They reached the bottom of the porch steps. She caught a quick breath and turned to him.

“I made it. Tomorrow…round two,” she whispered, and came into his arms in a rush that left him without breath.

Chapter 10

“It’ll be a lot different the second night of the tournament,” Billie said. “Quieter.”

“Hmm…” Holt’s hand was stroking up and down her back, keeping a lazy rhythm with the slow up and down movement of his chest beneath her cheek.

Her eyelids drifted down, and she had to fight to make her lips form words. “There’ll still be a crowd, just…most of ’em will be in the spectators’ gallery. There’ll be…I forget how many tables-around twenty, I think-each with nine players. The winner at each table advances to the next round.”

“So,” said Holt, “I guess there’s twenty players left for that round. How many tables?”

She managed a feeble head-shake. “Four tables, usually. But that’s when some of the big-name poker stars sit in, so it comes out to six players per table. And from that point on it’ll probably be televised.”

“And that’s tomorrow night?”

“Yup. So…even if by some miracle I make it to the semi-final round, that’s still only…”

“One more day.” His chest lifted, then slowly settled with a long sigh. His arms tightened around her and she felt a stirring in her hair and then the warm press of his lips. “Give us that, love, and we’ll find her.”

“Promise?” she whispered, smiling because she knew how silly a thing it was to ask. And aching in her throat because he’d said the word love and she knew it didn’t mean anything at all.

He responded, “Yeah, I promise.” But of course it wasn’t a sure bet and not even in his hands, so how could he make such a promise?

And yet…it was good to hear, and she felt her eyelids suddenly floating on a film of moisture she didn’t understand at all. It couldn’t possibly be tears, because for one thing, she never shed tears, wasn’t even capable of it. And for another, what she was feeling right then was his nice, solid chest under her cheek and the steady thump of his heartbeat in her ear, and his arms strong and warm around her. So why would something so sweet and good and wonderful make her cry?

Holt left Billie sleeping and stole out of the house at zero-dark-thirty the next morning. He’d asked Billie for one more day, and he didn’t want to waste a minute of it if he could help it. He picked up some fast-food drive-through breakfast biscuits and coffee and went straight on to police headquarters, figuring he’d be the only one of the team working the kidnapping in the squad room at that hour. Instead, he found Vogel and Sanchez and a couple of the others already there, sitting on desk corners scarfing down doughnuts and slurping coffee out of disposable cups. He handed around the sack of bacon-and-egg biscuits and helped himself to one before he picked a roosting spot on a desk opposite Vogel. He waited while the detective took a huge bite of his sandwich, chewed, then swallowed it down with coffee.

“Caught a break,” Vogel said, waving what was left of the biscuit in its paper wrappings in the general direction of the rest of the squad. “Sanchez managed to track down a cousin of Todd’s who says she loaned her RV to him the day before the kidnapping. Also gave us his current address.” He took another bite. “Evidently, he’s been bunking with his girlfriend. This cousin said he and the lady showed up asking if they could borrow the RV because they wanted to ‘go camping.’”

“You’ve been busy,” Holt said, sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

Vogel nodded as he chewed. “We got a unit sitting on the girlfriend’s place. Car in the driveway, no sign of the RV.”

Holt drank coffee and cleared his throat. “You figure one’s holed up there and the other’s staying with the kid in the RV?”

Again Vogel nodded. “According to what Todd told your friend Billie, finding him isn’t going to get us the kid, so my guess would be the girlfriend drew the short straw. Anyway, we don’t want to move on the girlfriend’s place until we know more about who’s where. What we really need is to find that RV.” He nodded toward the big screen in the front of the squad room. “Question is, how? It’s gonna be like looking for the proverbial needle in all that.”

Holt stared at the screen with narrowed eyes. He assumed what he was looking at were satellite photos of the search area. The Valley of Fire. A turbulent sea of red and gold, carved by wind and water over millions of years. Incredibly beautiful, but desolate. And vast.

“We’ll have eyes in the air at first light-” Vogel looked at his watch “-right about now, actually. But even with choppers and planes, it could take days. There must be a million places out there to hide an RV. And God knows how many RVs are out there right now. How the hell are we gonna know if it’s the right one?”

