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  Her heart stopped. She recognized Marie Meijer.

  Before she could say anything, the tallest of the Russians drew a pistol from the back of his pants. Billy slipped away from the front and eased between other containers.

  Albert inched to the rear of the group and drew his own pistol. No one but Hanna saw it in his hand.

  Chapter 74

  I STOOD BY the shipping container’s open door and stared at the group of twenty or so pitiful people inside. Several girls were weeping. A couple of people darted out of the fetid container and onto the ship.

  The scene inside the container shocked me, and that’s saying something for a veteran of the Miami Police Department. Almost all cops reach a point when they think they’ve seen it all and can no longer be surprised by people’s behavior or scenes of violence.

  I’d witnessed children shot in the streets. I’d once held pressure on a wound in the abdomen of a nine-year-old girl in Liberty City, desperate to stop the blood that was pumping out. She had unwittingly stepped into a gunfight between two local gangs and caught a nine-millimeter round just below her rib cage.

  I’d picked her up and carried her like a doll, keeping one hand pressed down hard on the wound in her abdomen. I ran till I thought my heart might burst to where the paramedics said they’d meet me, a block away from the gunfire.

  I rode with her in the ambulance because she didn’t want me to leave her.

  I stayed with her until she was taken into surgery, and then I waited at the hospital to explain to her stepfather what had happened.

  I sat with my uniform covered in the little girl’s blood. I could barely keep it together. Nurses offered me coffee and tried to talk to me as I waited.

  Her stepfather finally showed up and asked me what the hell was going on.

  I explained what had happened and told him that the surgeon was hopeful he could save the little girl.

  All the man said to that was “This ain’t gonna cost me nothing, is it?”

  That whole situation had shocked and bothered me for weeks after. And it didn’t touch what I was looking at now.

  The stench of human waste and vomit coming from the shipping container made my eyes water. A rat scurried out of it. Before I could tell the people inside they were safe, I heard movement behind me. It caught everyone’s attention.

  I looked around to see a group of people I didn’t know. I focused on a blued semiautomatic pistol in the hand of a tall guy wearing a dark sports coat.

  Lorena Perez shouted, “Police, don’t move!” and drew her department-issued Glock. But it had no effect on the man with the handgun. She let loose three quick rounds.

  The sound of the gunfire among the containers was deafening and disorienting, like thunder inside a small room. The noise was everywhere, swarming my senses. I stumbled forward and tried to pull the container door shut to protect the people inside.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. There was no way those prisoners would let the door shut on them again, not even if people were shooting right in front of them. A mass of the people still inside the container slammed the door open.

  I backed to the side of the container and drew my service pistol. People from the unknown group had guns up and were firing. Steph and Rick Morris were returning fire.

  I needed to know Marie was safe. She was unarmed. What had I been thinking, bringing her here? I raised my pistol. There were no obvious targets, but a few shots crossed between the two groups.

  My heart was pounding in my chest from the adrenaline rush and the shock of being shot at. I looked over my shoulder. There were a few people cowering inside the storage container and several others lying still on its nasty, garbage-covered floor.

  Marie leaped forward and slammed her body into a man trying to get to the container. She knocked him back, but he quickly regained his balance and swung the butt of his pistol into Marie’s face.

  Her head snapped and twisted.

  I needed to help her.

  Two things happened quickly: three rounds pinged off the vent I was using for cover, forcing me back down, and Marie took another blow, this one a punch from the man’s other hand.

  I stared in horror as he brought his pistol up and pointed it at Marie. I raised my pistol for a tricky shot, hoping to at least distract the man.

  But Marie was quicker. She kicked and darted to one side. Her foot connected with the man’s knee and he fell, and she followed that up with a kick to the man’s head.

  Teeth flew and blood painted a pattern on the side of the container.

  A tall woman scooped up the injured man, and the two of them disappeared into the maze of containers.

  There was one more rush of fire, then, like the aftermath of most gunfights, an eerie, all-encompassing quiet. Part of it had to do with my ears ringing from the sudden loud noises. Part of it was the fact that there was very little activity at this time of the evening in the port of Miami.

  And part of it, I knew, was that there were people down on both sides of the fight.

  Chapter 75

  AS SOON AS she heard the first shots, Hanna realized exactly what Albert planned to do. He wanted to use this as cover to shoot Billy the Russian. He wasn’t going to wait for a police officer to do it.

  Hanna flinched as Albert shot one of the Russians in the back. The man just dropped. Nothing like in the movies. He just fell forward, silent and still in the midst of chaos.

  Albert wasted no time. He grabbed Hanna by the wrist and tugged her along as they fled the shooting.

  Albert managed to say, “I think that shit Billy is headed for the gangplank. We better not see him on the ship.”

  Hanna risked a quick glimpse over her shoulder. They’d already gotten far enough away that all she could see was a few flashes from pistols. It was amazing how much the sound of gunfire was reduced when you got a few dozen yards and a couple of shipping containers away from it.

  Hanna recognized a couple of the younger women running past them, headed for the front of the ship. They were girls she had housed in Amsterdam.

