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little sister. Knowing that, Alexis loved her even more. But to her shame, she still hated her for leaving.
    She knew she was an emotional mess where her family was concerned, but she’d channeled her roiling emotions into her work. Even once she’d realized that Tori had left of her own accord, Alexis’s desire to join the FBI hadn’t faded. By then, the thought of being an agent—of honoring that badge and helping victims of unspeakable crimes—had invaded her soul, become a part of her. She’d clung to the dream, shifting it around only slightly for Tori’s benefit. Alexis was no longer looking for her abductor; now she was looking for Tori herself. She wanted to throw her arms around her sister and tell her that their parents were dead. That Tori could come back. That she could be a big sister again.
    It was a fantasy that Alexis clung to with determined tenacity. So far, she’d done everything a civilian could do to search for her sister, and a few things only an FBI agent could manage. One of these days she was going to ask official permission to use FBI resources to track Tori down. She had to, because Tori was all the family she had. Considering what she now knew about her parents, Tori was all the family she’d
ever
had.
    Until then, though …
    Well, until then, the FBI was her life. And if Gutierrezwanted her on her day off, then she’d been more than ready to go.
    What she hadn’t understood was why she was going to the police department. By then, the task force had been in place long enough that the cops knew to call the FBI and the forensics team from the get-go. It had to be a cold case. An unsolved crime filed away that the local cops had dug out to pass off to the task force. A pain in the ass for the cops, maybe, but for the task force it could be gold.
    She’d arrived at Lanahan’s office eager to see the file, and he hadn’t disappointed. After the briefest of introductions, he’d passed her a thick sheaf of papers fastened with a binder clip. “Only a few months old,” he’d said. “So tepid, not cold. But the detective assigned didn’t realize he should call you folks in.”
    “Didn’t realize!” Alexis said, but Lanahan only shrugged.
    “There were wounds on the neck, but those weren’t the only injuries. Sure, he should have realized, but what can I say? He fucked up. And he’s moved on—Kansas, Nebraska, one of those corn-fed states. Soon as I got the file, I called you folks.”
    She skimmed the initial detective’s notes from the scene. “Unidentified female?” she asked, glancing up at Lanahan. “She’s a Jane Doe?”
    “It’s all there,” he said. “We didn’t get anything back with prints. Girl looked to be a recovering junkie—but there wasn’t any physical evidence of drug abuse. She did have some old puncture wounds on her neck and some scar tissue on her wrists. Could be drug-related, but the coroner thinks no.”
    “Self-mutilation.”
    Lanahan shrugged. “Who knows. Our guy canvassed the streets, but he didn’t come up with anybody who knew the female.”
    “She was found in the subway system?” Alexis asked. The answer was on the report, but she wanted to hear what this detective had to say. As she waited, she flipped pages, looking for the crime scene photos.
    “Not far from the Battery Park station,” he confirmed. “In a pile of debris in one of the homeless squats.”
    Alexis frowned, hating the thought of some poor girl, probably a runaway, holed up in one of the areas carved out within urban subways where the homeless would park their carts, warm their hands over Sterno cans, and trade needles and bottles of Jack. At her lowest, she wondered if that was where Tori had ended up, but always immediately banished the thought.
    “I can take you there if you like,” Lanahan offered.
    “That would be great,” Alexis said as she flipped another page. She knew she wouldn’t find a clue, but just being close to the scene and seeing what the