I went past him and he stayed behind me. A few more steps and I could make out distinct voices. We came to the end of the back wall, but the far side of the building extended back. I stopped at the corner and ducked my head around the corner.

There was a large rectangular office, a room within a room, with a large window, pulled dark with blinds. In front of the office, I counted five people. One female, four males. All in chairs, all in various stages of lounging, save for one guy on the end, a tall, lanky kid in a white T-shirt and black jeans with short black hair and a hard scowl.

The female was without a doubt Netty.

I pulled my head back. “Five in front. Another room behind them.”

Anchor nodded.

A cell phone rang back in the direction of where they were all sitting. I craned my neck as close to the corner as I could get without exposing myself.

“Fuck,” a voice said. “Someone’s here. Jay saw them come in.”

Feet scurried on the ground.

I looked at Anchor.

“Let’s go,” Anchor said. “You take the right. I’ve got the left.”

I spun into the open area and they were all on their feet, maybe a hundred feet away.

I locked eyes with the kid with the hard scowl. “Nobody move.”

For a moment, they froze, staring back at us.

And then they unfroze.

Guns flashed as they all moved and I took a deep breath. I squeezed the trigger and the one kid to the left of the hard scowl dropped. Another one on the other side dropped thanks to Anchor. They all scattered in opposite directions. We held where we were.

Then we heard rapid fire from somewhere behind the room at the back of the warehouse.

“Go,” Anchor said. “Ellis is in. I’m behind you and will cover. Go.”

I stayed low and moved as quickly as I could toward the door, moving my eyes back and forth. I saw a quick flash out to my right and as I turned, felt a burning sensation as a bullet pierced my shoulder. I stumbled, but continued moving forward, a hail of bullets from behind me in the direction of my shooter. The hard scowl fell to the ground, his back soaked in red.

More gunfire behind the room, some yelling off to my left.

I focused on the door.

I got to it, reached for it—ignoring the burning in my shoulder—yanked it open and slid inside.

A thick Hispanic man, early twenties, was standing next to a cot, trying to get his pants up. His black T-shirt was wrinkled across his massive chest and his hair was disheveled, two angry red stripes on one of his cheeks.

Elizabeth was on the cot, on her back, staring at me, eyes wide, her mouth frozen in an oval.

The guy stiffened when he saw me, slowly getting his hands up. “Yo. We’re cool.”

“Don’t fucking move,” I said. “Don’t fucking move.”

“Yo, I got you. I’m not movin’, dude.”

More gunfire exploded outside the room. Elizabeth jerked on the bed, startled by the noise.

I rose out of my crouch slowly, looking at her. “Are you…”

The guy’s foot crashed into my gun hand and the gun clattered to the floor. I stumbled backward against the wall, pain searing through my shoulder as it hit. The guy came at me, snarling, his fists coming fast at my face.

I ducked under the blows, grabbed him around the waist and took him to the floor, dumping him on his back. We hit the ground hard and white heat burned through my shoulder. He was flailing at me with his fists. I found his neck with my hands and squeezed as hard as I could, pushing myself off of him.

Elizabeth was still on the cot, watching us, apparently unable to move, and I had no idea if it was because of me or the man I was fighting with or the gunshots or everything.

The guy clawed at my arms, then started banging away at my shoulder, each strike feeling like a spear into my back. But I kept my hands on his neck and leaned down, his face growing redder.

Elizabeth finally pushed herself up. I could see that her jeans were undone at the waist and her shirt was pushed up.

I looked down at the man beneath me and squeezed harder, the muscles in his neck pulsating against my hands as I cut off his air supply.

No one was going to hurt my daughter again.

Elizabeth scrambled on the bed, fixing her jeans and pulling down her shirt, tears running down her face. “He was going to…”

I tuned her out, focused on the son of a bitch I was choking to death.

His arms started to fall, his hands sliding down my arms, gagging, his eyes fluttering.

The door slammed open behind me.

Anchor stood in the doorway. “We’re clear.”

I squeezed harder.

“If you want him dead, he’s almost there,” Anchor said softly.

Elizabeth was crying, her hands covering her nose and mouth, shaking her head.

Anchor touched my good shoulder. “It’s over, Mr. Tyler. You don’t have to do it.”

My body shook, my hands cramping around the man’s neck. He symbolized everything that had gone wrong for so long. Everyone and everything that had taken part in keeping my daughter from me. I wanted to extinguish it, make it go away forever.

His body started to go limp beneath me.

Anchor put his hand on my wrists. “Let go, Mr. Tyler. You don’t want your daughter to see this.”

Sweat dripped down the back of my neck and I looked at Elizabeth. She was crying, shaking, watching me.

I loosened my grip on his throat, then moved my hands off of him, sitting back.

The room tilted a little.

I reached out to Elizabeth.

“I’m sorry,” I said, the words fat and heavy on my tongue.

She hesitated for a moment, then reached out, her own hand quivering as it touched mine.

I wrapped my fingers around hers.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “No one will ever hurt you again, Elizabeth.”

She nodded, tears streaming down her face.

“I’m so sorry,” I said one more time before the room tilted to the side and everything went black.

FORTY-THREE

“The question, then, Elizabeth is…what would you like to do?”

We were sitting in a conference room on the fourth floor of the FBI field office, a four-story rectangular building in an office park near Montgomery Field and Kearney Mesa. Lauren and I were on one side of a large glass-covered oak table and Elizabeth was sitting on the other. Special Agent Dorothy Blundell was at the end of the table, smiling sympathetically at my daughter.

Anchor and Kitting had gotten us out of the warehouse. I came to in the parking lot and by that time, there were sirens and lights and all kinds of noise around us. I’d lost a fair amount of blood, but the wound in my shoulder was nothing more than a pretty deep cut. I’d refused transportation to a hospital and they’d patched me up as well as they could on the scene.

As I sat on the curb near the ambulance, I watched everything. Cops brought out the people in the warehouse. Lasko, the officer who’d stopped us, seemed to be running the scene and he gave me a nod at some point. I nodded back.

Anchor apparently called Lauren because she was there, next to Elizabeth, her arm around her, on the opposite side of the lot. Elizabeth looked scared, unsure, completely confused by everything around here.

I didn’t blame her.

Mike Lorenzo showed up, checked to make sure I was okay, then went about calling the people that needed to be called, including federal agents. Technically, abducted children fell under their jurisdiction and he knew that he had to involve them in order to get Elizabeth back to us. So he’d made the calls and got them to the scene.

I saw Bazer momentarily and wondered why he was there. Then realized that because he was tied to the AMBER Alert, he’d come to the scene. Or maybe Mike had called him. I didn’t know.

I stared at him while his eyes surveyed the scene. He finally saw me and stopped.

We stared at each other for a moment, but his expression gave away nothing.