“Go back inside and close the door,” Astra orders in a harsh whisper.

The woman quickly complies and shuts the door. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I feel the pressure of unseen eyes watching us from behind the ragged, threadbare curtains that cover the windows around us. Putting it out of my mind, I turn, and we continue forward, crossing a patch of dirt and dead, dried grass. We stop, each of us taking a position on either side of Zane’s door. His car, a 1990 Pontiac Grand Am that was once white but is now a dull gray with big patches of rust is parked in the lot, telling us that he’s home.

I key open my comms. “Mo, we’re at the target door,” I whisper.

“We’re in position,” her voice crackles through my earpiece.

“Copy that; stand by,” I say. “We’re about to make entry.”

“Standing by.”

I look at Astra who gives me a nod. My weapon in one hand, I reach out with the other and bang on the door with the side of my fist.

“Nicholas Zane, open up, FBI,” I call out.

The sound of a round being chambered sends a flood of ice through my veins. Astra and I lean away from the door as the first shots ring out. The bullets tear through the cheap, flimsy door, blowing holes through large enough to put my fist through. From inside the room, Zane curses as he struggles with his weapon. Moving quickly, I kick the door, shattering what was left of it and sending it flying inward.

The ragged remains crash against the wall behind it as Astra and I charge in, moving low and fast. We find Zane sitting on the edge of his bed, a jammed .45 in his hand. He looks up to find himself staring down the barrel of my Glock and Astra’s M4, and a resigned expression crosses his face. He drops his weapon to the worn carpeting with a hard thud.

“What?” he grumbles, annoyed, as if he hadn’t just taken shots at us.

“Put your hands on your head, moron,” I order.

He does so, and Astra gives me cover as I move him to a chair in the corner of the room, quickly getting his hands in cuffs behind his back. After getting the all clear, Mo and Paige step into the room, look at Zane, and frown in disgust. I feel their pain. Somewhere in his forties, Zane is pale and scrawny with a thick head of shaggy, light brown hair, chestnut-colored eyes, and several days’ worth of growth on his face. He looks like he hasn’t seen the inside of a shower in days, and worse, he smells like it too. And to top it all off, he’s naked, save for a ragged and worn pair of tighty-not-so-whities that are ragged and worn.

Grabbing a stained and foul-smelling blanket from the bed, I throw it over him. “Nobody wants to see that.”

“Thank you for that,” Astra exhales.

“What the hell do you want?” he gripes.

Astra cuffs him upside the head, making him wince dramatically, acting as if she’d just hit him with a hammer. She rolls her eyes.

“Talk only when you’re spoken to and not before,” she orders. “Until then, shut it.”

“Okay, spread out and search for anything,” I say as I look around with distaste at the pigsty that is his room. “I strongly recommend gloves.”

“And penicillin shots when we’re done,” Astra adds.

Zane fidgets in his chair, his face growing tight, as he watches us snap on nitrile gloves and begin digging through his scant belongings.

“Hey, you can’t do that. You can’t look through my stuff without a warrant,” he objects. “I got rights. I know my rights.”

Astra cuffs him behind the ear again. “You threw shots at us, idiot. That gives us the right to do whatever we want.”

“That ain’t true,” he complains.

“Then take it up with a judge.”

He watches us dig through everything he owns. Ideally, we hope to find something that connects him to Ashley. And in a perfect world, we’ll find something that connects him to Ashely and Peter. But the world is far from perfect, and as he continues to rant and rave about rights that don’t exist anywhere but in his own mind, I start to understand what Violet meant when she said he isn’t a very smart man. And it casts doubt for me on whether he could have abducted Ashley. Our perp is intelligent, audacious, methodical, and disciplined. The man sitting in the chair in front of me is none of those things.

I sit down on the edge of the small, round table beside Zane and stare down at him, letting the magnitude of the moment sink in for him. He squirms in his chair and glares at me with red, rheumy eyes and a sneer on his thin, cracked lips.

“What do you want?” he exclaims.

“Tell me about Ashley Barlow,” I tell him.

“Who?”

“Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t play stupid.”

“I don’t think he’s playing,” Astra remarks.

“Shut up, bi—”

This time it’s my turn to cuff him behind the ear. “Watch your mouth,” I tell him. “Now, let’s try this again. Ashley Barlow.”

“Don’t know her.”

“Yeah. You do. Don’t play this game,” I say.

“I ain’t playing a game.”

“What did you do with her?” I ask.

“I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about.”

I slam my fist down on the table beside him so hard, he flinches. “I’m not playing games, Nick. Where is Ashley?”

He shudders but quickly recovers. “I don’t—”

Leaning down, I put my face scant inches from his—then immediately regret my decision as the most foul-smelling breath wafts over me. It’s rancid and is quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever smelled. To back out now, though, would be seen as weakness, so I focus on taking short, shallow breaths to keep myself from vomiting all over him. He recoils in fear. Like every bully I’ve ever known, Zane wilts in the face of somebody unafraid of him.

“We have you on video tailing Ashley in the mall. We know you know Ashley and are of the opinion that you took her to get the money you told Violet you needed. Now, where is she?” I growl. “And I swear to God, if you lie to me again, I will beat you within an inch of your life. You fired on us, so that pretty much gives me a free pass to do what I want. Understand?”

“Fine. Fine. I know her, all right?” he stumbles over his words. “I know who she is, but I didn’t do nothin’ to her.”

“No?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t. I was goin’ to, but Violet… she warned me not to. She said she’d tell that big Israeli dude that follows her around; she said he’d kill me if I touched that girl. So, I didn’t. I swear to God, I didn’t. I found another way to get some money.”

Dammit. He looks and sounds like he’s telling me the truth. Standing up again, I glance at the others, and as they finish their search of his belongings and the room itself, they all give me a shake of the head. There are plenty of drugs sitting in plain sight, but there is nothing in here that indicates Ashley has ever been here. Astra comes back in from the parking lot after rifling through Zane’s car and gives me a frown.

“Nothing,” she says.

I turn back to Zane. “What about Peter Olange?”

He cocks his head. “Who?”