The garage had three smaller rooms attached to the main space, and they had made their interrogation rooms in these spaces. They would not be here long enough that the rudimentary facilities would be a problem. The plan was for them to leave the city that evening and fly to New York.

She opened the door to the second interrogation room and went inside.

Miguel was leading the questioning of the man. Ellie had not seen him yet, and he hadn’t been identified. He was secured in a chair and Miguel was in front of him, blocking her view. Miguel asked him who he was, the man replied that he was Santa Claus, and Miguel drove his fist into his gut.

“Hey!” Ellie said. “What are you doing?”

Miguel turned to her. “You want to get him to speak or don’t you?”

“I do. But not like that.”

The man in the chair looked up and Ellie nearly gasped in surprise.

Miguel was still looking back at her. “What?”

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “Let me have a go.”

Miguel collected his jacket from the back of the chair and made his way to the door. He gave a shrug as he passed her on the way out. “You want a crack at him, you go right ahead.”

The door closed.

Ellie waited for a beat.

“What is this?” the man in the chair said, blinking into the light. “He’s roughed me up, and now you’re going to play nice? You’re the good cop, right?”

She made her way forward, passing into the cone of light cast down by the naked bulb that was suspended above the chair.

“Hello, John,” she said.

Milton stared at her, dumbfounded.

“Shit,” he said. “Hello, Ellie.”

73

Ziggy Penn woke to the sound of his laptop’s alarm: a pattern of three short bleeps and then a pause that repeated over and over. He sat up, scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and tried to remember where he was. He saw the bland hotel room and, out of the uncovered window, the light of the city beyond.

Medellín.

That’s right.

Colombia. He was in Colombia.

The alarm bleeped again and it took Ziggy another ten seconds to remember its significance.

Oh shit, he thought.

Shit!

He swung his legs out of bed, and, in his haste to cross the room, got his feet snagged in the sheet and tripped. He thudded down onto the floor, kicking his legs in an attempt to unwind them from the bedclothes, and, finally free, he scrambled across the room to the desk.

The alarm sounded again.

He opened the screen, hit the return key and waited for the computer to wake. The screen stayed dark; Ziggy hit the space bar, then stabbed it repeatedly until the screen lit up. He stared at it. The red dot was moving west, passing through San Bernardo and La Palma toward Belen.