“If you’re not going to level with me—” Faye began.

“I am leveling with you.”

Faye looked straight ahead, out the windshield. “Did anything Candice say mean anything to you? Help you in any way?”

Sebastian nodded. “That thing she said about the house in Santa Paula, the owner—his name isn’t David. It’s Wayne Dixon. Met him a couple of times, almost did some business together. Idea of him hosting private sex parties doesn’t surprise me—the old prick always struck me as a perv. It all makes sense now.”

“I’m not following.”

“Paul wanted money from me in the beginning, to get started. You need a lot—tens of millions—to start a blood operation, do it right. Stay protected. Last night, he had no interest in money, which tells me he’s managed to get an investor, someone with really deep pockets. You did good work back there. Really good work.”

“What’s the plan now?”

Good question, Sebastian thought. In a situation like this, normally he’d have Ron getting to work on bugging Dixon’s house, phones, and cars, his place of business. As they waited for Paul to call, Ron would put together a small army to stake out Dixon, see where he went, who he talked to, everything.

But that kind of operation took time, and with Grace in the equation, Sebastian didn’t have time. “I’ll talk it over with Ron, best way to handle this. I left him a message, told him to meet us at the house.”

His phone rang. Not the one he was carrying, but the new burner he had given Ava the number for. It didn’t have Bluetooth, so the car’s communication system ignored it, thank God. He wanted to talk to Ava privately—or in as much privacy as possible.

“The kidnapper,” Ava began, her voice low, almost a whisper. “He reached out this morning, around four. He said to watch out for something special in my mail.”

Mail. The word triggered a memory from yesterday’s conversation. Why give up Ava’s little girl when I can do so many wonderfully creative things with her? Paul had said. Like, say, drop a finger every now and then in the mail to her mommy. Or you. Do you think Grace could hold her baby without any fingers?

His blood ran cold and his breath seized in his throat and the road in front of him turned hazy. “Did he say why? The kidnapper.”

“No. He called, said to watch out for something special in my mail, and hung up.”

Sebastian struggled to speak. “My money guy—he’s going to reach out to you this morning. I talked to him yesterday, got everything set up.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, but I have to go. The police don’t know I’m making this call, and I don’t want them to, you know, start asking questions.”

He wanted to be there with her. It was stupid and foolish, and he knew he couldn’t do it, and yet he still wanted to ask, wanted her to know she was in his thoughts, always had been, even after all this time.