Relax. She’s with a cop. Who knows what’s holding them up? Maybe a problem with her luggage, or they stopped to get something to eat. Maybe her cell phone battery is dead… But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. He speed-dialed Montoya, who picked up before the second ring.

“Montoya.”

“Got your call,” Bentz said.

“Yeah, I just talked to Hayes. I sent him information on the owner of the Chevy, Yolanda Salazar. A relative sold it to her for cash. She never changed the title, which isn’t a big deal, but the kicker is this: Her name is Yolanda Valdez Salazar. She’s the older sister of Mario.”

“What? Are you kidding me? Mario Valdez’s sister,” Bentz repeated, stunned. But he knew from the tone of Montoya’s voice this was no joke. In a second he was back in the dark alley, a person aiming a gun at Trinidad…

A silver glint of moonlight on the black gun barrel.

Panic tearing through his heart.

“Police. Drop it!” he yelled in warning.

But in the next instant, the gun didn’t fall away.

He’s going to shoot! He’s going to shoot Trinidad!

As the realization throbbed in his brain, Bentz pulled the trigger.

And the gunman went down…

Now, a dozen years later, that fatal moment was still emblazoned in Bentz’s memory. The rush of relief that he’d saved his partner’s life had quickly given way to horror when he saw that the gunman was just a kid, a boy with a toy pistol. It was a nightmare Bentz would never be able to put completely behind him. “Sweet Jesus,” Bentz said, half to Montoya, half to himself.

“She lives in Encino,” Montoya went on. “I e-mailed and faxed all the info to Jonas Hayes. It should be there by now.”

“Good. Thanks.”

Yolanda Valdez. He clicked off, saw that Hayes was still on the phone. Pacing the corridor, he tried to remember the older sister. There had been three kids in the family, right? Mario was the youngest and Yolanda quite a bit older, maybe twenty when the accident had occurred. And there had been a brother, too…what the hell was his name? Franco? Or Frederico? Or…no, wait…Fernando, that was it. But he didn’t remember Yolanda looking like Jennifer…no, this wasn’t making any sense.

Salazar? That didn’t sound right. Hadn’t she already been married? And the name had been different. He tried to come up with it, but her surname eluded him. Now she was Salazar? He rolled that around in his mind, tried to make some connections. Something didn’t make sense.

He called Montoya back. When his partner answered, Bentz told him his concern. “I think she was married to someone else. Not Salazar. I think the name was Anglo…something like Johns, no that’s not right. Can you double-check?”