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“Allie has international connections. She could have had another plane waiting. They could be on a train or in a car. We’ve got nothing.”
    Mort was right. Allie’s criminal empire provided an endless stream of money. Her network of connections spanned the globe, fueled by the one motivator no one could resist: fear. Allie’s pathology left her free of any moral restraint. She would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. She’d do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything to get what she wanted.
    Even her niece.
    Lydia slammed her hand against the console. She threw herself back in her chair and raked her fingers through her auburn hair.
    The overhead lights in her office dimmed ever so subtly.
    Lydia snapped to attention. Someone was on her property. The nearly imperceptible fade of her lights had been a silent signal she’d asked her electrician to install. It tripped whenever someone approached her home and was part of an overall security system that would make the Secret Service yearn for a consult.
    She wasn’t expecting anyone. She never did on the two-acre estate she had transformed into her fortress. She entered another command. A six-view display appeared on her monitor, each camera recording a different view of her property. The tension clenching her spine relaxed as she identified the car coming up her long driveway. Lydia shut down her computer, locked her communications room, and bounded up the stairs in time to open her front door to her visitor.
    “Mort.” He looked like hell. Stubble shaded his cheeks and chin. His skin had the ashen pallor of someone surviving on caffeine and desperation. His bloodshot eyes stared at something over her shoulder. “Come in.”
    He walked past her, more robot than human. “Anything?”
    She closed the door and followed him down the hall. This time he didn’t stop to drink in her view of Dana Passage, the islands, and the snow-capped mountains in the distance. This time he didn’t ask about her practice or why she wasn’t dating that nice fellow from the coffee shop or the Olympia detective he knew to be a stand-up guy. He seemed to be using his last bit of energy to find his way to her sofa and collapse.
    Lydia sat on a chair across from him, steeling her heart against the sight of his depleted body and crushed spirit.
    “I’m tracking the credit cards she’s used in the past. There’s been no activity since she left the Larchmont. I captured recent photos of Hadley that Robbie and Claire posted on Facebook. I’ve got those synced to surveillance cameras at airports and train stations, both U.S. and international. My computer’s programmed to alert me to any facial recognition beyond 60 percent.”
    “Anything?” He didn’t bother to ask how she had come to have the type of equipment most governments couldn’t afford.
    “Nothing yet. What’s on your end?”
    “The FBI’s still camped out at Robbie’s. There’s still the tap on the phone. And of course there’s the APB on Allie.” He scraped his hand across his face and sighed. “But it’s all useless. Allie’s not going to call. She doesn’t want ransom. She wants Hadley.”
    She wants revenge,
Lydia corrected.
She wants to destroy us all. She’ll wage her war on your family by taking Hadley. And she’ll punish me by leaving me helpless to stop her.
    “Has the FBI brought in any international agencies?”
    Mort shook his head. “They’re operating as if she’s still local.”
    “They’re what? She was in Calgary. The charter pilot dropped them off when Allie feigned illness. My God, Mort. She’s in the wind. Her connections are more European and Russian than American. Why aren’t they on it?”
    “They don’t know about Calgary.” His voice was weak, drained. “They don’t know about the jet Allie chartered.”
    “Why not?”
    “I can’t tell them what you’ve learned. Not without implicating you. They’d have all kinds of questions about how you were able to learn what