Chapter 26: The Gala

KIDNAPPED DEVLIN DAUGHTER: "MY SISTER HELPED THEM."

Verity's lawyer stood on the hospital steps in a camel overcoat and read a statement.

His client had been abducted from a parking garage, forced at gunpoint to wire the foundation's money, and held in the dark.

Whatever she'd said in that laundromat, she'd said with a gun in her back.

The transmitter in my leg had caught twenty dryers, then my voice, then Uncle's hand.

It hadn't caught a single word of hers.

Uncle sat in a federal holding cell and said nothing at all.

At noon the foundation's board put out a statement of its own.

The Bring Them Home Gala would go on as planned, Saturday night.

Our executive director, Verity Devlin, has asked to host it, the statement said. For the children.

"I'll pull the name," Dad said. "I'll call every table. It's over."

"Don't," I said.

"Let her come," I said. "Let her stand up in front of six hundred people and say it again."

Then he called the hotel and asked for a table in front.

The ballroom on Michigan Avenue had crystal chandeliers and a screen the size of a garage door.

Every table had a centerpiece of white roses and a card with seven children's faces on it.

All seven had a little gold star in the corner now.

I wore the dress Verity had picked for me.

Ice blue, long sleeves, high collar.

So nobody stares.

Dez wore a rented tuxedo that was tight across the shoulders.

"You look like a bouncer at a wedding," I said.

"I am a bouncer at a wedding."

Verity's table was in front, beside ours.

There was a place card at it with a man's name nobody at the table seemed to know.

That chair was for a man in a black suit.

Verity walked onto the stage in the white gown from State Street.

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