Page 150 of South of Nowhere

He studied her for a moment.

Shaw rose and walked to the video camera sitting on a tripod near the door. He shut it off.

Which engendered a frown.

He returned and sat. “What if therewassomething else we could offer you…Icould offer you.”

Now she looked curious.

“You’ll be in prison. Granted. That’s your future. But what about your past?”

She shrugged.

Shaw said slowly, “The past…It’s never erased. Is there anything I could do to…clear up some questions you might have? Something you’ve been wondering about over the years?”

Her eyes widened momentarily, then grew inscrutable once more.

He leaned forward, smelling her sweat and perfume—and, he was pretty sure, a scent of Waylon Foley’s expensive aftershave. “I find things, you know. I find people. It’s what I do. And I’m good at it.”

This time the crack in the stone was wider.

“Would there be anyone in your past you might want to know about?”

She inhaled and exhaled an unsteady breath. Licked her lips.

Shaw had read in the brief bio Marissa Fell had prepared about Alisette Lark that, at nineteen, she had gotten married. And, two years later, divorced.

Shaw was thinking of several rewards he’d pursued under circumstances with some parallels. Rewards posted by women in their thirties or forties, who had married young and then divorced after several years and moved on to very different lives.

Women like Alisette Lark, though without the criminal angle.

As a general rule Colter Shaw did not pursue rewards to find birth mothers or adopted children. Most often, each in their own way wished to remain anonymous. But there was one exception: when the birth mother had been diagnosed with a genetic illness later in life and she felt her child should be made aware of it.

Shaw had then tracked down the adoptive parents and delivered the information on the medical condition.

Lark breathed deeply and lowered her head to wipe a tear away with fingers of her shackled hand.

Shaw said softly, “I’ll find your son or daughter, tell you about them. What they’re studying, the family they’re part of now. I won’t tell you where they live or give you enough information to find them on your own. That’s set in stone. But you’ll know something.”

He pushed his notebook and offered the fountain pen. “Draw a map of where you think Foley might’ve pitched the phone.”

She stared at the implement for a long moment, then picked it up and started to draw with a steady hand. She was talented. As she sketched, she said, “Even if you find it, remember, Waylon broke it in half.”

“Let us worry about that,” Shaw said. “Keep going. You’re doing great.”

66.

Outside the Public Safety Office, Colter Shaw and his mother were walking toward the parking lot. Annie Coyne was with them. Dorion had gone to visit Ed Gutiérrez and his wife, Martina, who had landed in Sacramento about an hour earlier.

Shaw involuntarily looked at the fallen levee. Clearly his sister’s odd demolition man, Hire Denton—howhadhe come by that name?—had calculated correctly as the dam was holding. A half dozen army engineers, armed with surveying equipment and tablets, were walking around in the muck of the riverbed where the gap was.

They seemed to think all was secure, but it never hurt to keep an eye out for oneself, and Shaw looked casually for possible escape routes, just in case.

Very few risks in life clock in at zero percent.

Foremost in his thought was the conversation he and Dorion were about to have with Mary Dove at the hotel the woman had checked in to between Fort Pleasant and Hinowah. Nice and private.

How would his mother react?

---