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suddenly had a job to do and a case to work on—a real case. Emma Ortiz and Hedda Brinker had nothing in common but their two murdered daughters. And because of them, Brandon Walker had returned from the dead.
    ***
    Maria Elena Dominguez lay naked on the bed and waited, drowning in despair. She had no way to tell time. In this darkened room with no windows and only a tiny pinprick of light over the corner toilet, she didn’t know if it was night or day. She didn’t know if she’d been here for weeks or months or years. All she knew was that at some time, the overhead light would flash on, temporarily blinding her. Then the latch would click, the door would creak open, and once again she would be plunged into a living hell.
    She had been glad to see Señor the Doctor at the bus that sunny afternoon in Nogales, which now seemed so very long ago. She had been thrilled to think that he and his wife—the woman with the bright green eyes and beautiful silver hair—were the ones who were taking her in. And he had been so kind to her as they left the bus station behind and drove across the border at Nogales in a shiny black car that smelled of what had to be new leather. The seat had felt soft as a feather lingering against the bare skin of her legs.
    There had been no question about her papers. In fact, no one had even bothered to look at them. Instead, the guard had leaned down, peered across the seat at her. He then smiled, saluted the driver, and waved them on. That was all there was to it. Minutes later they were gliding along far faster than the lumbering bus, only this time they traveled on a fine wide roadway—a wonderfully smooth highway—that stretched out ahead of them like a length of gray satin ribbon. And for the first time in her life, Maria Elena was riding in a car where the air flowing out of the vent was so impossibly cool that she shivered with cold.
    Señor the Doctor had asked if she was hungry or thirsty. When she had nodded yes, he had reached behind the seat and produced a basket containing a sumptuous feast—bananas and chunks of sharp yellow cheese. When she had eaten her fill, he produced a thermos.
    “Do you drink coffee?” he had asked.
    “Sí,” she said, although it had been years since she had any. She poured it herself into the top of the thermos. She savored the aroma that boiled up into her nostrils from the steam. And when she tasted it, the coffee was sweet and dark on her tongue, just the way her mother had made it. And that was all she remembered. When she awakened next, she was in this room and on this bed. And the doctor, who knew for sure that she and her friends did not have AIDS, took what she had kept from the drug dealers and killers at El Asilo Seguro. The doctor took that, and far more besides, enjoying her suffering and laughing at her when she cried out in pain.
    He always brought her food—for afterward. She didn’t know if he intended it as a punishment or a reward. Hoping to starve to death and put an end to her misery, Maria Elena at first had tried not eating the food and had flushed it down the toilet that sat, squat and ugly as a gray ghost, in the dimly lit far corner of the room. But something had gone wrong. The toilet had backed up, and Señor the Doctor had figured out what she was doing. He had beaten her then—beaten her with a thin, sharp strap—until she’d been left with bloody welts all over her body. After that, he watched her while she ate, making certain she swallowed every morsel.
    Lying naked, shackled, and miserable on the bed, Maria Elena grieved for herself and also for her friend, for Madelina. She knew now that for Madelina, too, there had been no nice family waiting in the United States. Perhaps Señor the Doctor had simply tired of her. Or perhaps she had been lucky—really lucky—and died. There would be no meeting of two old friends at some pretty place someday. And the old times they might have discussed if they had met—the bad