PRAISE FOR

SIX SECONDS

“Rick Mofina’s breakout thriller.

It moves like a tornado.”

—JAMES PATTERSON

“Six Seconds is a great read. echoing Ludlum and Forsythe, author Mofina has penned a big, solid international thriller that grabs your gut – and your heart – in the opening scenes and never lets go.” —JEFFERY DEAVER

“Classic virtues but tomorrow’s subjects –

everything we need from a great thriller.”

—LEE CHILD

“Mofina is one hell of a story-teller!

A great crime writer!”

—HÅKAN NESSER

“A perfect thriller, in every way. Very powerful and

very, very clever: this novel hits the ground running

and stays with you long past the finish line.”

—NICK STONE

Rick Mofina is a former reporter and the award- winning author of several acclaimed thrillers. He’s interviewed murderers on death row, patrolled with the LAPD and the RCMP and his true crime articles have appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest and Penthouse. He’s reported from the US, Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Qatar and Kuwait’s border with Iraq. He is based in Ottawa, Canada. For more information visit www.mirabooks.co.uk/rickmofina and for a chance to win free autographed books subscribe to Rick’s free newsletter at www.rickmofina.com.

SIX SECONDS

RICK MOFINA

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is for

Jeff Aghassi, Ann LaFarge, Mildred Marmur,

and

John Rosenberg and Jeannine Rosenberg.

Because no one gets through life without

the help of others.

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air – there’s the rub, the task.

Aeneid

—Virgil

Prologue

The woman in the video is wearing a white shoulder-length hijab, embroidered with delicate beadwork. Her immaculate silk scarf frames her face, accentuating her natural beauty. She gives a tiny nod to the camera.

A soft cue is heard, then she begins.

“I am Samara. I am not a jihadist. I am a widow-mother baptized with the blood of my husband and my child when your governments murdered them.”

Her strong, intelligent voice underscores her resolve in accented English, suggesting a mix of the Middle East and East London. Her eyes burn into the camera as it pulls back slowly. She speaks directly to the audience who will soon meet her on every television set in the world.

She lets a moment pass in silence. Her hands are clasped before her on a plain wooden table. Her rings glint from her thumb and wedding finger. The camera eases back, revealing a framed family photograph of a man, a boy and the woman herself. They are smiling. Joy swims in the woman’s eyes. For it is a portrait of her from another time. Another life. It stands next to her as headstone to her happiness and witness to her destiny.

To exchange pain.

For the intelligence analysts who will study her message, there is no prepared statement. No grenade launcher on display before her. No AK-47 flanking her.

No chanting from the glorious text.

There are no black-and-gold flags on the walls behind her. No flags of any group. No carpet or fabric. The background is simple with angled mirrors.

Nothing betrays the woman’s location, where she is recording her video or who is helping her. She could be in a safe house in the West Bank. Or in Athens. Maybe in Manila, Paris or London. Perhaps Madrid, or Casablanca.

Or in a suburb of the United States.

“Your soldiers invaded my home, tortured my husband and child. They forced them to watch as one by one they defiled me. Then they killed my husband and my son before my eyes. They fled when your bombers delivered death to my city. I carried my dead child through the ruins and to the bank of the river of Eden where I buried him, my husband and my life. But I have been resurrected to seek justice for these crimes.

“And it is for these crimes that I deliver my widow-mother’s wrath. For these crimes you will taste death.

“Dying for me does not mean death. Dying for me is a promise kept. For I will have avenged the destruction of my world by bringing death to yours. Death is my reward as I join my husband and my child in paradise. For them, I am the eternal martyr. For them, I am vengeance.”

Book One:

“Where is My Son?”

1

Blue Rose Creek, California

Maggie Conlin left her house believing a lie.

She believed life was normal again. She believed that the trouble preying on her family had passed, that Logan, her nine-year-old son, had come to terms with the toll Iraq had taken on them.

But the truth niggled at Maggie as she drove to work.

Their scars—the invisible ones—had not healed.

This morning, when she’d stood with Logan waiting for the school bus, he was uneasy.

“You love Dad, right, Mom?”

“Absolutely. With all my heart.”

Logan looked at the ground and kicked a pebble.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I worry that something bad is going to happen. Like you might get a divorce.”

Maggie clasped his shoulders. “No one’s getting divorced. It’s okay to be confused. It hasn’t been easy these past few months since Daddy got home. But the worst is over now, right?”

Logan nodded.

“Daddy and I will always be right here, together in this house. Always. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Remember, I’m picking you up after school today for your swim class. So don’t get on the bus.”

“Okay. Love you, Mom.”

Logan hugged her so hard it hurt. Then he ran to his bus, waved and smiled from the window before he vanished.

Maggie reflected on his worries as she drove through Blue Rose Creek, a city of a hundred thousand near Riverside County, on her way to the Liberty Valley Promenade Mall. She parked her Ford Focus and clocked in at Stobel and Chadwick, where she was a senior associate bookseller.

Her morning went fast as she called customers telling them orders had arrived, helped others find titles, suggested gift books and restocked bestsellers. As busy as she was, Maggie could not escape the truth. Her family had been fractured by events no one could control.

Her husband, Jake, was a trucker. In recent years, his rig had kept breaking down, and the bills piled up. It was bad. To help, he took a contract job driving in Iraq. High-paying, but dangerous. Maggie didn’t want him to go. But they needed the money.

When he came home a few months ago, he was a changed man. He fell into long, dark moods, grew mistrustful, paranoid and had unexplained outbursts. Something had happened to him in Iraq but he refused to talk about it, refused to get help.

Was it all behind them?

Their debts were cleared, they’d put money in the bank. Jake had good long-haul driving jobs and seemed to have settled down, leaving Maggie to believe that maybe, just maybe, the worst was over.

“Call for you, Maggie,” came the voice over the P. A. system. She took it at the kiosk near the art history books.

“Maggie Conlin. May I help you?”

“It’s me.”

“Jake? Where are you?”

“Baltimore. Are you working all day today?”

“Yes. When do you expect to get home?”

“I’ll be back in California by the weekend. How’s Logan?”

“He misses you.”

“I miss him, too. Big-time. I’ll take care of things when I get home.”

“I miss you, too, Jake.”

“Listen, I’ve got to go.”

“I love you.”

He didn’t respond, and in the long-distance silence, Maggie knew that Jake still clung to the untruth that she’d cheated on him while he was in Iraq. Standing there at the kiosk of a suburban bookstore, she ached for the man she fell in love with to return to her. Ached to have their lives back. “I love you and I miss you, Jake.”

“I’ve got to go.”

Twice that afternoon, Maggie stole away to the store’s restroom, where she sat in a stall, pressing tissue to her eyes.

After work, Maggie made good time with the traffic on her way to Logan’s school. The last buses were lumbering off when she arrived.

Maggie signed in at the main office then went to the classroom designated for pickups. Eloise Pearce, the teacher in charge, had two boys and two girls waiting with her. Logan was not among them. Maybe he was in the washroom?

“Mrs. Conlin?” Eloise smiled. “Goodness, why are you here? Logan’s gone.”

“He’s gone? What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“He got picked up earlier today.”

“No, that’s wrong!”

Eloise said Logan’s sign-out was done that morning at the main office. Maggie hurried back there and smacked the counter bell loud enough for a secretary and Terry Martens, the vice-principal, to emerge.

“Where is my son? Where is Logan Conlin?”

“Mrs. Conlin.” The vice-principal slid the day’s sign-out book to Maggie. “Mr. Conlin picked up Logan this morning.”

“But Jake’s in Baltimore. I spoke to him on the phone a few hours ago.”

Terry Martens and the secretary traded glances.

“He was here this morning, Mrs. Conlin,” the vice-principal said. “He said something unexpected had come up and you couldn’t make it to the school.”

“What?”

“Is everything all right?”

Maggie’s breathing quickened as she called Jake’s cell phone while hurrying to her car. She got several static-filled rings before his voice mail kicked in.

“Jake, please call me and tell me what’s going on! Please!”

Each red light took forever as Maggie drove through traffic. She called her home number, got her machine and left another message for Jake. Wheeling into her neighborhood, Maggie considered calling 911.

And what would I say?

Better to get home. Figure this out. Maybe she’d misunderstood and the guys were at home right now. Was Jake actually in Blue Rose Creek? Why would he tell her he was in Baltimore? Why would he lie?

Turning onto her street, Maggie expected to see Jake’s rig parked in its place next to their bungalow.

It wasn’t there.

The brakes on her Ford screeched as she roared into her driveway, trotted to the door, jammed her key in the lock.

“Logan!”

No sign of Logan’s pack at the door. Maggie went to his room. No sign of Logan or his pack there. She hurried from room to room, searching in vain.

“Jake! Logan!”

She called Jake’s cell again.

And she kept calling.

Then she called Logan’s teacher, then Logan’s friends. No one knew, or had heard anything. She ran next door to Mr. Miller’s house, but the retired plumber said he hadn’t been home all day. She called Logan’s swim coach. She called the yard where Jake got his rig serviced.

No one had heard anything.

Was she crazy? You can’t drive from Baltimore to California in half a day. Jake said he was in Baltimore.

She rifled through Jake’s desk not knowing what she was looking for. She called the cell-phone company to see if billing could confirm where Jake was when he made the call. It took some choice words before they checked, only to tell her that there was no record of calls being placed on Jake’s cell phone for the past two days.

By early evening she phoned police.

The dispatcher tried to calm Maggie. “Ma’am, we’ll put out a description of the truck and plate. We’ll check for any traffic accidents. That’s all we can do for now.”

As night fell, Maggie lost track of time and the calls she’d made. Clutching her cordless phone, she jumped to her window each time a vehicle passed her house as Logan’s words haunted the darkness that swallowed her.

“…something bad is going to happen…”

2

Five months later Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Haruki Ito was alone, hiking along the river when he stopped dead.

He raised his Nikon to his face, rolled his long lens until the bear in the distance filled his viewfinder. A grizzly sow, stalking trout on the bank of the wild Faust River in the Rocky Mountains.

Photographing the grizzly was a dream come true for Ito, on vacation from his job as a news photographer with The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Tokyo’s largest newspapers. As he took a picture then refocused for another, something blurred in his periphery.

He focused and shot it—a small hand rising from the rushing current.

Ito hurried along the bank to offer help, struggling through dense forests and over the mist-slicked rocks while glimpsing the hand, then an arm, then a head in the water before the river released its victim into an eddy nearby.

He stepped carefully toward the small, swirling pool. Then he slipped off his camera gear and made his way into the cold, waist-high water, bracing himself as he reached for the body of a child.

A Caucasian boy. About eight or nine, Ito estimated. Sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers.

He was dead.

Sadness flooded Ito’s heart.

As he prepared to lay the boy on the riverbank, the sudden loud thumping of something large bearing down forced Ito to flinch as a canoe crashed into the rocks next to him. It was empty.

Taking stock of the river, he shuddered.

Were there more victims?

Ito ran to the trailhead, and managed to wave down two women—German tourists riding bicycles—and within an hour park wardens had activated a search-and-rescue operation.

The area was known as Faust’s Fork, a rugged section of rivers, lakes, forests, glaciers and mountain ranges straddling Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country. It was laced with trails and secluded campsites. Access was by foot or horseback, except for a few day-use riverside points that you could drive to, and a cluster of remote drive-through campsites at the river’s edge which were served by an old logging road.

After confirming the boy’s death, and facing the possibility of other victims, park officials notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the medical examiner, paramedics, local firefighters, provincial park rangers, conservation officers and other agencies. They established a search zone with gridded sectors.

