Until You

"Now, that sounds right." John O'Neil chuckled. "Fella I talked to didn't have much of a French accent, if you get my drift. So, you know this guy?"

Images crowded in. De Lasserre's arrogant face and cruel smile, and what Miranda had told him of her wedding night in that medieval fortress.

"Son? Does it help?"

Conor cleared his throat. "Yes, yes, it does. Thanks, Dad."

"No problem. To tell the truth, it felt good, poking my nose into things again. If there's anything else...?"

"Actually, there is." Conor looked at the photo in his hand. Sometime during the last few minutes, he'd crushed it in his fist. Now he tucked the phone in the crook of his shoulder and smoothed the creases out of the picture as best he could. "Some of your neighbors read Spanish, right?"

His father laughed. "Is the Pope Catholic?"

"You think one of them would translate something for me?"

"Well, I guess. Let me grab a pencil here... Okay. What've you got?"

"Dile a tu madre que divulgue su secreto," Conor said slowly, then spelled it out. "I know it's something about your mother and revealing the secret but—"

"It means, 'Tell your mother to let the cat out of the bag.' "

Conor's eyebrows shot up. "How'd you know that?"

"You can't work in Nuevo York as long as I did without learning something."

"In that case," Conor said, fanning through the photos, "maybe you can help me with something else. I've got some pictures here. That message was written on the back of one of them."

"Uh-huh."

"There are some signs in the pictures, in Spanish. I figure they must have some connection to the message."

"What do the signs say?"

"The first says Avenida Rio Azul."

Conor could hear the sharp intake of his father's breath over the phone.

"Avenida Rio Azul?"

"Yeah. Does that mean something to you?"

"Tell me what the other signs say, Conor."

"There's a second sign that says Calle La Perla. And then there's a sign on a building. It says—"

"El Gato Negro."

Conor frowned. "That's right. You know this place?"

"Damn right, I know it. Where'd you get those pictures, son?"

"It's too complicated to go into now. Just tell me what the hell I'm looking at here."

"There was a big drug bust back when I was still on the job. Some yahoos from Medellin got taken down by the DEA."

Conor felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck.

"Medillin? Colombia?"