Cavanaugh Undercover. Marie Ferrarella

her—Tiana—anywhere she wanted to go. There were a few times she could have sworn the college senior was actually coming on to her.

      Tiana tried as gently as possible to encourage Janie to see other guys. But for her sister, the sun rose and set around Wayne’s close-shaved head. Tiana instinctively sensed that the more she’d say against Wayne, the more Janie would defend him and dig in her heels, at the same time turning her back on the only family she had.

      So Tiana had kept her peace and even refrained from saying anything when it became apparent that Janie was cutting classes to hang out with this loser.

      But when one of Janie’s friends called to ask if Janie had quit college altogether, all sorts of red lights and alarms had gone off in Tiana’s head. When she asked around, it came to light that no one had seen Janie either in her classes or at the part-time job she’d gotten to help with her schooling expenses approximately two weeks ago. Sick with worry, Tiana only became more so upon learning that according to her roommate, Janie hadn’t been to her dorm room for those same two weeks.

      And no one had seen her boyfriend, either.

      Tiana immediately went into high gear to try to track down her sister’s movements and current whereabouts. Accessing local cameras around the college and the places that her sister had frequented had ultimately yielded eyestrain and nothing else. For all intents and purposes, both Janie and her boyfriend had completely disappeared from the San Francisco area.

      Tiana tried calling Janie on her cell phone both day and night to no avail. All her calls went straight to voice mail until finally, the metallic voice told her that the mailbox was full.

      Growing increasingly desperate, Tiana tried to get coordinates on her sister by using the GPS feature of her cell phone. That had eventually gotten her sister’s phone—abandoned in a Dumpster—but not her sister.

      “C’mon, Janie,” she had pleaded, glaring at the cell phone—an electronic fixture her sister would have never willingly thrown away. “Give me a clue, something to work with. Anything. Where are you?”

      And about that time the rumors regarding a white slave ring operating somewhere in the general vicinity, “recruiting” new faces or, more aptly, new bodies, began to circulate.

      The moment she heard, a cold chill had gone down her spine. And she knew, knew this was the direction she had to go in.

      Further investigation on her part pointed to the trail working its way down to the southern portion of the state. She had no jurisdiction outside San Francisco and she knew she’d be strictly on her own.

      But since nothing in the world was more important to her than Janie, Tiana did what she had to do. She requested a leave of absence and took off that very day, following the only lead she had—a confidential informant who owed her a favor since it was her work in the lab that had eventually cleared the man of some pretty nasty charges. The informant told her that Wayne was mixed up with the traffickers.

      When she was a kid, Tiana had prayed feverishly, seeking the help of a higher power. She had prayed that her mother would come back to take them away, out of her father’s reach. She also prayed nightly that her father would change, suddenly regret the way he had treated them and do his best to make it up to her and her sister. Finally, all but devoid of hope, she still prayed that someone, anyone, would come to their rescue.

      But their mother had never returned to take them with her, their father had continued to mistreat and abuse them—especially her—until the day he died and no one ever came to rescue them.

      A week after their father was killed, Tiana turned eighteen and she was the one who rescued Janie. She was the one who stood up and did what had to be done, taking care of herself and her sister. And, since none of her prayers were ever answered, she concluded that there was no one listening. So she gave up praying.

      She still didn’t pray.

      Faced with the huge challenge of tracking down her sister and bringing her home, Tiana saw no reason to go back to something that had only failed her time and time again. In this big, wide world, Tiana had discovered that the only person she could rely on with any sort of certainty was herself.

      So be it.

      She just had to gather her inner fortitude and her strength together. She intended to do whatever had to be done to find her sister. And if, along the way, she ran into Wayne, she felt confident that she could be forgiven for pummeling the worthless piece of garbage into the ground for having kidnapped Janie.

      Tiana was convinced that was what had happened. He’d drugged Janie and kidnapped her. There was no other reason why Janie hadn’t gotten in contact with her in two weeks. Always before, no matter what kind of an argument they’d had, she and Janie had never gone for more than a few days without getting in contact with each other. Neither one of them had ever held any sort of a long-term grudge, although this campus Romeo had definitely thrown a wrench into the works and caused an upsetting schism to form between them.

      But this went beyond even that. Something was definitely wrong.

      She could feel it way down deep in her bones.

      “If anything bad has happened to Janie,” Tiana promised the missing Wayne between clenched teeth as she packed a few essential things, then threw the single suitcase into her car, “I am going to fillet you and make you wish you were never born.”

      Voicing the threat aloud didn’t make her feel immeasurably better.

      But it helped.

      Chapter 2

      Tiana held her breath as she walked up to the motel door. The faded, peeling gray door was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and number 13’s 3 was hanging upside down, held only partially in place by a nail precariously inserted at the bottom.

      The thought occurred to Tiana that the barely attached 3 might be an omen of some sort.

      She dismissed the thought. Behind this door—hopefully—was the only lead she had to help her find her sister. By calling in every favor she’d had, she’d managed to get Wayne’s credit card activity traced. The cocky dimwit had used his card to pay for his motel room, allowing her to trace him to this run-down twenty-unit motel.

      With any luck, Janie was here, too. Tiana wasn’t going to leave without the girl.

      And if this lowlife had hurt Janie in any way, she would make sure he regretted it. Her sister was still a minor despite the fact that she was in her first year in college. Wayne was not. It was ultimately all the ammunition Tiana needed to have him put away.

      Damn it, Janie, you’re the smart one in this family. You’re supposed to have more brains than this, running off with a loser. What were you thinking? Tiana silently demanded.

      The next second, the direction of her thoughts did a one-eighty and anger turned to foreboding. Please be all right, Janie. Please. I’ll forgive this stupid lapse in judgment, just please be all right.

      Glancing around to see if anyone was watching—this unit faced the rear parking lot, which was at present devoid of any activity—she took out the small precision tools she needed to help her gain entry into the room. The last thing she intended to do was knock, alerting Wayne so that he’d wind up fleeing through the back window, dragging Janie in his wake.

      But as Tiana inserted the thin metal tool into the keyhole, the door moved back.

      It wasn’t locked.

      Tiana caught her lower lip between her teeth. She was either lucky—or something was very, very wrong.

      It had been a while since she’d considered herself lucky.

      Bracing herself, Tiana drew out her service weapon from its holster beneath her jacket. Her breath backing up in her lungs, she pushed the door open with her fingertips, moving it a painfully slow inch at a time.

      The instant she saw Wayne spread out on the bed, she moved quickly, crossing from the entrance