Rescue boats were deployed up and down the river but were not able to look for survivors in the section where the boy was found. The flow was too wild. Search teams were assembled and scoured the area on foot, horseback and ATVs. All had radios, some had search dogs. A helicopter and a small fixed-wing plane joined the operation along with volunteer search groups, who advised other campers in Faust’s Fork.

Some distance upstream in a remote campsite, Daniel Graham stood alone on a small rise that offered a panoramic view of the river, the mountains and the sky.

He gazed upon the bronze urn he was holding, caressed the leaves and doves that were engraved in a fine band around its middle. After several moments, he unscrewed the lid, tilted the urn and offered the remainder of its contents to the wind. Fine, sandlike ashes swirled and danced along the river’s surface until there was nothing left.

Graham looked to the snow-crested peaks, as if they held the answer to something that was troubling him. But he never had time to find it. The serenity he’d sought was broken by a helicopter thudding by him less than one hundred feet over the river.

A few moments later, it made a second low-altitude pass in the opposite direction.

Must be a search, Graham figured, as he set the urn aside and looked along the river for any indication of what was happening. Not long after the chopper had subsided, the air crackled with the cross talk of radios as two men in bright orange overalls entered his campsite.

“Sir, we’re with search and rescue,” the first one said. “There’s been a boating accident on the river. We’ve got people looking for survivors. Please alert us if you see anything.”

“How serious?”

The searchers assessed Graham, standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. Late thirties, about six feet tall with a muscular build, and a couple days’ stubble covering his strong jaw, accentuating his intense, deep-set eyes.

He produced a leather wallet and opened it for them to study the gold badge with the crown, the wreaths of maple leaves, the words Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the bison’s head encircled with the scroll bearing the motto, Maintiens le Droit. The photo ID was for Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Daniel Graham.

“You’re a Mountie?”

“With Major Crimes out of Calgary. Off duty at the moment. How serious is this accident? Are there fatalities?”

“One for sure. A young male. We don’t have confirmed details.”

“Have any members arrived yet? Can you raise your dispatcher?”

One of the men reached for his radio, made checks with the dispatcher and Graham was told that members of the local Banff and Canmore RCMP detachments were en route. Others were being called in to help.

“Do you have a scene and an identity on the victim?” Graham asked.

Over the radio a park dispatcher told Graham that the body of a young male, approximately eight to ten years of age, was found about a kilometer downriver from Graham’s location. It appeared a canoe had overturned and the wardens suspected there were other victims.

“It’s all happening now,” the dispatcher said.

“I’ll help search as I make my way to where the boy was found. Pass that along,” Graham said.

The searchers continued upstream while Graham collected some items and headed to the river, moving as quickly as he could along the harsh terrain. The interruption had distracted him from his purpose for being here. Graham pushed his personal problems aside to deal with the tragedy unfolding before him.

He paused to use his binoculars to scan the rugged banks and the water, concentrating on rocks spearing the surface. They created powerful spouts and rainbow-colored curtains of white water, as the current pounded against them. As he searched, Graham heard the intermittent whump of the chopper and the buzz of the small plane overhead.

When he came to a perilous section, he slipped on the wet ledges, banging his knee. But he kept going, picking his way along the craggy formations, which stood as a gateway to a waterfall that dropped two stories. He could hear its roar.

As he steadied himself, Graham thought he’d seen a patch of color amid several large rocks that forced geysers of spray in the middle of the river. He found a secure position and focused his binoculars. The spray obscured his view but he was convinced that through the gushing watery fan, he could see a swatch of pink, low against the rock. He got into a better position and distinguished more details: a small head, an arm, a hand.

It’s a child. A girl. Pinned to the rock by the current. Clinging for life.

She was about the width of a football field away from him, concealed by a clear dome of water spray. At any moment she could slip under the water or off the rock and be swept to the falls. She’d never survive the plunge.

There was no time to lose. He didn’t have a radio. Or a cell phone. No other searchers were in sight. He had to make a decision.

Standing alongside the roaring river, staring at the tiny pink square, Graham could feel the vibrations of the rushing water in his rib cage. He knew the danger of going into the river. He’d have only one chance to reach her. If he missed, the current would carry him away to a life-and-death struggle to save himself before it took him over the falls and to the rocks below.

After all that had happened, what did he have left in his life?

Graham knew the risk. He would likely die. But so would that child if he didn’t try to save her.

He had to go after her.

He hurried back upstream, kicked off his boots, set aside his badge, binoculars—everything that would weigh him down—then slid into the frigid water.

The river swept him along, and adrenaline coursed through him as he maneuvered around the rocks while contending with the current. White flashed before his eyes as his lower leg slammed into a rock. Pain shot through him and he slipped below the surface. Water gurgled in his ears, gushed into his stomach.

He fought his way to the surface, coughing and spitting water, gulping air while struggling to find his bearings and to line up on the girl. The pink patch, his critical guide, had vanished. Rapids and spray concealed her. He was blinded by the water, only guessing her location.

A hidden rock punched the breath from him; he grabbed it, struggled to lift himself upon it, glimpsing pink downstream just as the river pulled him down, tearing his palm against the razor edge of a rock.

Graham slipped under the surface. In the churning water he saw small legs pressed against the rock ahead. Using all of his strength, he guided himself to it. The pressure welded him to the rock.

He was underwater, couldn’t move, couldn’t get to the surface.

Alarm rang in his ears. His lungs ached for air. He was not going to make it.

“Keep going, Daniel.” He heard his wife’s voice. “You have to keep going.”

It took every ounce of strength he had to battle the water’s power and to work his head to the surface, where he gulped mouthfuls of air while holding fast to the rock. After several seconds, his mind cleared and he worked his way around the rock, reaching as far as he could, until he felt small fingers, a hand, the arm of the girl. He continued positioning himself until he came face-to-face with her.

Little eyes, wide with terror, met his.

Her lips were blue.

She was alive, quaking with shock.

She appeared to be five or six years old.

Graham got closer, got his arm around her and peeled her from the rock. She was bleeding from a head wound. Graham worked their position around the rock to where he had more control, struggling to steady the girl and himself against the rock, praying it was not in vain.

As he held her, her eyes locked on to his.

He moved his mouth to her ear to offer her comfort.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said. “I’m going to help you. Hang on. Just hang on.”

She stared at him and her mouth began to move.

He pressed his ear closer, straining to hear above the river’s roar, but he was uncertain what she was saying.

“Don’t…daddy…don’t…please…”

3

Blue Rose Creek, California

At that moment, some eighteen hundred miles south of the Faust River, Maggie Conlin stood before a newspaper building, reflecting on the five months since Jake had vanished with Logan.

The day after it happened, the county had dispatched a deputy to check Maggie’s house for foul play before sending Maggie to Vic Thompson, a grumpy, overworked detective. He said Jake had ten days from the date of Maggie’s complaint to give the D. A. an address, a phone number and to begin custody proceedings. If that didn’t happen, the county would issue a warrant for Jake’s arrest for parental abduction. Maggie gave Thompson all their bank, credit card, phone, computer, school and medical records.

He told her to get an attorney.

Trisha Helm, the cheapest available lawyer Maggie could find, “first visit is free,” advised her to start divorce action and claim custody.

“I don’t want a divorce. I need to find Jake and talk to him.”

In that case, Trisha suggested Maggie hire a private detective and steered her to Lyle Billings, a P.I. at Farrow Investigations.

Maggie gave Billings copies of all their personal records and a check for several hundred dollars. Two weeks later, he told her that Jake had not renewed his license in any U.S. state, Canadian province or territory, nor was Logan registered in any school system.

“Assume he changed their names,” Billings said. “Creating a new identity is easier than most people think. It looks like your husband went underground.”

The agency needed more money to continue searching.

Maggie couldn’t afford it.

There was just enough left in their savings for her to keep things going with the house for another three, maybe four months. Then she’d have to sell. She’d been cutting corners. She still had her bookstore job, but things were getting desperate.

So Maggie held off paying the agency more money. She searched on her own, spending most nights on her computer. She contacted truckers’ groups and missing kids organizations, pleaded her case to newsletters and blogs. She scoured news sites for crashes involving rigs and boys Logan’s age.

With each new tragedy Maggie’s stomach knotted.

Maggie attended support groups. They told her to get the press interested in her struggle to find Jake and Logan. Every few days, then every week, she worked her list: the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Riverside Press-Enterprise and nearly every TV and radio station in the southland.

“Oh, yeah, we looked into it,” one apple-crunching producer told Maggie after she’d left three messages. “Our sources say that while it’s classified as a parental abduction, it’s more of a civil domestic thing. Sorry.”

Every newsperson had stopped taking her calls, except Stacy Kurtz, the Star-Journal’s crime reporter.

“I don’t think we’ve got a story yet, but please keep me posted,” she said each time Maggie called.

At least Stacy would listen. Maggie had never met her but sometimes her picture ran with her articles. Stacy wore dark-framed glasses, hoop earrings and a smile that her job was slowly hardening. Daily reporting of the latest shooting, fire, drowning, car crash or variant urban tragedy was taking something from her. Some days, she looked older than she was.

“I can’t guarantee we’ll do a story, but I’ll listen to your case as long as you promise to keep me posted on any developments.” Stacy’s to-the-point manner placed a premium on her time in a business ruled by deadlines.

For Maggie, time was evaporating.

What if she never found Logan? Never saw him again?

Now, here she was standing before the Star-Journal, a paper that covered Blue Rose Creek from a forlorn one-story building on a four-lane boulevard.

It sat between Sid’s Check Cashing and Fillipo’s Menswear, looking more like a 1960s strip-mall castaway than the kick-ass rag it once was. A palm tree drooped above the entrance. Weak breezes tried to stir a tattered U.S. flag atop the roof, where a rattling air conditioner bled rusty water down the building’s stucco walls.

To locals, the Star-Journal was an eyesore in need of last rites.

To Maggie, it was a last chance to find Logan, for, day by day, her hope faded like the flag over the Star-Journal. But she’d come here this morning, all the same, with nothing but a prayer.

“May I help you?” a big woman in a print dress asked from her desk, which was the one closest to the counter. The other desks were nearby, situated in the classic newsroom layout. About a dozen cluttered desks crammed together. Most were unoccupied. At others, grim-faced people concentrated on their computer screens, or telephone conversations.

The off-white walls were papered with maps, front pages, news photos and an assortment of headlines. A police scanner was squawking from one corner where three TVs were locked on news channels. At the far end, in a glass-walled office, a balding man with his tie loosened was arguing with a younger man who had a camera slung over his shoulder.

“I’m here to see Stacy Kurtz,” said Maggie.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but—”

“Name?”

“My name is Maggie Conlin.”

“Maggie Conlin?” the big woman repeated before shooting a glance at the woman nearby with a phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.

“No, that is absolutely wrong,” the woman said into the phone as she typed, glancing at Maggie at the counter. She held up her index finger, going back into her phone call. “No, it is absolutely not what your press guy told me at the scene. Good. Tell Detective Wychesski to call me on my cell. That’s right. Stacy Kurtz at the Star-Journal. If he doesn’t call, I’ll consider his silence as confirmation.”

After typing for another moment Stacy Kurtz, who looked little like her picture, approached the counter.

“Stace, this is Maggie Conlin,” the big woman said. “She doesn’t have an appointment but she wants to talk to you.”

Stacy Kurtz extended her hand. “I’m sorry, your name’s familiar.”

“My husband disappeared with my son several months ago.”

“Right. A weird parental abduction, wasn’t it? Is there a development?”

“No. My husband—” Maggie twisted the straps of her bag. “Could we talk, privately?”

Stacy appraised Maggie, trying to determine if she was worth her time. She turned toward the glass-walled office where the balding man was still arguing with the younger man. She bit her bottom lip.