  She’d thought these girls would’ve trusted her. It must be the gunfire. Hanna didn’t like the idea that they would betray her and run when they knew they still had to work off the cost of their transportation. The people she transported usually wanted to trust someone. And they’d known the travel would be hard.

  She planted her feet to stop Albert from dragging her along.

  He looked at her, astonished. “Are you crazy? We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “We need the red backpack. Either Magda has the pack or it’s back in the container.”

  “Back there, where all the gunfire is? Where the police are waiting for us? No, thanks. We need to keep running.”

  Hanna glanced over the side of the ship and saw the girl she was looking for. And she had the backpack over her shoulder. She yelled at Albert, “Right there. Magda’s right there.”

  “And running faster than we could ever hope to,” Albert pointed out. “Don’t worry. The tracker is in the backpack. We’ll let things settle down here and then we’ll be able to find her easily. At least we can salvage the diamonds.”

  Hanna followed her brother off the ship. The chaos from the ship had spread to the docks. People were running in every direction. No one knew if this was a terrorist attack or a drug-gang shootout.

  Hanna followed Albert’s lead as he immediately slowed to a fast walk. They headed directly off the port grounds. She was going to take a serious financial hit on this fiasco.

  Chapter 76

  IT TOOK ONLY a moment for me to regain my senses and realize I had to act immediately. I wanted to chase the shooters, but there were too many people who needed help right in front of me.

  I swept the area for gunmen. Once I determined it was clear, I holstered my pistol. Two men from the group that had confronted us were dead.

  One of the men had been shot in the back, but I didn’t know if it was an accident or if someone fr
om his group had gotten tired of him. For safety reasons, I took the pistols from the bodies and secured them.

  A moment later, I was at Marie’s side. She was on the deck and bleeding badly from cuts on her face. I could barely recognize her under all the blood. It pooled and dripped off her nose like a cheap faucet.

  She said, “I swear, it’s not that bad. Some of the blood isn’t mine. Check on the girls in the container.”

  A moment later I was in front of the storage container. The smell turned my stomach. A haze seemed to have settled over the few people still in the container. Piles of garbage filled the back corners. Junk-food wrappers, empty water bottles, and used toilet paper overflowed from one small garbage can to form a small mountain. Cockroaches scattered when I stepped inside.

  A bucket used as a toilet was visible through a flimsy plastic curtain. I had a hard time imagining what the nine-day trip from Europe had been like for these poor souls.

  Steph was checking the pulse of a man on the ground. He was ashen and his eyes looked up lifelessly at the rusty walls of the container. One leather loafer was missing from his left foot.

  Steph looked up at me and shook her head.

  I said, “Hit by a stray bullet?”

  Steph said, “No. We have four dead in here. It looks like they all died from illness or heat exhaustion.” She indicated another man on the ground and two girls against the rear wall. There were three young women, alive, huddling together near the door to the container. Steph went to comfort them.

  I went over to the rear wall. The two girls looked like they had been dead a couple of days. They had been placed next to each other and covered with a plastic tarp.

  Both the girls looked like young teenagers; they had long hair and pretty faces. Faces with eyes that would never see home or family again. It was heartbreaking.

  I thought about how these poor people had lived for the last nine days and I got mad. Fury washed over me like a wave. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this pissed off. And I knew just who I could focus my anger on.

  I stepped out of the container with my hand on my pistol and said, “Where is that goddamn Inspector Vacile?”

  Lorena Perez just pointed.

  Across the cluttered deck, our best source of information lay flat, half of his face missing. Blood had gushed from the gunshot wound on his left cheek. Based on where he’d landed, I guessed he’d been shot by the men who surprised us. I wondered if it was done on purpose to keep him from talking to us.

  I stepped over to Lorena. She wasn’t injured but she didn’t look too good. Her hands were shaking and she was leaning back against a storage container.

  I put my arm around her shoulder. “You saved our asses. You okay?”

  She looked up and nodded but didn’t say a word. I’d seen it before. The aftermath of police shooting could be devastating. She’d done her duty and proved she had talent.

  Anthony Chilleo was holding pressure on the wound on Rick Morris’s arm.

  I said, “Chill, how bad is it?”

  “I’ll survive,” the Customs supervisor said.

  “We’ve got help on the way. Nothing we can do for the others,” Chill said.

  I searched the two dead men’s pockets, found some ID, and said, “They’re Russian.”

  Chill mumbled, “Shocker.”

  Chapter 77

  HANNA SLAPPED THE wall in frustration. “Why can’t we get a decent reading on the tracker?”

  Albert didn’t take his eyes off his phone as he tried again to refresh the location of the tracker sewn into the red backpack.

  They’d spent two hours near the port looking for Magda with the red backpack.

  During a quick break, sitting on the seawall in Bayside with the trendy shops behind them all closing down for the evening, Hanna turned to her brother and said, “Why did you shoot a Russian in the back?”

  Albert looked at her as if she were speaking Martian. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I shoot him? They were trying to rip us off. It was our best chance to rid ourselves of the Russians here in Miami.”

  “Did you see what happened to Billy?”

  “No. It was too crazy. We’re lucky we got out of there alive.” Albert focused on his phone as he tried to bring up the tracker again.

