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An Uber home would be the quickest way to get out of here. She could get another car to use until hers was fixed.
Right now, she really needed that damned drink.
Not true.What she needed was to know more about Alice Cortez and her family. She considered calling Falco, but Devlin would be the best source. And Devlin was far more desperate at the moment than Falco.
Sadie tapped the name in her contact list. Devlin answered on the second ring.
“Can you give me a ride?”
Sadie’s Loft
Sixth Avenue, Twenty-Seventh Street
Birmingham, 2:40 p.m.
Sadie pointed to a grainy photo she had printed from the internet. “This is the image a sketch artist did right after I came back. That’s what I could recall of the girl, Isabella.”
Devlin stared at the wall of notes Sadie had made. Pieces of memories. Fragments of time. “She could be Alice,” Devlin said. “No question.”
“The voice is right.” Sadie shrugged. “More mature, but right.”
Devlin shook her head. “I can’t believe you got into Brighton Academy so easily. Geez. What am I paying for?”
“Good question,” Sadie concurred. “I was able to watch her for a few minutes—the girl, I mean. She did this little twirl around like a ballerina. I saw Isabella do it a hundred times.”
“Most girls want to be a ballerina at one time or another in their lives,” Devlin countered.
“Yeah, yeah.” Sadie didn’t have kids. She knew nothing of what little girls did or wanted.
“Walk me through what you actually remember,” Devlin said.
Sadie grabbed her mug of coffee from the table and stalked toward the sofa. “I was assigned to the task force in July. By September I was in tight with the son, Eduardo—Eddie to his friends. By October I was living at the compound. By Christmas we were engaged.”
The other part Sadie had long ago decided she wouldn’t talk about. To anyone. Her father knew because the doctors had told him there were indications Sadie had given birth a few months prior. She’d never told anyone else.
“Were you able to pass along usable intelligence while you were undercover?”
Sadie downed a hefty swallow of coffee. “I did. Not as much as I would have liked but more than anyone else had ever managed before. I was the first undercover to get inside the compound. It took getting really close to the family. Digging in deep.”
“I imagine it was difficult to play the part so completely.”
“I don’t know.” Sadie stared at her half-empty cup. “Part of me became my cover. It’s the only way to make it real. You pull on that skin and become the person you’re pretending to be. After a while, it feels ... right, and you do what you have to do.”
“What happened before you vanished?”
“I overheard a conversation. Passed along the intel, and that was the end of my cover.”
“Someone saw you or set you up?”
“The last bit of intelligence I passed along was too close. No one knew except Eddie, his father, and the woman on the phone. They knew it had to be me. There was no one else in the house that day.”
“What about the woman? Did you recognize her?”
“I only heard her voice on the conference call. For a moment. A dozen words, maybe. She never came to the compound.” A snippet ofmemory about someone important visiting at the party on October 31 flashed in her brain. Was that why she’d ended up drugged that night, so she wouldn’t see the visitor? Sadie shook off the memory. “She’s the big mystery that remains even after digging in so deep and all that hard work.”
“And sacrifice.”
Sadie nodded.