“I just need to talk to you,” Maggie said. “Please.”

“I can give you twenty minutes.”

“Thank you.”

“Della, tell Perry I’m going to step outside to grab a coffee.”

“Got your cell?”

“Yes.”

“Is it on?”

“Yessss.”

“Charged?”

“Bye, Della.”

* * *

A few moments later, half a block away on a park bench, Stacy Kurtz sipped latte from a paper cup and tapped a closed notebook against her lap. As Maggie poured out her anguish, seagulls shrieked overhead.

“So there’s really nothing new though, is there, Maggie? I mean not since it all happened, right?”

“No, but I was hoping that now, after all this time, you would do a story.”

“Maggie, I don’t think so.”

“Please. You could publish their pictures and put it on the wire services and then it would go all over and—”

“Maggie, I’m sorry we’re not going to do a story.”

“I’m begging you. Please. You’re my last hope to find—”

The opening guitar riff of “Sweet Home Alabama” played in Stacy’s bag and she retrieved her phone. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this. Hello,” she answered. “Okay. On my way now. Be there in two minutes.”

“But will you do a story, please?” Maggie held out an envelope for Stacy as they hurried back toward the newspaper.

“What’s this?”

“Pictures of Logan and Jake.”

“Look—” Stacy pushed the envelope back “—I’m sorry, but I never guaranteed a story.”

“Talk to your editor.”

“I did and, to be honest, this is not a story for us at this point.”

“At this point? What’s that supposed to mean? That he’s only news to you after something terrible happens? Like after he’s killed, or dead.”

Stacy stopped cold.

They’d reached the Star-Journal. She tossed her two-thirds-full latte into the trash can and stared at Maggie, then at the traffic. Dealing with heartbroken people every day was never easy, but Stacy’s experience had forged her approach, which was to be truthful, no matter how painful it could be.

“Maggie, I spoke to Detective Vic Thompson. He mentioned something about some incident with your husband and a soccer coach. And that this was all about problems at home. A civil matter, really.”

“What? No, that’s not true.”

“I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, the buildings, traffic, the sidewalk, all began to swirl. Maggie steadied herself, placing her hand on a Star-Journal newspaper box. She raised her head to the sky in a vain effort to blink back her tears.

“My son is all I have in this world. My husband came back from working overseas a changed man. It’s been five months now and no one’s been able to find them. I may never see them again.”

Stacy’s phone rang. She glanced at the number then shut it off without answering.

“I have to go.”

“What would you do if you were me?” Maggie said. “I’ve gone to police, a lawyer, a private detective. All in vain. I have nowhere else to go. No one else to turn to. I have no family, I have no friends. I’m all alone. You were my only hope. My last hope.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure things will work out. I’m so sorry. I really have to go.” And with that Stacy disappeared through the doors of the Star-Journal.

Maggie stood alone in the street, the flutter and clang of the flagpole sounding a requiem to her defeat. She returned to her car and she met a stranger in her rearview mirror. She blinked at the lines stress had carved into her face. She’d let her hair go. She’d lost weight and couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled.

How did her life come to this? She and Jake had been in love. They’d had a happy life. A good life. She thrust her face into her hands and sobbed until she heard a tapping on the window and she turned to see Stacy Kurtz’s face.

Maggie lowered her window.

“Listen.” Stacy was searching her notebook. “I’m sorry things ended that way.”

Maggie regained a measure of composure as Stacy snapped through pages.

“I’m not sure that this will help, but you never know.”

Stacy copied something on a blank page then tore it out.

“Very few people know about this woman. She doesn’t ask for money. She doesn’t advertise and when I asked to profile her, she refused. She does not want publicity.”

Wiping at her tears, Maggie studied the name and telephone number written in blue ink.

“What’s this?”

“I have a detective friend who swears this woman helped the LAPD locate a murder suspect, and that she also helped the FBI find a teenager who’d vanished and, I guess, about ten years ago she helped find an abducted toddler in Europe.”

“I don’t understand. Is she a police officer?”

“No, she senses things, sees them in her mind and feels them.”

“Is she a psychic?”

“Something like that. It’s up to you whether you go to her or not. I apologize, today’s been a bad day at the paper. Please keep me posted. Bye.”

After Stacy left, Maggie stared at the name she’d written.

“Madame Fatima.”

She clenched the note in her fist as if it were a lifeline.

4

Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Graham hung on to the girl.

How long had it been? Half an hour? An hour? He didn’t know.

The river’s force was draining his strength but he refused to let go.

Where’s the chopper? They’ve got to see us. Come on!

Shouting was futile. The current pummeled him, the pain was electrifying. His body went numb. He was slipping from consciousness.

He thought of Nora, his wife. Her eyes. Her smile.

It gave him strength.

The river was relentless but he refused to let go. His hands were bleeding but he refused to let go, reaching deep for everything drilled into him at the training academy in Regina.

Never give up, never quit, never surrender.

He held on until the air began hammering above them.

A helicopter.

Everything blurred in the prop wash: A rescue tech descended, tethered to a hoist and basket. Graham helped position the girl into it, then watched her rise into the chopper. Then the tech returned for Graham, strapped him into a harness and raised him from the water. Mountains spun as they ascended over the river to a meadow where they put down. The techs pulled off his wet clothes, wrapped him in blankets and they lifted off.

As rescuers worked on the girl, the helicopter charged above a rolling forest valley that cut through the mountains. In minutes they came to a clearing near a trailside hostel where several emergency vehicles waited, including a second helicopter—the red STARS air ambulance out of Calgary. Its rear clamshell doors were open. Its rotors were turning.

“She’s not responding,” Graham heard the techs shout to the medical crew.

Wearing their flight suits and helmets, the emergency doctor, paramedic and nurse worked quickly, administering CPR, an IV, slipping an oxygen mask over her face, transferring her to a gurney. They packaged her into the medical chopper which thundered off to a trauma hospital in Calgary.

Graham stayed behind on the ground. He was barefoot and enshrouded in blankets as paramedics from Banff treated him for mild hypothermia and cuts to his hands and legs. Other officials watched and waited.

“Let’s get you to the hospital in Banff for a better look,” a paramedic said.

Graham shook his head, watching the red helicopter disappear in the east.

“I’m fine. I want to stay with the search.”

A park warden trotted to his pickup, dug out a set of government-issue orange coveralls—the kind firefighters wore for forest fires—woolen socks and boots, and tossed them to Graham.

“They’re dry and should fit,” the warden said, nodding to a change room. “When you’re ready, I’ll drive you to the search center.” He shook Graham’s hand. “Bruce Dawson.”

A few minutes later, with Graham in the passenger seat, Dawson ground through all gears as his truck rumbled along the dirt road that cut southwest through pine forests. On the way, he radioed a request to the searchers to retrieve the Mountie’s bag from his campsite, along with his badge, boots and things he’d left by the river, and bring them to the center.

“What’s the status?” Graham asked. “Those kids didn’t come up here alone.”

“Right, we figured on adults, too. We’ve expanded the perimeter downstream.” Dawson kept his eyes on the road, letting several moments pass before he said, “I was listening on the radio after they spotted you in the river with the girl. That’s a helluva thing you did.”

Graham looked to the mountains without responding.

It was a bumpy thirty-minute ride over backcountry terrain to the warden’s station for the Faust region. It sat on a plateau near a ridgeline trail. In its previous life the station had been a cookhouse built from hand-hewn spruce logs by a coal mining company in 1909.

Now it was doubling as the incident command center. Its walls were covered with maps. The main meeting room was jammed with people and a massive table was loaded with computers, GPS tracking gear and more maps. Sat phones and landlines rang, amid ongoing conversations as radios crackled nonstop over the hum of search helicopters.

The station was also equipped with basic plumbing. Graham took a hot shower, changed into his clothes from his retrieved bag. As he joined the others, his chief concern was the girl.

“What’s her status?”

“No word yet.” Dawson offered him a mug of coffee and a ham sandwich. Graham accepted the coffee, declined the sandwich. “We know they landed at Alberta Children’s moments ago. While we’re waiting for news, I’ll update you on the search.”

Referring to the map spread out on the big table, Dawson touched the tip of a sharpened pencil to a point along the river.

“This is where the boy was found. Mounties from Banff and Canmore are at the scene, and the medical examiner’s just arrived.”

“Do we have an idea who the boy is? Or who he belongs to? Any missing children reports?”

Dawson shook his head. “Not yet. Too many possibilities.” His pencil followed the river. “You’ve got scores of campsites, day-trippers. We’re going through the registrations and we’ve got teams going to each site to account for each visitor. People are mobile. They’re on trails, or in Banff doing the tourist thing, or in Calgary, or wherever. It’s going to take time.”

Graham understood.

“We’ve gridded the area. We’ve got people on the ground, on the water, in the air, we’re searching every—”

“Is there a Corporal Graham here?” Across the room, a young woman held up a black telephone receiver.

“That’s me,” Graham said.

“Call for you!”

Taking it, Graham cupped a hand over one ear.

“Dan, we heard what you did. You okay?”

It was his boss, Inspector Mike Stotter, who headed Major Crimes out of the RCMP’s South District in Calgary.

“I’m fine.”

“You went above and beyond the call.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Dan, listen, I’m sorry, but they just pronounced her at the hospital.”

“What?”

“They just called us. She didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

Her trembling body. Her eyes. Her last words, spoken into his ear.

Graham rubbed his hand over his face.

“Give me this case, Mike.”

“It’s too soon for you.”

“I was coming back from leave this week.”

“I’ve got some cold cases ready for you. Look, this one’s likely going to be a wilderness accident, nothing suspicious. We don’t need to be there. Fornier’s rookies in Banff can have it.”

“I need this case, Mike.”

“You need it?”

“Did the chopper crew or the hospital indicate if she said anything? If she tried to speak before she died?”

“Hang on. Shane was talking to them.”

Graham looked at the mountains, feeling something churning in his gut until Stotter came back on the line.

“Nothing, Dan, why?”

“She spoke to me, Mike.”

“What’d she say?”

“It wasn’t clear. But I’ve got a feeling that this wasn’t an accident. We need to be on this. I want this case, Mike.”

A long moment passed.

“Okay. I’ll tell Fornier. You’re the lead. For now. If it’s criminal, it stays with us in Major Crimes. If it’s not, you kick it back to Fornier’s people. Look, Prell’s in Canmore on another matter, I’m sending him to you now, to give you a hand.”

“Prell? Who’s Prell?”

“Constable Owen Prell. Just joined us in Major Crimes from Medicine Hat.”

“Fine, thanks, Mike.”

“You sure you’re good to take this on. You’ve got two fatals so far and the river’s likely to give you more.”

“I’m good.”

“Better get yourself to the scene where they found the boy.”

5

Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

The boy’s face was flawless.

Almost sublime in death.

His eyes were closed. Not a mark on his skin. He had the aura of a sleeping cherub as a breeze lifted strands of his hair, like a mother tenderly coaxing him to wake and play.

His resemblance to the girl was clear. He was older, likely her big brother. His jeans were faded, his blue sweatshirt bore a Canadian Rockies insignia, his sneakers were a popular brand and in good shape. He looked about eight or nine and so small inside the open body bag.

Who is he? What were his favorite things? His dreams? His last thoughts? Graham wondered, kneeling over him on the riverbank with Liz DeYoung, the medical investigator from the Calgary Medical Examiner’s Office.

“What do you think?” Graham raised his voice over the river’s rush. “Accident, or suspicious?”

“Way too soon to tell.” DeYoung was wearing blue latex gloves and, using the utmost care, she grasped the boy’s small shoulders and turned him. The back of his skull had been smashed in like an eggshell, exposing cranial matter. “It appears the major trauma is here.”

