.
    Not in, and she had no voicemail.
    Not having her pager number, Talba left a message with some anonymous detective: “Tell her to call the Baroness right away. It’s extremely important— can you page her?” The detective snorted. Too late, she realized the word “Baroness” had probably identified her as a nutcase. He might or might not page Langdon.
    And then she remembered something— the bird-dog homing device she’d attached to the car parked in front of Toledano’s office. She just might be able to pick up a signal. If she could, and it was Toes’s car, she could find him.
    But the thing had a very short range. No time to wait for the cops. She had to get going. And there was one other thing. She was unarmed. What the hell was she thinking of?
    Without a second thought, she ransacked Aziza’s house, turning up what appeared to be an automatic handgun on a shelf of the woman’s closet, along with several clips of ammunition. She’d never shot a gun in her life, but how hard could it be? She knew damn well she was smarter than the humanoids who had Cassandra. If they could do it, she could.
    She rushed to her car, did a makeshift hookup on the receiver and…against all odds, started to get something.
    The beep was coming from the east. On the road, she used her cell phone to dial 911, and ran the whole thing down to a dispatcher who kept interrupting with pleas for her name. Finally, she exploded, “Jesus, lady, I’ll be in touch!”
    The signal was getting strong.
    It took her to the river, and then she lost