After talking to the family of the kidnapped girl, I began driving and alerted local police, as well as used my left-behind assistant’s office location to look up known associates, recent locations, and abandoned properties. I also had local police checking stop-light cams, since Julian was notorious for running them.

I wanted to get on a fresh trail as soon as possible or I feared the girl would be a goner.

“First of all, Julian always works alone,” my associate informed me. “Second of all, there are hundreds of warehouses he could go to outside of the city, if he makes it that far. There are also countless motels he could hide out in. There is no known record of any of his aliases checking into those motels within the past month.”

“This isn’t good news! He’s probably gonna ditch the car as soon as he gets a chance, and he’s not gonna visit any motels. He’ll drive all night and get to some place out in the desert! Any news from the local cameras? Where is he headed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out!”