“From the rocks?”

“Probably. We’ll know more after we autopsy him, and the girl, back in Calgary. At this stage, Mother Nature’s your suspect.”

Graham glimpsed De Young’s wristwatch and updated his case log using the pen, notebook and clipboard he’d borrowed from the Banff members helping at the scene.

“No life jackets,” Graham said.

“Excuse me?”

“The girl didn’t have one. He doesn’t have one. Did anyone see life jackets?”

“No. But if you’ve got a reason to be suspicious, would you share it?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Forget it. I’m still thawing out. Did you find any ID? Items in his pockets? Clothing tags?”

“No. Except for a little flashlight and a granola bar, nothing. Look, you guys do your thing. Get us some names and a next of kin, so we can request dental records to confirm. You know the drill.”

He knew the drill.

“So we’re good to move him?” DeYoung had a lot of work ahead of her.

Graham didn’t answer. He was staring at the boy, prompting her to look at him with a measure of concern.

“Are you okay?”

DeYoung knew something of Graham’s personal situation and took quick stock of him, blinking at a memory.

“Dan, you know the only time I ever met Nora was last Christmas. We all sat together at the attorney general’s banquet. We hit it off. Remember?”

He remembered.

“I’m so sorry. I missed her service. I was at a conference in Australia.”

“It’s okay.”

“How are you doing? Really?”

His gaze shifted from the boy’s corpse to the river, as if the answer to everything was out there.

He stood. “You can move him now.”

DeYoung closed the bag. Her crew loaded it onto a stretcher, strapped it in three areas, then carried it carefully up the embankment to their van. Graham watched the van inch along the trail, suspension creaking as it tottered to the back road. Then it was gone.

For a moment, he stood alone in the middle of the scene.

It had been cordoned on three sides with yellow tape. He was wearing latex gloves and shoe covers. Nearby, members of the RCMP Forensic Identification Section out of Calgary, in radiant white coveralls, looked surreal against the dark rocks and jade river, working quietly taking pictures, measuring, collecting samples of potential evidence.

All in keeping with a fundamental tenet known to all detectives.

A wilderness death can be a perfect murder. Treat it as suspicious because you don’t know the truth until you know the facts.

Graham resumed studying his clipboard, paging through the handwritten statements and notes he’d taken from the people who’d found the boy. Haruki Ito, age forty-four, photographer from Tokyo, was first. He’d flagged the women on bicycles. Ingrid Borland, age fifty-one, a librarian from Frankfurt, and Marlena Zimmer, age thirty-three, a Web editor from Munich. They all seemed to be pretty straight-up tourists.

Nothing unusual regarding their demeanor.

The guy from Tokyo was a seasoned news photographer, having covered some terrible stuff like wars and tsunamis. He was fairly calm, philosophical, Graham thought. It was a different story with the women, who were left shaken by their futile attempt to revive the boy. “That poor child. That poor, poor child.”

Static crackled from a police radio, pulling Graham’s attention to the man approaching. He’d emerged from the tangle of emergency vehicles atop the riverbank where members from the Banff and Canmore general investigations sections were with the witnesses. He stopped at the tape. A wise decision.

“Corporal Graham?”

Graham moved closer to the new arrival. He was in his midthirties. Maybe six feet tall, wearing jeans and a checkered shirt under a black leather bomber jacket.

“Owen Prell. Inspector Stotter sent me.”

“Got here pretty quick.” Graham shook his hand.

“I was already in Canmore.”

“Mike said you joined Major Crimes from Medicine Hat.”

“Worked GIS. They just set me up by your desk at the office. I’m looking forward to working with you.” Prell looked back to the patrol cars and uniformed officers. “The other members want to know if you’re done with the witnesses. The people would like to go.”

“We’re almost done with them.” Graham flipped his pages. “Get them to surrender their passports. We’ll run them through Interpol. Just say it’s procedure and we’ll return them soon.”

“Will do.”

As Prell turned, a helicopter throbbed overhead, skimming the river. The RCMP’s chopper out of Edmonton. The instant it disappeared, Graham heard his name. The FIS member processing the canoe was waving for him to come and see something.

Something important.

Wedged in the rocks where the canoe crashed was a small metal plate displaying the label Wolf Ridge Outfitters. The screw holes aligned with those on the canoe. It was a rental. Number 27.

Rental agencies kept records.

“Prell!”

The constable returned with his radio. An urgent request was made to the telecomms dispatcher to contact Wolf Ridge and cross-reference its rental agreement for Number 27 with the park’s permits and wilderness passes.

It took twenty minutes for the information to come back.

The canoe was rented by Ray Tarver, of Washington, D.C.

Park permits showed Ray, Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver as the visitors registered to drive-in campsite #131.

6

Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Campsite #131 was upstream, deep in the backcountry, secluded in a dense stand of spruce and pine, offering sweeping views of the river and the rugged cliffs of the Nine Bear Range.

When Graham arrived with the others, he saw no movement.

A late-model SUV was parked near a large dome tent. It was a typical campsite: propane camping stove, lawn chairs, four life jackets stacked neatly against a spruce tree, food kept a safe distance from the tent, and other items, including shirts and pants, hanging from a clothesline tied between two pine trees. Shouts for the Tarvers were answered by the river’s rush and the thud of the search helicopters.

The site was silent.

Lifeless.

Graham declared it a second scene and as Prell and the others taped it off and radioed for a request to run the SUV’s Alberta plate, he entered the tent alone.

Inside, he detected the pleasant fragrances of soap and sunscreen. There was also the sense that something had been interrupted but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Time had stopped here. To one side, was a sleeping bag big enough for two adults. Next to its left pillow, a Danielle Steel paperback. Next to the right, a large flashlight.

Across the tent, two smaller sleeping bags, side by side. A Sponge Bob comic was splayed open on one, while a pink stuffed bunny sat on the other, arms open, awaiting its owner’s return.

Graham picked it up, looked into its button eyes.

Children’s clothes in bright colors erupted from small backpacks: sweaters, small pants. The larger bags on the opposite side were also open, clothes spilled from them, but not in a disheveled way.

It was orderly.

Graham searched in vain for a purse or wallet. Campers often hid them or locked them away. After making notes, he stepped outside, where Prell updated him.

“The SUV’s a rental from an outlet at Calgary International. Customer’s Raymond Tarver, same D.C. address.”

“Anything inside?”

“It’s locked.”

“Get the rental agency to open it for us ASAP. Tell them it’s a police emergency. Then we’ll get forensics to process it and this site. Nobody tromps around here or touches anything.”

Graham nodded upriver.

“What about the people in the neighboring sites?”

“Some of the guys have started a canvas.”

“Good, I want statements, time lines, background checks.”

“Will do. Corporal, what do you suspect happened to the parents?”

“I don’t know.” Graham surveyed the site again: the life jackets, the cooler of food kept at a proper distance from the tent, a pail of dirt near the fire ring—did they cook hot dogs, toast marshmallows and huddle under the stars together? Did they die together? “These people follow the rules, keep things safe, take no risks. I don’t know what happened.”

Later that night, after Prell had gone back to Calgary, Graham watched flashlights and headlamps probe the dark river valley as SARS teams continued searching. Graham was alone at his own campsite sitting before a fire, listening to transmissions echoing from the borrowed radio next to him.

As the searchers reported, Graham reviewed his case.

After a mechanic from the rental agency had opened the SUV, Prell found more items, including a wallet, a purse and U.S. passports belonging to the Tarvers. The flames illuminated the faces of Raymond, his wife, Anita, their son, Thomas, and their daughter, Emily, the girl who took her final breaths in Graham’s arms.

What went wrong here?

Graham wanted to believe that this was your nice, average American family. But where were Ray and Anita Tarver?

Did they drown their children?

Or drown with them?

What happened?

Had they been having a blissful mountain vacation before a horrible accident? Or was something else at work? Was there stress in the family? What was going on in the lives of the Tarvers before the tragedy?

What about his own life?

The firelight also captured the urn visible through the screen door to his tent.

Graham ran a hand across his face.

It’d been a hell of a day. He’d come up here to one of Nora’s favorite spots, to distribute the rest of her ashes. He’d come up to quit the force. He couldn’t go on without her because he had nothing left.

Nothing.

Because it was his fault.

Then today happened. And in his darkest moment when he was in the river, certain he would die, he heard her, telling him not to give up.

To keep going.

And then came Emily Tarver’s final cryptic words.

How could he walk away from this?

He owed the dead.

The radio sputtered.

“Repeat, Sector 17—”

“We’ve got something here!”

7

Blue Rose Creek, California

It was nearly 1:30 a.m.

In the quiet, Maggie was losing hope of ever meeting Madame Fatima. As she got ready for bed, she considered all the messages she’d left. All unanswered.

She’d try again tomorrow.

Maggie drew back her bedsheet then froze.

What was that?

She’d heard something. Down the hall. In the study area off the living room. She glanced around, listening for a moment.

Nothing.

She was exhausted, dismissed it and tried to sleep but a million fears assailed her.

Were Jake and Logan dead?

Why hadn’t she heard from them? She ached to hold Logan, to talk to Jake.

Just pick up the damn phone and call me, Jake. Let me know you’re all right.

Why are you doing this?

Why?

For much of her life, Maggie had been a loner. But tonight she wished she had a friend, someone to talk to. When Maggie was six years old, her mother committed suicide after a drunk driver killed Maggie’s older sister, April, as she was riding her bike. Maggie’s dad raised her alone until she married Jake. Then her father took up with a younger woman, a drug addict he’d met in rehab.

He moved to Arizona and Maggie hadn’t spoken to him in years.

She’d called him to see if he’d heard from Jake, but it had been a short conversation.

No.

Jake had no family either. His parents divorced after he’d left high school. His father died of cancer five years ago. His mother died three years back.

Maggie and Jake had always kept to themselves, happy to have each other. Able to handle any problem together.

Until this.

What really happened to Jake in Iraq?

Maggie knew he’d driven on secret missions and that his convoys often came under fire, but he refused to tell her anything as she worried about his brooding, his nightmares, the outburst.

One day, Jake went with her to the supermarket where they’d bumped into Craig Ullman, Logan’s soccer coach. As they talked, something icy flitted across Jake’s face. A few nights later in bed, he turned his back to her.

“I know you slept with Ullman when I was over there.”

She was stunned.

Not only was Jake wrong, he scared her because it seemed as if he was losing it. Then came the scene at one of Logan’s games. Jake had been out of town and arrived late. Logan waved from the field, Maggie waved from her place among the parents in lawn chairs on the sideline.

Jake ignored them, marching up to Craig Ullman.

“I know, asshole,” Jake said.

Ullman looked up from his clipboard, bewildered.

“Is something wrong, Jake?”

“You were banging my wife while I was away. I fucking know it!”

“What?”

Jake drew back his fist and Maggie grabbed it.

“No, Jake! Stop it! We have to go home. Craig, I am so sorry.”

Jake stared at her, at Logan who’d watched it all, along with everybody else. Jake just walked off, drove away, and spent the night in his rig, parked in the driveway of their home, exiled from the people who loved him.

She and Logan endured the humiliation and, in the days that followed, Jake refused to speak of the incident. He went on several long-haul jobs while Maggie called anonymous crisis lines to find a way to fix their lives.

She did all that she could for her family.

Maggie opened her eyes.

There it is again.

The noise.

A bit louder this time.

She got out of bed to check.

She went into the hallway and looked around. Unease rippled through her as she headed for the living room and the study area. Nothing obvious. Yet something felt wrong. She went to the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain.

Nothing.

She went to Logan’s room. Nothing. She went back to the living room and this time she went deeper into the study area where she kept her computer and her records on Jake and Logan.

