Free Forced Disappearance by Dana Marton

shadowing her every step.
    After a few more questions, including asking about Glenn’s returned personal effects, and receiving only the vaguest of answers, Miranda ended the call and, swallowing her frustration with the lack of progress, went to bed.
    She slept restlessly, all her old nightmares coming back—Matthew dying on the battlefield, Abby, the other little girl, then herself, pulling the trigger. She woke to her laptop pinging at eight a.m., grateful for the end of the gruesome movie reel in her brain.
    She rubbed a hand over her face, shook the last of the images from her head, then focused on the screen. Incoming email from Bjorn. He sent back her three photos digitally enhanced.
    Miranda brought up the van photo. Still unusable.
    The transport log from the National Guard popped up on her screen next. She scanned the first page, ran down the names. Another odd list: Bieber Gonzales, Leonardo Ruiz, a couple of Jos é s, an odd mixture of traditional and celebrity names. The second page was more of the same.
    Except for the very last line.
    The last person they identified only as Prisoner #786. Next to that, the transport log had one printed word: Guri. After that, somebody had handwritten Strictly Confidential.
    She touched her fingertip to that last line on her screen. Prisoner #786 had been transported to Guri under heavy guard on March second. Excitement surged through her.
    Prisoner #786 had to be Glenn.
    She dressed in a hurry, packed her suitcase, and sailed downstairs.
    Roberto was waiting for her in the lobby, leaning against the reception desk and flirting with the young woman behind it.
    The smile slid off his face as he glanced at Miranda and the suitcase she was dragging. “Are you leaving?”
    “Just the hotel.” She stepped up to the counter to check out. “I want to see more of your beautiful country. How do you feel about visiting the Guri Dam?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “The dam is close to seven hundred kilometers from here.”
    Sounded doable. “What does that mean in drive time?”
    “Over ten hours, depending on road conditions.”
    “I can go alone. I don’t want to waste your time.”
    “Nonsense. I promised to help.” He reached up to rub his chin as he watched her. “Why don’t you walk back to the restaurant and have breakfast. I’ll grab an overnight bag for myself. I’ll be back by the time you’re finished.”
    She hesitated. She was pretty sure he’d been assigned to her to keep an eye on her. But he was helpful, knew the language better than she did, definitely knew the roads better. He had a badge that could come in handy with getting answers at Guri. He hadn’t tried to impede her investigation yet. She could find no reason to refuse him.
    She let her face relax into a smile. “All right. Breakfast would be great.” She paused for a second. “You wouldn’t know by any chance if there’s a National Guard outpost at Guri, would you?”
    He had this look on his face, as if he was impressed with her for some reason. “Just a small outpost. The dam provides more than a third of the country’s power needs. It’s a strategic installation.”
    Meaning, any damage to it would be a national security threat, so it needed protection. “I thought Venezuela was big on oil and gas.”
    “The more hydroelectric energy we make for our own consumption, the more of the oil and the gas we can sell on the international market.”
    That made sense.
    While she had breakfast, she brought up the map again on her laptop and zoomed in as much as possible, using satellite images to scan Guri Lake and the dam. The area didn’t look like much, as far as population went, maybe a hundred houses altogether.
    She kept coming back to the same small compound over and over. That had to be the National Guard outpost.
    Once she found Glenn, she could contact the home office and the US government could exert pressure on the Venezuelan government to have him released. She refused to think of