“I think I might know somebody who can help with that,” Holt said, reaching in his pocket for his cell phone. Opened it, found his batteries were on life support, shoved it back in his pocket and frowned at the room. “Anybody know the number for the Venetian?”

Vogel gave him a skeptical look. “You’re thinking the psychic? Even if I believed that stuff-and I’m not sayin’ I do or I don’t-how’s she gonna help?”

“She’s an empath-picks up on emotions. Figured maybe if she got close enough, she might be able to home in on the vibes of a scared little girl.” Holt gave an offhand shrug and downed the last of his coffee. He wasn’t about to waste breath trying to convince somebody of something he’d seen proof of with his own eyes. Something like that you either believed or you didn’t. “Figured it couldn’t hurt, right?”

Vogel stared at him for a moment, then tossed his empty coffee cup in the general direction of a trash can and pointed at his squad as he slid off his desk perch. “Sanchez-get me the Ven-”

“Already on it,” Sanchez drawled, cradling a phone next to her ear.

“Got another phone I can use?” Holt sent his trash after Vogel’s. “My cell phone’s…”

“Sure-use that one right there.” The detective was already halfway across the room, yelling at somebody else. “Hey, Turley, those choppers in the air yet? Get me the tower out at-”

Holt picked up the phone on the desk behind him and tucked it under his jaw while he took out his cell phone again and found the number he wanted in his phone-book. He put away the cell phone and punched in the number. After a couple of rings a sleepy voice answered.

“This better be Publishers Clearing House…”

“Tony, it’s me,” Holt said, then listened to some swearing. “Look, you know I wouldn’t call this early if it wasn’t important. Where are you? How soon can you get back to Vegas?”

“Never left,” Tony said, in the middle of a huge yawn. “Brooke’s on her way here. You didn’t think she was gonna stay away once I e-mailed her those pictures I took-you kiddin’ me?”

Somebody was definitely on his side, Holt figured. He let out a breath. “Man, you don’t know how glad I am to hear that. Need another favor, my friend. Listen, will that toy of yours carry three passengers?”

“Three? Sure, if I leave my cameras, and if two of you don’t mind sitting on the floor.”

“Okay,” Holt said, “get your gear and meet us at the airstrip. Can you be there in an hour?”

Billie woke up and knew before she opened her eyes that it was later than she’d ever slept before. A sickening lurch in her stomach reminded her she’d not only overslept, she’d also failed to show up for work.

Too late to worry about that now.

For a few more minutes she lay in her bed, listening to the silence of an empty house. Wondering why she’d never noticed before that the silence had a weighted, suspenseful quality, as if the house itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to come and fill the void. A voice, a laugh, a country song playing on a radio, the morning news on television, the tinkle of silverware on plates…

She got up, pulled a T-shirt on and wandered out to the kitchen, where she found the light blinking on her message machine. Three messages, the digital readout on the police recorder said. She punched the button, heard two hang-ups, then Holt’s voice.

“Mornin’, sunshine. Don’t worry about going in to work. I called your boss. In case he asks, you’re having stomach problems. I figured that covers a lot of territory, so you can fill in the blanks however you want to. So…rest up, whatever you need to do, for…you know, tonight. I don’t know if I’m supposed to wish you luck, or not. So…break a leg, or whatever you say in the world of professional poker. Just hang in there, darlin’. And…I’ll call you later. Okay…’bye.”

She stood for a moment, her finger poised to play the message again, just to hear his voice. Told herself that was stupid, and went to make coffee instead. She was measuring coffee into the basket when the phone rang, making her jump so that the grounds went all over the countertop instead. She wiped most of them into the sink, brushed her hand off on the front of her T-shirt and picked up the phone, her heart already lifting into a quicker, more hopeful cadence, knowing it must be Holt, calling her back as he’d said he would.

“Hey,” she said with a softness in her voice she hadn’t even known would be there.

“Where you been? I been callin’ you all morning.”

Cold rage washed over her. She wrapped her arms across herself and shivered. “Miley.”

“Yeah, it’s me-who did you think? So, you did it, didn’t you? Went to the cops. I told you-”

“Don’t be stupid. The cops, the FBI-they’re all over it without any help from me. What did you think was going to happen? You grab a little girl off the street and her parents aren’t going to notice? Jeez, Miley, what were you thinking?”