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

Her papers had been shuffled, some had spilled onto the floor.

Had someone been in her home?

Maggie looked at the patio door just off the study at the back of the house. It was open by about four inches. She closed it. Locked it.

Did she leave it open?

She’d been careless before when she was lost in her thoughts.

If she did, it would explain her scattered file. It was breezy tonight.

What’s that?

A faint trace of something. A lingering scent she couldn’t identify.

Maybe it was nothing.

Was she so stressed her mind was playing tricks on her?

This is stupid. She couldn’t handle this right now.

No. It was strange, but she could feel a presence.

Maggie jumped as her phone rang.

Who’d be calling at this hour?

Hope fluttered in her stomach then fear clawed at her.

“Hello?”

Silence swallowed her answer. The incoming caller was BLOCKED, according to her caller ID.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Nothing. No breathing. No background noise. Only silence.

“Who are you calling, please?”

Through the window Maggie saw a car whisk down the street with only its parking lights on.

What’s happening?

She hung up and thrust her face in her trembling hands.

Was she losing her mind?

8

Washington, D.C.

North of the White House, beyond the Capitol and the Washington Monument, Carol Mintz analyzed potential threats to the security of the United States.

The pope’s upcoming visit to the U.S. made her even more tense.

Watch for everything. Note anything, her supervisor had advised her.

Sure. No problem. That’s what we do here twenty-four-seven. It never stops.

Mintz’s keyboard clicked softly as she scrolled through the secret file from the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

A French intelligence source listening to Algerian insurgent operatives had intercepted radio traffic out of Tripoli. The chatter indicated a possible shipment of hostile cargo from Africa was nearing the U.S.

No other information was known.

Mintz, an intelligence specialist, checked her archives, confirming what she’d suspected. This one had first surfaced a few weeks ago with an unsubstantiated report of a freighter steaming from Morocco’s Port of Tangier, the cargo thought to be drugs from Ethiopia. According to the latest information, that ship had navigated the Suez, crossed the Indian Ocean and was now thought to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Still unsubstantiated.

So why was this flaring up again?

Tripoli advised to stand by for an update.

More information would be good. This was going to be another long day.

Mintz worked in the old naval intelligence base known as the Nebraska Avenue Complex. Her office was among some three-dozen buildings on the thirty-eight-acre site, near the operations center of the Department of Homeland Security, about fourteen miles from where terrorists had slammed a jetliner into the Pentagon.

The DHS’s mission was to prevent further strikes.

Mintz’s job was to track cases and assess the threat with her counterparts at the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, Secret Service and various other agencies.

Her team was responsible for distilling intelligence on incoming ships and planes.

Mintz bit her lip as she glanced at her copy of the morning’s New York Times. A front page headline indicated foreign intelligence agencies were detecting increased levels of terrorist activity—activity that was aimed at heads of state.

Ain’t that the truth.

Earlier in the week they’d helped process a threat through Australian and British security services indicating that two men, suspected to be terrorist operatives, had boarded a 747 on a Hong Kong-to-Sydney flight connecting to San Francisco. U.S. fighters were scrambled.

Fingerprints obtained covertly from their drinking cups in-flight by two American agents aboard and scanned in-flight to Washington, had confirmed the subjects’ identities and ruled out a threat.

Everyone stood down on that one.

Passengers had never known of the events that had unfolded around them.

Mintz reached for a carrot stick just as her computer flashed with a new report.

The embassy in Amsterdam had issued a classified threat. A jailed passport forger in Istanbul had told Turkish police interrogators that a ship was carrying several concealed containers of explosives that would be detonated when it reached Boston Harbor. Registered to a numbered company in Aruba, the vessel had left Rotterdam and was now approaching U.S. waters.

Mintz grabbed her phone when her computer flashed with an update from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The illicit Rotterdam cargo was a dozen mail-order brides smuggled out of Moscow. No explosives were located. No threat. It was common for criminal sources to inflate their claims to better bargain with prosecutors.

Thank you, Langley, for sharing.

Mintz massaged the knot of tension in the back of her neck as she looked at the National Threat Advisory displayed on the wall behind her.

Today we are yellow—an elevated risk of terrorist attacks.

Her computer flashed with an update on the African freighter.

It was still headed across the Pacific to the U.S. The hostile substance was still suspected to be illicit drugs, possibly hashish or qat, a narcotic leafy substance, from Ethiopia.

Fine, Mintz thought, the data seemed to be going full circle.

Still, she directed it to her other agencies.

Sharing information to connect the dots. Once more, over to you fine people at the Coast Guard, Customs, the DEA and the gang at CT watch, who’ve probably already handled this one.

Then Mintz noticed that she’d just received a security look-ahead from the Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division—the guys who were protecting the pope during his U.S. visit in a few weeks’ time. Mintz scanned the updates on the papal travel agenda. Future destinations and considerations of interest to all security agencies.

Tapping her finger on her desk, Mintz contemplated some of her recent files.

She decided to share them with Secret Service Intelligence Division.

Mintz appreciated that they were going full tilt over there, given they had the lead to protect the Holy Father.

She was sorry to pile up their workload, but her orders were to share everything.

Even an unconfirmed shipload of drugs from Ethiopia.

And let’s hope that’s all it is.

9

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Searchers in Sector 17 found Anita Tarver’s corpse entangled in a logjam along a stream that flowed off the Faust River.

Less than twenty-four hours later, her naked body lay on a stainless steel tray in the autopsy room of the Calgary Medical Examiner’s Office, a few feet from the bodies of her son and daughter.

As Graham watched Dr. Bryce Collier, the pathologist, and his assistant conduct the procedures, he imagined moments in Anita’s life with her children. The birthdays. The Christmases. Getting them ready for school. Their excitement at the big plane trip for a vacation in the mountains. Anita kissing them good-night under the stars.

Had they known what was coming?

Like most detectives, Graham disliked autopsies. But it was part of the job. In his years as a Mountie he’d seen the aftermath of fires, electrocutions, drownings, stabbings, shootings, hackings, hangings, strangulations, beatings with hammers, bats, hockey sticks, pipes, car-wreck decapitations and lost hikers entombed in ice.

But no matter how many autopsies he’d viewed, he could never adapt to the room’s frigid air, the multicolored organs, the overpowering smells of formaldehyde and ammonia. Because they all signified the penultimate defeat.

And now, more than ever, it signified that he was to blame for his wife’s death.

When the autopsies on Anita Tarver and her children were completed Graham joined Collier in his office. He liked Collier’s tiny Bonsai tree and the calming gurgle of his small feng shui fountain. Objects of optimism. What always gave Graham pause each time he came here was the large print beside Collier’s framed degrees and awards: Van Gogh’s Twilight, before the Storm: Montmartre.

The worst is still to come, Graham thought.

Collier opened a can of diet cola, poured it into his ceramic coffee mug and began making notes in his file.

“I’m attributing cause as consistent with blunt trauma from the rocks and the manner as accidental. Noncriminal.”

“Not a doubt in your mind?”

“Unless you know something we don’t?”

“Emily tried to tell me something before she died.”

“Yes, Stotter mentioned that it was incoherent.”

Graham exhaled slowly.

“Isn’t that correct, Dan?”

“It is. But we haven’t found the father yet and there’s every indication he was with them in the park.”

“You think daddy did it?”

“I don’t know what to think, Bryce.”

“I see. Well, unless something concrete tells me otherwise, what we have here is a wilderness accident.” Collier sipped from his mug. “We need dental records to make positive identifications. Do you have next of kin for the call?”

Graham consulted his notes. On the park registration form, in the section on who to alert in case of emergency, the Tarvers had listed Jackson Tarver in Belts-ville, Maryland.

“Ray Tarver’s father. I’ll make the call back at my office.”

Graham wheeled his unmarked Chevrolet sedan out of the M.E.’ s lot and headed east on Memorial Drive which hugged the Bow River across from Calgary’s gleaming office towers. After passing the Calgary Zoo, he took the Deerfoot Trail expressway, north to the Southern Alberta District headquarters for the RCMP.

The Stephen A. Duncan building near the airport.

In the Major Crimes section he saw no sign of Corporal Shane Wilcox, the file coordinator, or Prell. Good. Graham was a team player, but he liked working alone. He started a fresh pot of coffee then went to the washroom and studied the mirror.

What the hell was happening?

What was the use of going on? Without Nora, his life no longer held any meaning. Maybe that’s why he risked it, in his vain attempt to save the little girl. But who was he really trying to save? What happened to him in the water? He swore to God he’d heard Nora telling him not to give up.

And the girl?

Her dying words haunted him.

Everyone believed it was a tragic accident but he remained uncertain.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

He splashed water on his face then went to his desk. It was neat and, unlike the desks of the other Mounties, it was bereft of framed photos of loved ones. No keepsakes or mementos to hint at his personality. Just a phone, a glass cup holding pens and pencils, a yellow legal notepad and the Tarver file.

That’s all he had left in this world.

He opened the folder and prepared to make the call to notify the Tarvers’ next of kin. Being the bearer of news that destroyed worlds was also part of the job.

The worst part.

As a traffic cop, Graham had been punched, slapped, and had people collapse in his arms as he stood at their door, cap in hand, to tell them what no one should ever have to hear.

Ever.

At times they’d see his police car pull up, watch through the living-room window as he got out and approached their home. They’d refuse to let him in. Because they knew. They knew that as long as they never heard what he was going to tell them, their world would remain intact. If they didn’t hear the words then their daughter, their son, sister, brother, mother, father, husband or wife would not be dead.

No one knew how much he feared the day it might happen to him.

Then it did happen.

“We couldn’t stop the bleeding. We did all we could for her. I’m so sorry.”

After five rings, a woman answered the phone in Maryland.

“I’m calling for Mr. Jackson Tarver.”

“One moment please, he’s in the yard.” Footsteps on a tiled floor, a back door creaked. “Jack! Phone! I think it’s that salesman again!” A man far off grumbled something as he approached the phone. Graham squeezed the handset, grateful he was alone in his office.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Tarver? Mr. Jackson Tarver?”

“Yes?”

“Sir, Corporal Daniel Graham with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Calgary.”

“Police?”

“Yes. Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but it’s important that I confirm your relationship to Raymond, Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver of Washington, D.C.”

Silence hung in the air as realization rolled over Tarver and he swallowed hard.

“Anita’s my daughter-in-law. Tommy and Emily are my grandchildren.” Tarver cleared his throat. “Raymond is my son. Why are you calling?”

When Graham delivered the news, Jackson Tarver dropped his phone.

10

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Dental records confirmed Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver as the victims.

Ray Tarver’s body had still not been recovered.

The tragedy landed on the front pages of Calgary’s newspapers with the headlines RIVER HORROR CLAIMS FOUR AMERICANS and U.S. FAMILY DIES IN MOUNTAINS. The Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun ran pictures of the Tarvers, the scene and locator maps. Through interviews with shocked U.S. friends of the Tarvers, the papers reported that Ray Tarver was a freelance journalist, Anita was a part-time librarian and that Tommy and Emily were “the sweetest kids.”

Not much more in the Web editions of the Washington Post and Washington Times either, Graham thought before he met Jackson Tarver at the Calgary airport. From the passport and driver’s license photos, Graham saw the father and son resemblance, except the elder Tarver had thin white hair parted neatly to one side.

Jackson Tarver was a sixty-seven-year-old retired high-school English teacher. His handshake was strong for someone whose world had been shattered. He insisted on “taking care of matters right away,” so Graham drove him to his hotel where they found a quiet booth in the restaurant. Tarver never touched his coffee. He sat there twisting his wedding band.

“Since your call, I’ve been praying that this has been some sort of mistake,” Tarver said. “I need to see with my own eyes that this has happened. I hope you understand?”

