Cry No More by Linda Howard Page B

features. The secondhand metal desks were battered, most of the office chairs were patched with duct tape, and there were only two private offices—semiprivate, that is, since the top half of the front wall in each office was a huge window.
    The phone system, however, was state-of-the-art. Finders put its money where it would do the most good.
    Milla loved her staff. God knows they didn’t work there for the pay, which was barely adequate. They worked long hours, including most Saturdays, and sometimes even on Sunday. She herself took no pay, not even a nominal amount. Most of the people in the Finders network were volunteers, spread out all over the nation, who offered themselves and their time whenever they were needed to look for people who were lost in their particular area. The core of Finders, however, the group of people here in El Paso, devoted themselves full-time to the job and were on the payroll.
    Most of the volunteers did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Some of her full-time staff were the same, but some of them had personal reasons for being there. Joann Westfall’s best friend in grade school had become lost while on a family camping trip and died of exposure before she was found. Debra Schmale’s ex-husband had disappeared with her two daughters, and it had taken her over two years to locate them and retrieve her children. Olivia Meyer, Harvard-educated, staunch New Yorker, chose to live in hell—her term for El Paso, which greatly offended the locals on staff—because her elderly, senile grandfather had wandered away from his house one November day and spent hours walking the cold city streets without even a sweater for warmth before a cop picked him up and took him to a precinct station.
    The best way to find lost people was to flood the area with searchers. All of her people understood that and devoted themselves to the task.
    Brian was at the coffee machine when Milla entered. “Want a cup?” he called, and she nodded.
    Joann looked up with an anxious gaze. “How did it go last night? Did you find out anything?”
    “The man who took Justin was there,” Milla said baldly, and there was a collective gasp from everyone within hearing distance. People shoved back chairs and hurried over.
    “What happened?” Debra asked, her blue eyes huge. “Did you talk to him?”
    Brian approached and shoved a polystyrene coffee cup into Milla’s hand. “No. There were four of them, just two of us.” He flicked a glance at her that said he wasn’t going to spill the beans about her loss of judgment.
    She wasn’t about to dissemble, though, so she came clean. “That was the idea, anyway, that we wouldn’t try to talk to them if there were more than two people. When I saw him, though, I lost my head. All I wanted was to get my hands around his throat.”
    “Omigod,” Olivia blurted. “What happened? Did they shoot at you?”
    “They never knew we were there. I was jumped and knocked out by another man.”
    “Omigod,” Olivia said again. “Were you hurt? Did you see a doctor?”
    “No, to both questions.”
    “I don’t get it,” Joann said. “This other man obviously knew you were there, so why didn’t he tell the others?”
    “He wasn’t with them. He was watching them, too.”
    “Well, that’s a twist,” someone else muttered.
    “Any idea who he might be?” Debra asked.
    “Not a clue. I didn’t get a look at him. Whatever he was up to, though, he saved our lives by jumping me. And since I’m confessing, I also went in a cantina and offered ten thousand dollars to anyone who could tell me where to find Diaz. So if you get any phone calls asking about a reward, that’s why.”
    “That explains that,” Olivia said, her eyebrows rising. “First thing this morning I got a threatening call, telling me to stay away from Diaz or die. I think that’s what she said, anyway. That was pre-coffee, so my Spanish comprehension wasn’t up to full speed yet. I told her I don’t have