LITMIR.BIZ

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of mowed grass near the booths, and he figured that’s where they had those native dance festivals. Another area looked like it was a small zoo or alligator house. It smelled like it. That’s where he encountered the Guatemalan boy. Pedro was sitting cross-legged on the ground and gazing at a fenced-in pond with about thirty gators lying unmoving in the mud. Novak walked over to him.

      The kid spun around when he heard footsteps and then jumped to his feet. “Oh, you scared me. Thank you for saving me and my sister. I thought I was going to drown until you came. I couldn’t make him let me go.” His words came out in a rush and were heavily accented. His English was poorer than his older sister’s.

      “He’s bigger than you are, Pedro. You’re just a kid. I’m bigger than him, that’s why I could put him down.”

      “I’m not a kid. I’m twelve years old,” Pedro said. He sounded indignant.

      “Yeah, you were brave to put up that fight.” Truth was, Pedro looked about nine or ten, skinny and slight and not very tall. He was a cute kid, not as beautiful as his sister, but he would be a handsome young man given time. “How are you feelin’ this morning, Pedro? I suspect you swallowed a lot of salt water last night.”

      “Okay. Better than Alcina. She cries and cries every night but tries to be brave in the daytime. She misses Rosa so much. She’s worried that somebody’s hurting her. Me, too, I’m scared. You think they’re hurting her? She’s just a little baby. She can’t even walk or talk and she doesn’t have any of her toys. I brought her one, though. It’s a little white fuzzy lamb.”

      Novak remembered his own life after 9/11, all the nights spent pacing and weeping in drunken despair. He had feared he’d never get over the loss of his family, and he never had. He had only learned to accept it, haunted by misty memories and awful nightmares. “I don’t think they’ll hurt her, and that’s the truth. We’ll find her.”

      “Rosa’s sweet and she likes to throw us kisses.” Pedro got choked up and turned away. When he sat back down, Novak took a seat beside him and let him compose himself.

      “We’ll get her back. Like I said, they aren’t going to hurt her. You know that, right?” That was probably the truth. A healthy, happy baby was a lucrative asset in their business. They would not endanger Rosa, but Alcina and Pedro were different stories. They wanted them both dead, no question about it. Novak wished they could go to the police, that would help, but Eldon knew the ropes down here. Novak would listen to him, and he would take his advice.

      “They said your name is Novak, no?”

      “Yeah, that’s right. Will Novak.”

      “You know what? Back there at that condo? I watched you run out on the beach every night. I hid in the shadows behind the pool so you wouldn’t see me. Why do you do that? You know, just run off by yourself like that?”

      “I run to keep fit. It gives me stamina. I never saw you, or your sister, either, and I was looking for you.”

      “We stayed in the first building down on the bottom floor. It’s apartment A101. We were scared to go outside, except late at night sometimes. The doctor told us not to until that woman named Claire came. Alcina said you might not be a good man, so we hid from you, too. We were scared of you, but now we’re not.”

      “So that guy didn’t hurt you much last night?”

      Pedro held up his arm and showed him some bruises. “He told me I was going to die, and he was going to hold me under until I drowned and then the fish would nibble all night on my eyeballs and skin until I was just bones. I tried hard to make him let me go, but he was too strong.”

      “That kind of man picks on people who’re smaller, and a bunch of them attack at once because they’re cowards. They aren’t used to facing somebody bigger than they are.”

      “You’re way bigger. You’re way bigger than anybody I know.”

      “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

      Then they were quiet, watching the alligators starting to stir. After a while, the Osceola boys started emerging from tents and heading out to the cook fire. “How about you tell me what happened the night they took Rosa? Think you can?”

      Pedro hesitated for a long time and then he said, “They killed Luis when he tried to stop them. They shot him two times. I saw them.”

      “Luis was Alcina’s husband, that right?”

      He nodded. “She misses him a lot, too. They shot Luis in the stomach first and then right here in his face.” He pointed at his left cheek, and his eyes looked horrified by the memory.

      “Were they the same ones that hurt you last night?”

      He shook his head. “No, they came up from Guatemala City. They have come to our village before but late at night, and in the morning, a child is always gone. It happened three times. Other villagers have seen them, too. They say they sneak into your house and take your little kids out into the jungle. We went to see Dr. Eloise, and she said they bring those kids here and sell them for money.” His eyes got wide, as if he couldn’t believe it. “You think they sold Rosa? She’s scared of strangers. She cries if she doesn’t know them. I bet she cries all the time now, just like Alcina.”

      Novak didn’t want to answer that, not truthfully, anyhow. “I think that’s their plan, but we’re not going to let them. We’re going to find her first and make them pay for taking her. I promise you that we’ll keep looking until we find her.”

      Novak hoped that’s the way it turned out, because that’s what he planned to do. An infant in the hands of those lowlife thugs wasn’t something he liked to think about. Still, the baby was valuable to their bottom line, and he knew that most illegal adoption rings hired nurses and nannies to care for the children they took. Still, Novak felt as if he was going into this case in the dark, knowing little about his enemy or his allies or the motives or the mob connections, and none of that was good. Claire needed to get on the stick and show up and fill him in, and the sooner, the better. The longer they waited, the farther away that poor little baby was going to get.

      Chapter 4

      Claire Morgan Black showed up with her husband early the next morning, driving into the Safari’s white-shell-paved parking lot in a black Lincoln. Wearing his new green Pa-hay-Okee Safari alligator T-shirt and aviator sunshades, Novak walked out of the museum to meet them. He had washed up in the bathrooms and spent the second night on the floor of the gift shop armed with a Glock 9 that Eldon had lent him and slept a hell of a lot better than he had atop that chickee.

      Claire was the first one out of the car when it stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking as tall and blond and athletic as ever. Though she was in her second trimester, she barely showed a baby bump under her baggy black T-shirt. She was five feet nine inches, fit, and a natural blonde. She was beautiful but didn’t seem to know it, and her big blue eyes never missed anything, anywhere, anytime, and they didn’t this time, either. Her first words proved it.

      “What happened to your head, Novak? And what the hell are you wearing?” Then she laughed at the fighting alligators on the front of his shirt.

      “Hello to you, too.” Novak gave her a big hug as Black parked the car and got out.

      “Really, what’s with the bandage? You okay?”

      “Ran into a baseball bat. This shirt was a gift, sort of.”

      Claire laughed. “I want to know everything that’s happened. Tell me.”

      She was looking around the camp and taking in every detail. Claire was tough and a bit mouthy when perturbed but as kind and loyal and devoted a friend as anyone could ask for. On the other hand, she was often too determined to solve a crime, and that made her a bit reckless, which in turn made Novak nervous. Most of the time, she was a damn good investigator and got the job done, no matter what.

      Today, as they walked down to meet Black, she looked happy and eager and better than ever. Her face was a

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