Graham understood. He opened his folder to display sharp color photographs of Anita, Tommy and Emily Tarver, on autopsy trays.

Pain webbed across Jackson’s face and he turned away.

After giving him time, Graham took Tarver’s forearm to ensure he was registering their conversation.

“Our services people have contacted the U.S. Consulate here. They’ll help you with the airline bookings and the funeral-home arrangements and they will assist you in getting them home with you,” Graham said. “They’ll also help you get the belongings shipped home later when we’ve finished processing them. Here’s some paperwork you’ll need.”

Graham slid an envelope to Tarver who took several moments to collect himself.

“Do you know how it happened?”

“At this stage, we believe their canoe capsized in the Faust River.”

“And they weren’t wearing life jackets?”

“No.”

“I just don’t understand. Ray was so careful. When things were good, he’d taken Anita and the kids to Yellowstone. He was no stranger to the outdoors. For goodness’ sake, he’s an Eagle Scout.”

“You said, ‘when things were good.’” Graham was taking notes.

“Ray used to be a reporter with the Washington, D.C., bureau of World Press Alliance, the wire service.”

“What sorts of stories did he do?”

“He covered everything before moving to investigative features.”

Graham nodded.

“Then he began clashing with his editors. About a year ago he’d had enough and decided to try making a living freelancing.”

“How did that go?”

“It was rough. Anita was worried. He’d quit a well-paying job with benefits.”

“So there was stress in the home?”

“Some. Sure, over the money and for Ray quitting World Press.”

“So why not try to find another news job?”

“I think Ray always felt he was close to a big story, or a book deal. Until then, he was always borrowing money from us to pay the bills, always struggling, worrying about Anita and the kids. About six months ago, he took out extra life insurance so Anita and the kids would be okay, if anything happened to him.”

“Really? How much?”

“I think he said it was two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Means more premiums. How did he pay for this trip?”

“I loaned him the money for this trip. He told me they really needed to get away. He found a cheap package deal. I figured he was going to pay me back with the money he’d get for some travel features, which usually happened. It just took time.”

Graham didn’t voice his view that Ray came across as something of a contradiction. Here was a guy who was not a risk taker but had taken a gamble leaving his job. Ray’s father must’ve picked up on what Graham was thinking.

“Is there something you’re not telling me, Corporal?”

“I’m just trying to figure things out.”

“You said it appears to be an accident, at this stage. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“I’ve told you all we know. We just need to locate Ray.”

“Corporal, it’s hard to explain a life here. My son loved his family. For him, reporting was a quasi-religious cause. He worked hard on his articles, they were very good. In fact, I’d like his laptop returned to me as soon as possible. It would mean a great deal to me to read what he’d been working on.”

“Laptop? I don’t think we found a laptop.”

Graham flipped through the inventory sheets from the crime scene guys.

“He never went anywhere without it.”

“It’s possible we have it in an evidence locker, or the lab is processing it.”

“He had it with him when I took them to the airport for this trip.”

“I’ll look into it.”

Graham was certain no laptop was found anywhere with the Tarvers and spent the rest of the night on the phone to the lab and the guys in Banff getting them to search for it.

In the morning, Graham rose early and drove Jackson Tarver two hours west to Banff, then deep into the Faust region to the site. Jackson Tarver tossed roses into the river where his grandchildren, daughter-in-law and, most likely, his son had died.

That afternoon, Graham accompanied him to the airport and badged his way through to the gate where they watched three casket-shaped containers roll along the luggage conveyor and into the cargo hold of Tarver’s plane.

Before he boarded, Tarver took Graham’s hand and shook it.

“I heard what you did, how you risked your life trying to save Emily. Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary.”

“I hope you’ll find my son, so that he can come home with his family.” Tarver’s grip was like that of a man fighting to keep from breaking into pieces. “Please.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Graham stayed at the window watching Tarver’s jet roll slowly from the terminal, turbines whining, running lights strobing, until his cell phone rang.

“Graham, it’s Fitzwald.”

“Fitz, did you find the laptop?”

“No laptop, but I did find something you should see.”

Twenty minutes later, Graham was at Fitzwald’s desk looking at a sneaker.

“We figure it belongs to Ray Tarver.”

Graham was puzzled; he’d seen this sneaker and its mate before.

“I don’t get it, Fitz, I’ve seen the shoes. They were in the tent.”

“And this was in the left shoe.”

Fitzwald tossed a small, slim leather-bound notebook on the desk before him.

“What do you make of it, Dan?”

Graham fanned the pages filled with notes, handwritten in ink. They were cryptic: something about an SS Age, another, see B. Walker. Scores of notations just before the last entry: Meet ‘x’and ‘y’verify link to Blue Rose Creek.

“Hard to say if it’s important.”

“It must mean something because it was hidden under the foot cushion. He valued this more than his passport.”

11

Tokyo, Japan

Central Tokyo’s skyline glittered against the night sky.

Setsuko Uchida gazed upon it from the balcony of her fortieth-floor apartment in Roppongi Hills, but her thoughts lingered on her vacation in the Rockies.

Had she really traveled halfway around the world?

She sighed, then resumed unpacking in her bedroom, happy to be home. Tomorrow she would have lunch with her daughter, Miki, near the Imperial Gardens and tell her about the magnificent mountains.

With great care, she retrieved the gift box from her suitcase and slowly unwrapped the tissue paper until a small polar bear, and a second, tinier bear, hand-carved in jade, emerged. A mother and her cub. She knew Miki would love them. The two women had grown closer since Setsuko’s husband had passed away.

Toshiro.

He smiled from the gold-framed photo on her nightstand. He’d been a senior official at the Ministry of Justice and was a kind man. He died of lung complications which had tormented him years after his exposure to the sarin gas attack on the subway system by the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

Losing her husband had almost destroyed Setsuko, who’d been an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. Eventually, she took early retirement then moved from their home in Chiba to Central Tokyo to be nearer to their daughter, Miki.

Miki was angered by her father’s death and had withdrawn from everyone, burying herself in her job. Setsuko had refused to accept Miki’s isolation, never letting her be alone for too long, always calling or visiting. In time, Miki opened her heart and allowed Setsuko back into her life, allowed her to be her mother again.

This happened because Setsuko’s friends, Mayumi and Yukiko, had always encouraged Setsuko not to give up on Miki. She loved them for it. She also loved them for insisting she join them on their recent adventure to the wilds of Canada, a place Setsuko’s husband had dreamed of visiting.

It was a wonderful trip, but it was good to be home.

Setsuko took a break from unpacking.

She went to her desk with her memory cards, switched on her computer and began viewing her travel photographs.

Here they were—the girls—on a mountaintop; in a forest; next to a river; here they were on the Icefields Parkway. Here were elk on the golf course in Banff. A man with a cowboy hat. Setsuko clicked through dozens of images, smiling and giggling, until she stopped at one.

Her smile melted.

Setsuko had taken this one of Mayumi and Yukiko in cowboy hats, laughing, seated at their table in the log-cabin restaurant outside Banff. It was during the last days of their trip.

Something about the image niggled at her.

Something familiar.

Staring at it, she tried to remember.

The people in the background.

She returned to her bags, fished around in the deep side pockets where she’d shoved magazines, maps and newspapers, her fingers probing until she found the copy of the Calgary Herald the attendants had offered on the plane.

She remembered glancing at it before dozing off during the flight to Vancouver where they’d caught the return flight to Japan.

She unfolded it at her desk.

There was the headline, U.S. FAMILY DIES IN MOUNTAIN ACCIDENT, and pictures of Ray and Anita Tarver and their two small children, Tommy and Emily. A beautiful family, Setsuko thought, reading the article.

Having done her postgraduate work at the London School of Economics and at Harvard, her English was strong. According to the report, the authorities had located the bodies of the mother and her children, but not that of the father, Ray Tarver, a freelance reporter from Washington, D.C.

The article concluded with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police requesting anyone with information regarding the Tarver family’s movements in the park area to contact them, or Crime Stoppers.

Setsuko studied the pictures in the newspaper then the people in the background of the photo she’d taken at the restaurant. The man in the background, sitting at the table behind Setsuko’s friends, was Ray Tarver.

Setsuko had no doubt about it.

She checked the dates. The tragedy was discovered one or two days after Setsuko had snapped her photo of her friends in the restaurant.

This might be the last picture taken of Ray Tarver.

It could be of use to the Canadian police. Setsuko reached for her phone and called her daughter, who was working late at her office. After Setsuko explained, Miki said, “Can you send me the news article and your picture now?”

Setsuko scanned the article into her computer then e-mailed it along with her travel picture to her daughter, who was a sergeant in the Criminal Affairs Section for Violent Crime with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Miki would know what to do, Setsuko thought, rereading the terrible story about that poor young family from the United States.

At her desk at the headquarters of the Keishicho, in the Kasumigaseki part of central Tokyo, Miki Uchida studied the material her mother had sent her. She agreed with her mother. The man in the background was the missing American.

Miki glanced at her boss’s office. He’d gone home for the day.

Early the next morning, as soon as he stepped into the office, she told him about the information and how it related to the tragedy in Canada. Sipping coffee from a commuter mug, he looked over her shoulder at the article and pictures enlarged on her computer screen.

“Do the necessary documentation. Then contact the Canadian Embassy and get back to our work.”

Sergeant Marc Larose was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police liaison officer for the Canadian Embassy, which was located along Aoyama Dori. After assessing the tip Miki Uchida at Tokyo Metro had sent him, Larose e-mailed a report, along with the information, through a secure network to Canada.

The file pinballed down through the command structure until it finally arrived in the mailbox of Corporal Daniel Graham, who would come to realize it was more than a random picture of Ray Tarver before the tragedy.

The background of Setsuko’s photo showed Ray Tarver sitting at a restaurant table facing the camera.

He was behind an open laptop.

12

Near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Fear crept across Carmen Navales’s face as she studied the pictures Graham had set before her on the table in the Tree Top Restaurant.

Ray Tarver stared back at the waitress from his passport, his driver’s license and the tourist photo Graham had received that morning from Tokyo.

“Think hard,” he said. “Do you remember serving this man?”

Carmen caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

Earlier, Graham had noticed her watching him in the booth of the closed section of the restaurant where he’d been interviewing other staff. They weren’t much help, practically indifferent, so why was Carmen nervous?

The RCMP knew all about places like the Tree Top.

Young people from around the world worked at the motels, resorts and restaurants in the Rockies, lured by the mountains, the tips and the party life. Sure, at times, things got out of hand with drinking, drugs, thefts, a few assaults. Last month, a chef from Paris stabbed a climber from Italy over a girl from Montreal. The Italian needed twenty stitches.

But Carmen hadn’t gotten into trouble out here. She was from Madrid and her visa was about to expire. Nothing to be nervous about.

Carmen was the last staff member Graham needed to interview. None of the others had remembered seeing Ray Tarver. I was, like, so hung over. Or, those tour buses just kept coming. It was all a blur, sorry, man, such a shame with those little kids.

Their responses eroded Graham’s hope that his Tokyo tip would lead somewhere because they still hadn’t recovered Ray’s body.

Carmen’s reticence frustrated him.

He tapped the photos.

“Ms. Navales, this is Raymond Tarver, the father of the family that drowned not too far from here. It was in the news. You must’ve heard.”

“Yes, I know, but I was in British Columbia at that time.”

“According to your time cards, you worked a double shift here the day before the children were found in the river.” Graham tapped the photo from Tokyo. “Ray Tarver was here the day before the tragedy. In this restaurant. In your section. On the day you were working. Now, please think hard.”

Carmen steepled her fingers and touched them to her lips.

