Charlotte told herself she’d wait to reach out to her mom till she and Sean got to Santa Monica with their surfboards, and she’d tell her she’d caught a ride from Arrowhead early this morning.

As the Uber drove through the narrow, winding streets in the Hollywood Hills, she told the driver to drop her off at the house next door to hers, not wanting her mom or dad to see her. From there she walked to a locked gate in the fence around her two-acre property, punched in the code, and let herself in. Closing it behind her, she headed down the steeply graded drive, then turned and moved across the sloping landscaped yard on the offhand chance her mom was standing at the living room window that overlooked the driveway.

She made her way around to the back of the property right at seven a.m., hoping no one in the house could see her as she rapped on the door to the pool house, but when Sean didn’t answer immediately, she began to worry that her mom could be standing in the kitchen dining area that overlooked the back patio. She tapped the code to the pool house into the keypad alongside the door, then stepped in when it unlocked.

“Sean?” she called out through the den and then again up the stairs. It was weird he wasn’t up, but she knew her dad gave him Wednesdays and Sundays off; it was Wednesday, so she figured he was just sleeping in.

Charlotte didn’t go upstairs to where Sean slept; that would be weird, she decided, so she texted him that she was here, then headed through the pool house to the storage room in the back. There she quietly dressed in her wetsuit, picked out a surfboard for today’s excursion, and began collecting other odds and ends she’d need for a morning at the beach.

* * *

• • •

   Three Mercedes-Benz G550 SUVs rolled down the driveway in front of Kenneth Cage’s Hollywood Hills mansion, then parked in a line in front of the house. A pair of Sean Hall’s men climbed out of the first vehicle, unlocked the door, and, while keeping their hands over the pistols secreted under their polo shirts and light sport coats, they scanned the area.

Seconds later one of them called into his radio, and all the doors to all the SUVs opened as one. Eight other men and two women, Roxana Vaduva and Dr. Claudia Riesling, climbed out and headed inside.

Everyone in the entourage had a mission this morning, and Jaco had tasked one of Hall’s men, much to Hall’s disapproval, to be in charge of Maja. He took her by the arm into the large kitchen at the rear of the house and sat her down at a table in front of the sliding glass door overlooking the pool and rear gardens, while he went looking for some cordage to tie her with.

He bound her tightly with an electrical extension cord but didn’t bother securing her to the chair because he didn’t want to deal with untying her from an object if they had to make haste to the SUVs.

Still, the girl he only knew as Maja was utterly compliant, so he wasn’t worried about her running off.

Sean Hall’s six security men took up positions around the home, their eyes cast out on the sharp hills and massive homes all around. Hall started to run over to his pool house for a change of clothes; he was still wearing an undershirt and jeans, but he’d only made it into the kitchen before Cage yelled from the living room, demanding that Hall, Verdoorn, and Loots follow him into his office to begin removing incriminating files and computer drives.

Sean turned to comply with his boss’s wishes, but on his way out of the kitchen he called across the room to his subordinate. “Don’t just sit there, Scott. Make us a pot of coffee.”

Claudia headed to the kids’ rooms after Cage directed her to a stack of suitcases in a hall closet.

Within five minutes of arrival, the Director and his people were all over the house, hurrying through their assignments, while a few miles away the pilots of the Gulfstream waited at LAX after filing a flight plan for San Jose, Costa Rica.

* * *

• • •

It’s just after seven a.m. when we park next to an unused warehouse just outside the fenced-in grounds of Van Nuys Airport. We sit down at picnic tables along a chain-link fence, just twenty-five yards from where Carl’s bullet-pocked helicopter is parked on a pad at the end of the runway.

We drink coffee and clean and rebandage Kareem’s arm wound, in that order. Carl and A.J. talk about Shep’s dog, agree to share custody and take care of her now that her master isn’t able to do so.

And then we sit around, just hoping for a bolt out of the blue.

We know we can’t count on Roxana, so our only fallback plan is to scan the news on a couple of the guys’ mobile phones, reading updates about the gun battle a few hours earlier a half hour’s drive to the north of our position. We’re hoping against hope that the media will be able to tie someone to the property or to one of the dead there, as much of a long shot as that seems.

We also pull out binos and scan the airport grounds, on the off chance the Director is flying out of this airport. It’s a hundred-to-one shot, which demonstrates how desperate we are.

My phone rings and I answer it in my earpiece. “Talyssa?”

The Romanian Europol analyst’s voice conveys a sense of dread. “Harry . . . it’s him. He’s on the line. He says he will kill Roxana.”

“Patch him through.”

I hear some clicks, and then I say, “That you, Jaco?”

His dark voice replies, “Nice work last night.”

I laugh. It’s phony, but I want to appear relaxed and in control. “You like that shit, do you?”

“Love it. I thought you’d sneak in, your standard operating procedure. Figured you’d kill a couple Mexicans with a stiletto before my guys came across you and did you in. But no, you went big, didn’t you? Made a lot of noise, broke a lot of things, killed some people who didn’t matter.”

“We slayed a lot of your boys, didn’t we?”

“Maybe. But what did you get out of all that?”

“I recovered a house full of sex trafficking victims, all of whom can identify the people who—”

“Nobody’s identifying a bladdy thing, mate. Those whores will be useless to you. We’re protected at the highest levels. You’re pissin’ into the fookin’ wind.”

I don’t respond.

He then says, “I was just telling your girlfriend on the phone that I’ve got her little sis here with me, in the next room. I’m thinking about walking over there and sticking my knife through her heart. What’s the Gray Man going to do about that?”

“I don’t have to do anything about that, because you aren’t going to touch her.”

He laughs. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because the only reason you took her away from the ranch last night was that you know she’s your fail-safe, your last chance to bargain to save yourself, save your boss.”