About ten seconds later, he raised his head, glanced once at the door, then at the red blinking light on the recorder. His shoulders drooped as he spoke. ‘The Placitas property was the second, more high-end operation. About a year ago, Tatiana ran a trafficking ring out of southern New Mexico for about six months. She mostly targeted prostitutes and undocumented immigrants because their disappearances would be less likely to send up any red flags to the authorities.’

‘What changed?’ Alyssa was holding on to her fraying temper by a fine thread, and one glance at Cord convinced her he was, too.

‘Tatiana and I were having drinks one night late November, and after a few shots of tequila, she told me how her ex had frittered away her father’s funds – apparently legally – and she wanted to make more money, faster.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘She told me she was thinking of turning her operation into a more ‘high-end, specialized’ one, but we’d need ‘cleaner’ girls. And she thought her property in Placitas was classy enough and far enough back from prying eyes.’

Cord piped in, anger and disgust evident in the tone of his voice. ‘And how about you, Mr. Yarmini? For Tatiana Salazar, it was about money. What was in it for you? The thrill of degrading and abusing women?’

To Alyssa’s surprise, Steve didn’t shy away from Cord’s angry glare. ‘I’d gone deep into debt over my gambling addiction – I owed a loan shark a hundred grand at an interest rate of thirty percent. I got scared and told Tatiana about it. A week later, she approached me with her idea. I wasn’t sold on it right away. Then she offered seven percent of profits, and all I had to do was transport the girls she no longer needed out. I wouldn’t have to be involved with finding or getting the girls. She said she’d find someone else for that.’ He spoke nonstop, his voice never altering from the monotonous tone of someone who knew he’d sold whatever soul he had to the devil. ‘Money from the first operation was good, so when she dropped the idea of making more while being able to stay closer to home, I jumped at it.’

Alyssa brought the questioning back around to something that had bothered her since she’d realized the picture on Lorna Price’s phone was that of Steve Yarmini.

‘You’d already cleared out of your house by the time we discovered the Viper, so tell me, what brought you back to Hotel Camino in the early hours of Saturday morning?’

One arm dropped and hung loosely at his side while the other rose to hold his head in his hand. ‘I thought I’d lost my watch. It was a gift from my mother, and it had my name etched on the back. I was afraid.’

To Alyssa’s knowledge, no watch had been discovered.

A self-deprecating laugh escaped. ‘It turned out it was in the bottom of my suitcase.’