  Hanna said, “It’s getting late. Let’s head back to the hotel.”

  As soon as the cab pulled into the Miami Gardens Inn, Hanna saw that the lights to their first-floor room were off. There was no way Josie and Tasi had gone to bed this early. There should have been a glow from the TV set, at the very least.

  They rushed to the door, Albert with his pistol out.

  Hanna fumbled with the key in the low light, then shoved the heavy door open and immediately flicked on a light so that Albert could scan the room.

  The first thing she noticed was the blood spattered across the sheet on the foldout bed.

  The second was a bloody handprint on the bathroom door.

  Hanna’s whole world started to spin as she tried to comprehend what had happened. She cried out, “Josie,” praying to God she would get some kind of response.

  There was just dead silence.

  Chapter 78

  HANNA FOUGHT THE urge to scream. Nothing had prepared her for the scene she was witnessing. She cried out again, “Josie!” Then she heard a sound coming from the bathroom.

  She and Albert rushed to the bathroom door. The smell of vomit was overwhelming. She pushed the door open and found Tasi kneeling next to the toilet with blood pouring from her nose and lips. She had two puffy black eyes. Josie’s babysitter had been beaten so badly, she was sick to her stomach.

  Hanna didn’t like to see the young woman in such distress, but she couldn’t waste any time. “Where’s Josie?”

  Tasi started sobbing, then leaned over the toilet to throw up again. The retro pink toilet made the blood and vomit stand out more. Even the kitschy palm-tree wallpaper seemed ominous now.

  Hanna gently took Tasi by the shoulders and made her turn from the toilet. She said, “Tasi, what happened? Where is Josie?” She spoke slowly and clearly, as if she were talking to someone who didn’t understand Dutch.

  Tasi took in gulps of air. Haltingly, she said, “A man tapped on our front door. He said he was a maintenance worker. I opened the door just a crack.” Tasi broke down and cried for a moment. “There was a woman there too, and she started kicking me in the stomach and the face. I was crying and couldn’t see but I heard Josie yell as the man dragged her out of the room.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Less than an hour ago.”

  “What did the man and woman look like?” Albert asked.

  Tasi coughed and spit some blood into the toilet. She collected her thoughts and said, “The woman was tall with dark hair. The man had a goatee. It was dyed blue.”

  Billy. Hanna would murder him right now if he were in front of her. She asked Albert, “How do you think they found us?”

  Albert was silent for a moment, then said, “I know exactly how they found us.”

  Five minutes later, Albert and Hanna were in the cluttered reception area of the Miami Gardens Inn. Ancient magazines, paperbacks with torn covers, and old VHS movies lay haphazardly on a shaky bookshelf. The clerk who’d checked them in looked up and said, “Good evening.” His Russian accent set Hanna on edge. Albert was already over the edge.

  Without saying a word, Albert grabbed the young man by the shirt collar, dragged him over the counter, and threw him onto the hard floor. He’d stuck his pistol in the young man’s ear before Hanna even realized he’d drawn it.

  Albert spoke slowly and clearly in English. “I don’t want you to make a mistake you’ll regret the rest of your life.” He shoved the pistol into the man’s ear harder. “I’m going to ask you a question. If you lie, I’m going to put a bullet through your head. Do you understand me?”

  The young man nodded vigorously.

  Albert said, “Let me see yo
ur phone.”

  The clerk carefully reached into his pocket and pulled out a new iPhone. Albert made him open it, looked at a few numbers, and said, “Whose number is this?”

  The young man hesitated and Albert pressed the gun harder into his ear. The man yelled, “Wait, wait, I don’t know his name! He runs a lot of the strip clubs. He told me to keep an eye out for you guys. I just did like I was told.”

  Albert remained unnaturally calm and said, “Where did they take the girl?”

  “I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know.” The clerk started to cry, and sweat poured down his forehead.

  Albert said, “FaceTime him.”

  “What?”

  Albert smacked his cheek with the barrel of the pistol. He didn’t feel like explaining. The young man quickly hit Redial. After a couple of rings, an image came on the iPhone. It was Billy.

  Friendly as always, Billy said, “Ah, Albert. I wondered what happened to you guys. Glad you made it away from the ship safely.”

  “Where’s Josie?”

  Billy kept smiling. He said something to someone else in the room.

  Albert made sure the pistol in the clerk’s ear was framed in the phone properly. “Tell me where my niece is or you’ll be cleaning up this asshole’s brains for a week.”

  Billy said, “The young man that works at that nasty little hotel? I don’t know him. Go ahead and shoot. I couldn’t care less. But you might be able to use the five hundred dollars cash I gave him. Perhaps you should check his pockets. But shoot him if you want.”

  The young man sucked in some oxygen and started to shake.

  Then Billy said, “If you’d like to be reasonable, I’m sure we could work out a simple trade. The diamonds for the girl. That’s the only thing I’m interested in talking to you about.”

  Hanna grabbed the phone and said, “Is Josie okay?”

  Billy chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, mama bear. We’re taking good care of your baby bear.” He turned the camera briefly so Hanna could see Josie sitting in a chair with a Kleenex in her hand.