“What’s the problem?” Graham asked.

“I need to extend my visa.”

“What’s that got to do with this?”

“I need to keep sending money home to help my sister in Barcelona. Her house burned down. I’m afraid that if my records show I’ve been involved with police—”

“Hold on. Look, I can’t do anything about your visa. But things might go better for you if you cooperate, understand?”

She nodded.

“You served him?”

“Yes.”

“And his family?”

“No family, he was sitting with another man.”

“Another man?”

Carmen traced her finger on the photo, along a fuzzy shadow behind the head of one of the laughing Japanese women. It bordered the edge and was easy to miss.

“That’s his shoulder.”

Graham inspected the detail, scolding himself for not seeing it.

“Do you know this other man? Have you ever seen him before?”

Carmen shook her head.

“Describe him.”

“He was a white guy, but with a dark tan. Slim build. In his thirties.”

“Any facial hair, jewelry, tattoos, that sort of thing?”

“I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

“What about clothes. How was he dressed?”

Carmen looked at Graham.

“I think like you. Jeans, polo or golf shirt, a windbreaker jacket, I think.”

“Did he pay with a credit card?”

“Cash. And he paid for both. In American cash.”

“Do you remember their demeanor? Were they arguing, laughing?”

“They were serious, like it was business.”

“Any idea what they talked about?”

“We were crowded, it was loud, I couldn’t hear them.”

“How long did they stay?”

“About an hour.”

“Do you know if they left in separate vehicles?”

Carmen shook her head.

For the next half hour, Graham continued pressing her for details. When he was satisfied he had exhausted her memory, he stood to leave.

“One last thing,” Carmen said. “Every now and then, the computer guy would turn his laptop to the stranger so he could read the screen.”

Graham didn’t know what he had.

Driving back to Calgary, he weighed the new information. The Tree Top was about a forty-five-minute drive from the Tarvers’ campsite. The photo put Ray in the restaurant the day before his family was found in the river.

Who was the guy at his table?

And why was Ray showing him his laptop? Was it an arranged meeting? Or spontaneous? Maybe he’d gone there to interview someone for a travel article?

Maybe it was nothing?

But some twenty-four hours later, his family was dead.

Now, Ray was missing and so was his laptop.

The questions gnawed at Graham as he worked alone at his desk.

Since the initial front-page stories, the calls from the public had slowed. Prell and Shane had followed up with a lot of door-knocking. Most of the information was useless, even bizarre. One guy claimed that the Tarvers had been “abducted by alien organ harvesters who will appear at the UN.”

Other tips were more down-to-earth, like the local rancher who’d insisted he’d seen a man resembling Ray hitch a ride on a logging rig. Graham had contacted all the lumber and trucking companies in the region.

No one had picked up anybody.

And nothing had surfaced concerning the whereabouts of Ray’s missing laptop.

The Banff and Canmore Mounties had put the word out to see if anyone on the street was selling one like Ray’s. Graham notified Calgary and Edmonton city police, who circulated information to pawnshops.

Jackson Tarver agreed to release the family’s bank, credit and Internet accounts. If someone had stolen Ray’s laptop they may be using it, and this information could help track the computer down.

Nothing had surfaced so far.

What was he missing?

Graham’s cell phone rang.

“Danny, it’s Horst at the site.” Static hissed over the search master’s satellite phone, mixing with the river’s rush and a distant helicopter.

“You find anything?”

“Nothing. Our people have been going full tilt for twenty-four-seven for the past few days. We figure he likely got wedged in the rocks, or a grizz hauled him off. A couple of big sows have been spotted in the search zones. We could find him in the next hour, or the next month, or never. Know what I mean?”

“Right.”

“We’ll keep it going, but we’ll wind it down by the end of the week.”

It was early afternoon as Graham ate his lunch, alone, outside at a picnic table.

He chewed on the ham and Swiss he’d made at home, looked at Calgary’s office towers and the distant Rockies and tried not to think of his life.

Stay on the case, he told himself.

He was nearly finished his sandwich when the superintendent’s assistant, who spent her lunch breaks walking in the neighborhood, approached him.

“There you are. How you keeping, Dan?”

“Day by day, Muriel.”

“There’s going to be a barbecue with Calgary city vice unit at Lake Sundance this weekend.”

“I heard.”

“Come join us, if you’re up for it.” She touched his shoulder.

“Thank you. We’ll see.”

“Sunday. Around three. Don’t bring a thing, dear.”

Graham nodded.

But when Muriel left, he decided he was not up to it. He crumpled his lunch bag and tossed it in the trash. Back at his desk, he went at the file again.

At Graham’s request, Ray’s father had faxed him copies of the insurance policies Ray had taken out on himself and his wife. Each had a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar death benefit. Anita was Ray’s beneficiary, Ray was hers. If they both died then Ray’s parents became beneficiaries.

Those were big numbers. People had committed serious crimes for less, but Graham saw no reason to suspect an insurance fraud, unless Ray Tarver emerged from the mountains unharmed to collect a quarter of a million dollars.

Graham returned to the Tokyo photo. He had to be missing something, he thought, staring long and hard at Ray and his laptop, until the light began to fade. With most of day and most of his coworkers gone, Graham began to dread what was coming.

13

Blue Rose Creek, California

After repeated attempts, a woman finally answered Maggie’s call to Madame Fatima.

She listened to Maggie’s request and told her to call back the next day, which Maggie did.

“Madame says not today. Call tomorrow.”

“If I could just come and talk to her, please.”

“She has little time to help. Call tomorrow.”

“Please, I need to see her. Please. I beg you.”

Maggie heard a second voice in the background then a hand covered the mouthpiece muffling a conversation between two people at the other end of the line. Then the woman said, “Madame says you may call back this afternoon, around three.”

Maggie thanked her and, with spirits lifted, resumed work at the bookstore.

She restocked shelves and was taking care of orders when a customer jingled her keys to get her attention before thrusting a napkin at her with a title scrawled on it. The woman reeked of cigarettes.

“I need this damn book right now for my sister’s birthday.”

After Maggie’s computer search showed it was out of print, the woman left muttering.

“What’s the G.D. point of a bookstore!”

Maggie was used to rude customers. Shrugging it off, she glanced at her watch. Nearly three. Her turn to take her afternoon break. She went to the children’s section and approached Louisa to cover for her.

“Did you see him, Maggie? He’s here again. He was in history and politics, but I lost him on the third floor.”

“Who?”

“The creep who pretends he’s reading.” Louisa stepped up on a toadstool and scanned every aisle she could see from the Enchanted Story Corner.

“Don’t be so paranoid. This is a bookstore. I’m going on my break, okay?”

“He stares at us all the time. I’m going to tell Robert to tell the creep to leave.”

“I’ll be back in fifteen.”

Maggie went to the public phone outside the staff room near the coffee shop. As Madame Fatima’s line rang, Maggie’s heart filled with anticipation. Would this lead her to Logan? She whispered a prayer. How had her life reached the point where she needed a reluctant mystic to help her find her son and husband?

I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes to find them.

Maggie fought her tears as the line was answered and she identified herself.

“Yes, Madame says come tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, Maggie, at seven.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much.”

“There is no certainty she can help you in any way, you understand?”

“I understand.”

“You must come alone. Do you agree to come alone?”

“Yes.”

“Madame says to bring a personal item of your husband’s and one belonging to your son. Something they’ve touched many times, something metal if possible.”

“Yes.”

“Here is the address and directions. Do you have a pen?”

“Yes.”

Maggie jotted the details on the back of the page Stacy Kurtz had given her, folded it and put it in her pocket and returned to work, never noticing that the man Louisa had called “the creep” had been standing an aisle away in the magazine section.

He’d had a direct line of sight to Maggie.

During her phone call, he’d been reading The Economist.

Or so it seemed.

14

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

It was time to face his crime.

As Graham drove south he looked west beyond the skyline to the jagged peaks silhouetted against the setting sun, standing there like a monumental truth.

Hang on, he told himself.

He made good time escaping the fringes of the metropolis and its cookie-cutter suburbs. Some forty minutes south, he exited Highway 2, taking a paved, two-lane rural road that twisted west into the foothills.

His pulse quickened as he mentally counted to what awaited him.

One kilometer, two, three, four, five…

He tightened his grip on the wheel then pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.

He needed to do this. Confront it, even if it pierced him.

He turned off the ignition, got out and walked to the site.

A plain white wooden cross marked the spot where Nora took her last breath.

Where he’d killed her.

A car hurtled by, kicking up a gust that nudged him closer to the roadside memorial for her. Nora had taught the fourth grade. They’d met when he was in Traffic and had come to talk to her class about safety.

Safety.

He pushed away the irony and touched the cross. Caressed its smooth surface. It had been erected by her students who’d adorned it with artificial flowers, pictures, small stuffed toys and printed notes protected in clear plastic sandwich bags.

We love you and we miss you, Mrs. Graham, one said.

We’ll be together with the angels, said another.

The epitaphs pulled him back to that night.

They’d gone to a Flames game because they’d needed some time together. And between them, she was the bigger hockey fan. He’d been working a lot of double shifts on a joint-forces operation with Calgary city police. A stress-fest, costing him sleep. He’d yawned throughout the game.

“I can drive if you’re too tired,” she’d offered as they crawled with the postgame traffic from the parking lot.

“I’m good.”

It took longer than usual to get to the expressway.

From there it was fine. It was a clear night. No snow. The roads were dry. The heater was blowing a gentle current of warm air to offset a slight chill. It felt so good being with her. It was tranquil and as they left the city Graham fell quiet.

“You okay there, buddy?” she asked.

He yawned again.

“Yup.”

As they got off the highway, heading into the foothills and deeper into the darkness, she gazed up at the constellations, naming them for him.

“Cassiopeia, Cepheus…”

Her soft voice, the hum and warm air relaxed Graham.

“Ursa Minor, Draco, Ursa Major…”

A perfect moment and it lulled him to surrender to his exhaustion.

The last things he remembered—

“DANIEL!”

The car was vibrating, her hand seized his arm.

“DANIEL!”

They’d gone off the road. He’d tried to correct it but overreacted, turning the wheel too sharply. The car rose, then they were airborne, rolling over and over, pavement, grass, metal crunching, glass breaking, dirt, lights and stars, all churning into nothingness.

He’s on the ground looking at their overturned car, its headlights pointing in odd directions. He smells gasoline. The rad’s hissing. He sees her in her seat with the deployed air bag, head turned all wrong, like a bad joke, like a rag doll.

Someone is screaming.

Screaming her name.

It’s him.

Everything blurs.

Emergency radios, sirens and he’s on a stretcher moving fast.

So fast.

Something’s pounding the air.

It’s deafening.

He’s flying. Ascending. Glimpsing strobing lights below. A galaxy of suburban lights wheel beneath him.

Next, a powerful antiseptic smell. Starched bed linen against his skin. He’s alive but not right. Sore but numb. A tube connects his arm to a bag of liquid on a pole. Faraway, hollow voices echo his name.

“Mr. Graham?”

He’s not dreaming.

“I’m Dr. Simpson. You’ve been airlifted to our hospital. You’ve been in an accident, Mr. Graham. You’ve got broken ribs, lacerations and a mild concussion. Nod if you understand.”

His head brushes against the pillow.

“Your wife was hurt badly. Her injuries were extreme. I’m very, very sorry.”

Graham’s heart slams against his chest.

“The paramedics did everything they could but she never regained consciousness. Her neck was broken. Her internal injuries were massive. I’m so sorry.”

The earth quakes.

“And the baby.”

Baby? What baby? It is a mistake. It is a dream because they don’t have a baby.

“She was three weeks along and may not have known she was pregnant.”

