Daylight (atlee Pine, #3)

Daylight is a novel in David Baldacci's Atlee Pine series.

FBI Special Agent Atlee Pine has spent months searching for her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted from their home in Andersonville, Georgia, 30 years earlier. Pine recently uncovered that Ito Vincenzo kidnapped Mercy to avenge his brother Bruno, a convicted mobster who blamed Pine's mother for serving as an undercover mole in a federal sting against the New York Mafia. Now Pine persuades her reluctant bureau chief, Clint Dobbs, to grant her a few more days to follow a lead to Trenton, New Jersey, where Ito once lived. Her assistant, Carol Blum, accompanies her.

In Trenton, Pine's attempt to question Ito's grandson Tony Vincenzo disrupts an arrest operation led by John Puller, a chief warrant officer with the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Puller has spent weeks building a case against Tony for running a drug network out of the Fort Dix military installation. Pine and Puller, who know each other from a prior task force, agree to collaborate alongside Puller's partner, CID Special Agent Ed McElroy.

Pine searches the Vincenzo home and visits Ito's wife, Evie, in a nursing home. In Evie's closet, she finds a letter Bruno wrote Ito from prison, confirming Bruno knew Pine's mother was the government informant but kept silent expecting a deal. Pine concludes Bruno revealed the family's location to Ito during a prison visit. At Fort Dix, Pine and Puller interview Ito's incarcerated son, Teddy Vincenzo, who confirms his father's fury over Bruno's fate, but unidentified officials abruptly terminate the interview and remove Teddy. Separately, Ito's former employee Darren Castor confirms Ito was absent for two months in 1989, aligning with the period of Mercy's abduction, and later vanished permanently.

One evening, McElroy is shot and killed outside a restaurant. Pine pursues the shooter into an alley and corners Jerome Blake, a terrified Trenton high school student, who says, "We're in deep shit." Before Pine can persuade Jerome to surrender, a uniformed officer shoots him dead. Pine's investigation reveals Jerome was an academically gifted student with no gang ties, coerced into the alley as a patsy. The gun found on Jerome's body differs from the weapon Pine saw him holding, and surveillance footage proves the "officer" was already inside the alley. Pine later identifies the killer as Adam Gorman, head of security for Congresswoman Nora Franklin. Meanwhile, Teddy is found dead in his cell under suspicious circumstances.

Pine contacts her biological father, Jack Lineberry, her mother's former handler during the undercover operation. After Pine's mother was exposed, the family entered WITSEC, the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program, but two relocation attempts failed when attackers found them. Lineberry directs Pine to Douglas Bennett, a retired operative who reveals that Lineberry once had a fiancée named Linda Holden-Bryant. Pine suspects Linda as the long-sought leak who compromised the family's locations. She and Blum confront Linda, now a billionaire in Manhattan, who confesses that after discovering Lineberry's affair with Pine's mother, she contacted Bruno through a mob associate and systematically passed the family's hidden addresses to the Vincenzos.

The investigation expands as obstruction intensifies. Puller briefs General Tom Pitts, the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Pitts is reassigned within 24 hours. Armed assailants attack Puller's apartment. Puller's brother, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Puller, a cybersecurity expert, traces a connection between the drug ring and Jeff Sands, grandson of Senate Majority Leader Peter Driscoll. Pine goes undercover at a luxury penthouse on Billionaires' Row with Lindsey Axilrod, a Fort Dix IT worker who turns out to be central to the conspiracy. Axilrod drugs Pine and frames her for the murder of Sheila Weathers, a Fort Dix worker. Pine escapes and is cleared by the FBI.

Pine and Puller locate Sands, who begins cooperating but is killed by a sniper; the same bullet wounds Puller in the torso. Jerome's 14-year-old sister, Jewel Blake, then reveals the penthouse is used to sexually exploit minors and blackmail powerful figures: Jewel was recruited, drugged, and raped there, and Jerome was killed because he discovered her involvement. At Fort Dix, Pine pressures two soldiers into revealing that Axilrod led the drug operation and that Tony sometimes stays at Ito's old beach house in Manasquan, New Jersey.

At the beach house, Pine makes a pivotal discovery. In the attic, she finds Mercy's childhood pajamas and letters from Leonard and Wanda Atkins of Taliaferro County, Georgia. Leonard served with Ito in Vietnam, and the letters thank Ito for "the girl" they renamed Rebecca. A 1999 Polaroid in the same box shows a dirty, barefoot young woman covered in scabs, staring at the ground. Pine recognizes her as Mercy. When Tony and Axilrod arrive, Pine learns the penthouse contains hidden cameras in every bedroom, confirming a large-scale blackmail scheme. In the ensuing confrontation, Tony is killed and Axilrod escapes.

Blum and Robert Puller are captured by Gorman while surveilling Franklin. Pine mobilizes the FBI's New York Field Office, where Special Agent in Charge Warren Graham reveals the Bureau has been investigating similar blackmail networks. Pine confronts Franklin at her Greenwich Village home, then discovers a secret underground passage to the adjacent building where the hostages are held. She fights through guards and reaches a standoff in which Gorman holds Blum at gunpoint and Axilrod holds Robert Puller. John Puller, having left the hospital despite his injuries, appears behind Gorman and kills him. Pine subdues Axilrod.

Graham reports that dozens of sealed indictments have been issued against politicians, executives, judges, and intelligence agents. Axilrod's real name is Svetlana Semenov, a former agent of Russia's Federal Security Service who went rogue and partnered with Gorman to run the blackmail operation for private profit. Franklin will go to prison under a sealed plea deal, but most of the scandal will be kept from the public to protect institutional trust.

Pine flies to Georgia to trace Mercy's captivity. In Taliaferro County, she learns that Leonard Atkins's son, Joe, and Joe's wife, Desiree, imprisoned Mercy in a locked cave, chained to a rock wall. Surveillance footage from May 2002 shows Mercy battering the cave door open when Joe fails to secure the padlock. The footage ends with gunshots and screams. Joe was murdered on June 1, 2002, and Desiree disappeared and was never found.

A corrected date reveals Ito also vanished on June 1, 2002, the same day Pine's father, Tim Pine, supposedly died by suicide. Pine forces Lineberry to admit that Ito traveled to Virginia to kill Tim, but Tim killed Ito instead. Lineberry helped stage the death as Tim's suicide, identifying Ito's body as Tim's. Pine's parents then faked their divorce, and her mother left to rejoin Tim, abandoning Pine in college with only a brief note. Both parents are alive in hiding.

Overwhelmed by rage at decades of deception, Pine storms to Lineberry's property and destroys a partially rebuilt cottage with a sledgehammer. She walks away without looking back. Blum waits in the car with the engine running. Pine gets in, armed with the knowledge that Mercy escaped captivity alive, that both her parents are in hiding, and that her search is far from over.