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suggested some of hisrocks were sourced from unsanctioned mines, Van Weldt had clammed up quick, threatening Fish with a libel suit if he so much as hinted that Van Weldt diamonds were dirty.
    Martin hadn’t expected anything different, but it made it that much more entertaining to expose Van Weldt’s dirty secret. His lip curled when he thought of the ad campaign featuring Alyssa Miles draped in nothing but sparkling stones. He wondered what she’d do when she found out she might as well have been covered in blood.
    Alyssa Miles at the center of a blood diamond scandal. And Martin Fish would be front-page news for breaking the story.
    But first he needed Marie Laure’s help to get him the footage he needed to give the story that heartbreaking dose of reality.
    “Monsieur Fish?”
    He sighed in relief when he heard Marie Laure’s soft greeting. She shot a furtive glance over her shoulder before emerging from the shadow. Her eyes were huge and dark in her thin face. Spindly arms poked from the sleeves of her dress, her legs covered by a colorful ankle-length skirt. She shuffled forward on bare feet. “I am sorry to be late,” she said in her lilting English. “My husband was slower to go out this morning.”
    Husband. Now, that was a euphemism if he’d ever heard one. Mekembe had stolen Marie Laure during a raid on their village nearly a year ago. In the course of the raid, her parents and younger sister had been killed, her younger brother taken captive and impressed into service for the People’s Freedom Movement.
    Marie Laure, an uncommonly pretty sixteen-year-old with smooth, coffee-colored skin and fine sculpted features, had been chosen by Mekembe to be his “wife.”
    Which Martin knew was code for sex slave. But it meant she had only one rapist to endure.
    And uncommon access to Mekembe and those who helped him move the diamonds over the border.
    “Give me the necklace,” he said, reaching for it even as she slipped it over her head, careful not to dislodge the blue and white scarf wrapped around her head. “It’s late. I’ll be lucky to make it back to the camp without anyone seeing me.”
    He ignored the stab of guilt in his chest as she lowered her gaze and hunched her shoulders and quickly replaced the battery in the pendant.
    She slipped it back over her head and reached for the bag of lentils.
    “Uh-uh,” Martin said, holding it just out of reach. “Before I give you this, you need to promise you’ll get me footage of the next shipment.”
    Her full lips tightened. “Monsieur, I do what I can, but he sends me out when they are meeting—”
    “Peek in the window, hide under the bed, for all I care. But if you want to get you and your baby out, you’ll get me the access I need.”
    Her thin, long-fingered hand curved protectively over the small bulge of her belly pushing insistently against the worn cotton of her dress. “I heard him talking to someone on his handphone. Someone important, someone they call the Français, is coming in next week.”
    Martin barely kept his jaw from falling open. He couldn’t possibly be this lucky. “The Français? You’re sure of that?” He tried not to get too excited. No doubt a lot of shady characters of the mixed French persuasion did business in this part of the world. How likely was it that he would come here in person? Still, his insides churned with anticipation. “You get me footage of him, and I promise I’ll get you out on the next transport to Kinshasa.”
    “And my brother, too,” she said, losing her timidity.
    “I’ll do what I can,” he said, knowing her brother was a lost cause. Finagling a pregnant teenage girl a spot on thehelicopter was difficult enough, if not impossible. He still wasn’t sure he could live up to that promise.
    But he shoved aside his guilt as he handed over the bag of lentils and watched Marie Laure disappear around the corner, her bare feet silent in the red dirt. Even if he couldn’t save one pregnant