It’s annoying, but I get it. I am bitching just as much as he is, and I didn’t even get shot.

The hostages are racked out on the floor all over the place. Most are still in a state of shock, but every one of them seems happy to be free from captivity, which is a relief, because I thought it possible, even after all the horrors these girls have undoubtedly suffered, that a few of them, at least, would side with their captors.

Some demand to speak to their embassy, but most understand that they are in the middle of a very fluid, if very low-rent, operation, and they calm the most anxious down. They all promise to sit tight, and we promise them we will help them get where they need to go soon.

Me and the boys grab more ammo and smoke grenades from Rodney’s garage, and we’re in the process of cleaning our weapons when Talyssa calls me from down in LA. I step into the backyard for some privacy, thinking she’s going to light into me about failing again to rescue her sister, probably because it’s all I’m thinking about right now, myself.

But instead she says, “Gentry, the Director will wonder how we found out about the ranch. He’ll be worried, at least for a few days, that we can trace the property directly to him somehow.”

I hope she’s right about this. “Suits me if he’s running scared.”

“Men like this,” she says. “Wealthy, powerful men. They have a lot of places they can flee to in times of danger.”

“Sure.” I’ve known a few powerful assholes myself, and she’s correct about their modus operandi when dealing with trouble.

She says, “If I knew about other properties he owned, we might have something to go on, but Rancho Esmerelda was so well insulated in its corporate ownership that I can’t tie any person to it.”

I know all this already. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, he is going to leave the area. Soon. If he hasn’t already.”

“Yeah, of course. Dr. Riesling, as well. But what can we do about it? There are a lot of airports here, we can’t just go—”

“Where do you think the Director lives?”

This question surprises me. “I have no idea.”

“You know it’s within driving distance to the ranch, because he brought my sister all the way here from Romania for himself.”

“Right, but ten million people live within two hours of that location.”

“The Director doesn’t live like ten million people.”

This is true. “But still, lots of enclaves for the wealthy around here. Not just in LA, but in towns up the coast, as well.”

Talyssa says, “He’s a businessman. A financier. He won’t be in some beach town hours away from Los Angeles. He’s got to be in the city. He meets clients for lunch, he needs the convenience of LA.”

I don’t have a clue where she’s going with this. “Okay. He’s in LA, some ritzy part of it. What? Do we go door to door and knock?”

“Of course not. But you and your team shouldn’t sit up there in a house in Bakersfield, either. Come down here. If my sister is able to alert me some way, if she is even still alive and still with the Director, then you will be much closer when it happens.”

It’s a lot of “ifs,” but Talyssa is right. LA is the most high-probability location for the Director, and if we head down in that direction now, we will be able to act faster if, by some miracle, Roxana is able to get a message out.

Twenty minutes later, Kareem, Rodney, A.J., and I have left the kidnapping victims alone at Rodney’s place, and we drive in A.J.’s truck to the south.

Carl is still at the airport with his helicopter, but when we tell him what we’re doing he decides to fly it to Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley. That will put him just minutes’ flying time from anywhere in LA and it also gives the rest of us a place to position ourselves.

This may not be much, but it feels like forward momentum to me, if only incremental forward momentum.

But one thing feels certain. I got us to Venice, and Talyssa got us to Rancho Esmerelda. But if we’re going to find our way to the top of this evil organization in the next twelve hours, it’s up to Roxana.

* * *

• • •

Roxana Vaduva drank the tepid vodka straight out of the little bottle while the men around her discussed whether to kill her.

Three men held her fate in their hands, and all three of them were aware of who she was and what she had done. They knew she’d been sent by her sister to meet the Director, and then, once she’d been taken, she’d communicated with her sister’s colleague on the yacht, no doubt giving him the information that led him to Italy.

So now she sat quietly, took a last gulp to finish the bottle, and awaited their decision.

The man she knew as the Director stormed around the massive penthouse hotel suite, hands on his hips, a bathrobe covering his small frame. The tall, bald-headed man named Jaco sat on a sofa in the opposite corner, making phone call after phone call. And Sean, the Director’s bodyguard, sat quietly on the kitchen counter, just feet from Roxana.

She’d seen him sneak an airplane vodka bottle out of the minibar for himself.

He was clearly scared. He wasn’t as scared as Roxana—no, she didn’t think anyone on Earth was as scared as she was right now—but she could tell he wanted nothing more to do with this entire affair, and the one shot of vodka she’d seen him down so far would help him no more than the one she just drank would aid in getting her out of this mess.

Dr. Claudia was also in the penthouse now. The older American woman’s normally calm exterior had given way to an intense look of concern, nail biting, and chain smoking.

Whoever it was who had shown up at the ranch in a helicopter, they had certainly rattled the top of the Consortium.

It had to have been the assassin from the yacht, although he certainly must have brought more forces along with him.

She hoped like hell her sister had been nowhere near all that fighting. She assumed Talyssa was still in Europe, directing the actions of the American killer from there.

Roxana looked at Jaco now, and he at her. His eyes frightened her, and she turned away, wondering if he might just draw the gun out from under his jacket and shoot her in the head.

That was, ultimately, the Director’s call, she was certain, and this terrified her more. If she was the most afraid in the room, the small bald-headed man was the angriest. His pacing, his yelling at his subordinates, his taking of pills, and his occasional bouts of brooding silence had made the last few hours a terrifying roller-coaster ride for the young Romanian.

The Director stormed around now, and she focused on him. She thought, at first, that he looked like Napoleon at Waterloo, but after watching him for a while, she found him to be less like the embattled general and more like a spoiled kid, furious things weren’t going his way.