A blood rush roars in his brain, the universe cracks and darkness coils around him, crushing him with the realization.

HE’D FALLEN ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL AND KILLED HIS WIFE AND THEIR UNBORN CHILD.

Now, all he had to keep him alive was his guilt.

It’s why he’d gone to the mountains. To distribute the last of Nora’s ashes then use his gun to be with her and their baby.

What else was left?

Standing there alone in the prairie night, the burden of his guilt forced him to his knees. Aching for her, he gripped the cross. “Nora, I am so sorry. Forgive me. Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me what I am supposed to do now?”

He searched the stars for the answer. It was delivered on a gentle breeze, resurrecting what had happened when he’d gone into the river to save the girl.

He’d heard Nora’s voice.

“Keep going, Daniel.”

This was his answer.

This case would be his redemption because his wife’s voice was not the only one guiding him.

“Don’t—daddy.”

So much was garbled and drowned by the river. He didn’t comprehend all of what Emily Tarver was trying to tell him. But now he believed in his gut that the key to unlocking this tragedy was in her dying words…and any break that heaven would allow.

Graham’s cell phone rang.

“Corporal Graham, this is Prell. Just spoke with FIS. Just wanted to advise you that they pulled clear latents off the Tarver vehicle and got hits through CPIC. We have a name. Are you ready to copy?”

Graham hurried back to his car.

15

Bonita Hills, California

Maggie battled to keep her hopes in check.

As she threaded her way through the freeway traffic, her stomach tensed.

Would her nightmare ever end?

Would she ever see Logan and Jake again? Where were they?

Each day had passed without news. Nothing from police. Nothing from the courts. Nothing from the support groups, Logan’s doctor, Logan’s school or the private investigator. Nothing from her amateur Internet searching.

Not a word from Jake or Logan.

Nothing but deepening anguish.

Dammit, why did Jake do this?

Maggie searched the traffic in vain for answers. Whatever it was, maybe Jake just needed time to sort it all out. Maggie consoled herself with that explanation, hoping with all her heart that Madame Fatima would work a miracle tonight.

But who was she?

Maggie had called Stacy Kurtz, who’d pressed her police contacts for more information, urging Maggie to keep what she’d learned confidential.

The woman was known as Madame Fatima Soleil. She’d descended from French gypsies who’d fled persecution in Senegal and roamed Europe in the early 1900s. Her family tree branched into northern Quebec and Louisiana’s bayous.

As a young woman working in the cafés of Germany, Poland, Austria and Czechoslovakia reading tea leaves, Fatima had told a Czech police official’s wife that her youngest daughter would nearly drown within one year. Some ten months later, the girl was on a school trip in Rome where she was found at the bottom of the hotel pool. She was pulled unconscious from the water and had barely survived.

The girl’s mother told her husband, a skeptical, case-hardened detective. But months later when the ten-year-old son of a Russian diplomat was kidnapped for ransom in Prague, he sought Fatima’s help.

Fatima met the boy’s parents, spent time in the boy’s bedroom, then told Czech detectives to search a specific spot near a riverbed in the St. George Forest, an hour northeast of Prague. They found the boy buried alive in a coffin equipped with an air pump. Police traced the pump to the point of purchase, then to his abductors and arrested them at gunpoint.

At her request, Fatima’s role was never ever made public. And she’d refused any money. Later in life, her reputation, known only to a few in police circles, accompanied her when she’d moved to California. She’d planned to retire on a small inheritance, but agreed to help California police when they called upon her.

There’s the exit for Bonita Hills.

Maggie signaled.

At the first red light, she consulted her directions. She was close to the Serenity Valley Mobile Country Club, where Madame Fatima lived alone in a sixty-by-forty-foot mobile home. She had a tiny, neat-as-a-pin yard with a flower garden beneath a large picture window and a big awning that shaded much of her house. The stone walk invited Maggie to the side porch where she rang the doorbell.

She was greeted by a woman who was less than five feet tall but had a solid frame under her Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants.

“I’m Helga, Fatima’s friend.” She directed Maggie to a cloth-covered dining table in the paneled living room and kept her voice low. “Please sit down. You should know that she is not well and has very little time left, so you must—”

“Helga!” An unseen voice whisper-wheezed from the dark paneled hallway leading to the rear. “Come get me.”

Helga left Maggie who peered down the hall after her, not believing her eyes.

A thin, feeble woman, bent by age and deterioration, emerged from the darkness. One gnarled hand gripped a cane. Her free arm was hooked around Helga’s neck. The stronger woman supported her as she inched forward.

Fatima was wearing an emerald muumuu and a green head scarf. Maggie detected the smell of jasmine as Fatima eased into a chair at the table, the silver cross hanging from the chain around her neck captured the twilight.

Maggie sat across from Fatima thinking that she resembled a concentration-camp inmate. The skin on her face was wrapped tight to her skull behind oversize glasses. Looking beyond them, Maggie met fierce dark eyes as Fatima’s ghost of a smile liberated the tips of crooked brown teeth.

“It’s finished for me,” Fatima said, pulling off her kerchief revealing that her hair had fallen out. Small islands of down were all she had left. “The cancer. Not much longer for me. You are Maggie?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband has taken your son away and you wish to find them?”

“Yes, he’s a good man but he’s mixed up about—”

Fatima’s palm stopped her.

“Did you bring me something that belongs to each of them?”

Maggie reached into her bag for Logan’s pirate key ring and Jake’s penknife which she’d retrieved from the sofa where they were forever losing things. A fond memory flickered in the corner of her mind as she placed them in Fatima’s hands.

“My glass please, Helga.”

Helga placed a glass with ice chips next to Fatima.

“We shall begin,” Fatima said. “Whatever you hear or sense, you must not move or speak, or be afraid. If I ask questions, answer only yes or no. Say nothing more. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“The window and the candle please.” Fatima put some ice chips in her mouth. “The ice cools my throat and stomach.”

Helga lit a white candle, placed it in the center of the table, then drew the heavy curtains. Calm filled the room as Fatima extended her arms, resting her hands on the table, her skeletal fingers caressing the key ring in one hand, the penknife in the other.

Helga removed Fatima’s glasses for her. Maggie noticed the jasmine smell intensifying. The candle flame quivered in Fatima’s eyes while she continued caressing the knife and key ring. A sound akin to soft lowing flowed into the room before Maggie realized its source.

Fatima.

She was humming, creating a surreal aura; candlelight haloed around her round head as she began to sway, her gaze fixated on nothing as if she were searching another dimension, seeing other lives and other worlds.

All the while, Fatima never ceased massaging the knife and key ring, increasing her ardor with each passing moment, drawing energy from them, as if sensing the very thoughts Jake and Logan may have left on them.

Fatima shut her eyes.

Her body began to bounce up and down slightly as she continued humming.

“I see a truck.”

Maggie caught her breath.

“A big truck,” Fatima said. “Near mountains.”

Fatima began bouncing slightly as if she were there in the cab of a rig.

Maggie felt Logan near. Felt his presence. Detected his scent!

“Logan! Honey, it’s Mommy! Where are you?”

“Shush.” Helga touched Maggie’s wrist.

Fatima’s humming stopped.

Maggie had trespassed on the moment.

Fatima’s work resumed. She continued rubbing the items in her outstretched hands, continued humming and bouncing as if a passenger in a rig.

Fatima’s head snapped back.

Maggie gasped.

Fatima’s body jolted as if punched by a powerful force. It jerked again, nearly throwing her from the chair. Fatima’s hands let the knife and key ring slip to the table as jolt after jolt shook her in her chair.

Maggie’s skin tingled.

Fatima’s eyes bulged to the point of nearly bursting. Her pupils rolled back in her head, leaving only the whites.

She was motionless.

Each minute melted into the next, devouring time in huge chunks before Helga blew out the candle and drew back the curtains.

Fatima began coughing.

Helga brought her a fresh glass of ice chips and Maggie watched Fatima’s jaw work as she crunched them. The older woman’s body was depleted as Helga slid her glasses back onto her head then helped replace her head scarf.

“We’re done,” Helga said. “Thank you, Maggie. You may leave.”

“Fatima, did you see my husband and son?”

“I saw nothing that will help.”

Maggie’s jaw dropped.

“You saw something, didn’t you?”

Fatima searched for her cane.

“You have to help me, please, tell me what to do?” Maggie asked.

Helga helped Fatima from the table.

“Please, Maggie.” Helga nodded toward the door. “We’re done.”

“Yes,” Fatima whispered, “I must sleep.”

“That’s it?”

“You must leave,” Helga said.

“No! Wait, please, you have to tell me what you saw. You have to help me!”

Fatima extended her shaking hand to Maggie’s, then dropped Logan’s key ring and Jake’s penknife into it. Fatima’s eyes held Maggie’s for an intense moment.

“No one can help, especially me.”

“What are you saying? What does that mean?”

“You should pray.”

“Pray for what? I don’t understand.” Helga was closing the door on her. “Please, you have to help me! You can try again! Please! I felt Logan with us! I know you saw something!”

Maggie stepped from Fatima’s mobile home and the locks clicked behind her. She leaned against the door, slid to the landing and buried her face in her hands.

16

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Jesus Rocks filled the police binoculars.

The words strained across Neil Bick’s T-shirt, advertising his tattooed physique, earned in Stony Mountain federal prison where he did three years for stealing computers from RVs, cabins and cottages.

He’d also shot at—but missed—the two Winnipeg cops who’d arrested him.

How did this ex-con’s fingerprints get on the SUV rented by the Tarver family, Graham wondered, watching through binoculars as Bick walked down a neglected southeast Calgary sidewalk and into a world of trouble.

The Calgary Police Tactical Unit had a perimeter around his ramshackle house. The street had been cleared. Far off, an unseen dog barked.

“All right, take him,” the TAC commander whispered over the radio.

Heavily armed police rushed from the cover of shrubs, alleys, porches and parked cars, putting Bick facedown on the street at gunpoint.

“What the fuck?”

They handcuffed him, patted him down and read him his Charter rights.

“What the fuck is this?”

Twenty-five minutes later he was sitting in an interview room with Graham, who’d read his file a third time.

Neil Frederick Bick, age thirty-four, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Mother was a hooker murdered by an outlaw biker when Bick was six. He’d been a child of the province. In and out of school. In and out of the military. In and out of jail.

Graham asked Bick if he wanted a lawyer.

“Fuck lawyers. I don’t need one because I didn’t do nothing. Why are you jamming me, man? I’ve been livin’ straight since I got out. I need a smoke.”

The federal building was subject to no-smoking laws but Graham returned his pack. Bick shook one out, lit it and squinted through a cloud.

“Yeah, I remembered that family after I’d read the news. Wild.”

“Tell me again how your prints got on their SUV.”

“One of my jobs is pumping gas into airport rentals. I filled their tank and cleaned their windshield. I gave them directions to the Trans-Canada. My prints are on a lot of cars, you already know that.”

Graham knew it.

He also knew they’d just executed a search warrant on Bick’s residence.

“Neil, tell me about the four laptop computers we found in your possession.”

“I’m repairing them for people at my church. I studied computer tech at Stony. The church outreach people set me up here in Calgary. New place, new start and all.”

Bick tapped ash into the empty soda can Graham had passed him.

Ray Tarver’s computer was not among the four they’d found with Bick. None of the models or serial numbers were close. In fact, they all belonged to church members who’d corroborated Bick’s account.

And Mounties in Banff had called Graham after they’d showed Bick’s photograph to the staff at the Tree Top Restaurant, including Carmen Navales.

“No one can say if Bick’s the man who was sitting with Ray Tarver.”

By late afternoon, Graham had established Bick’s whereabouts for the time surrounding the tragedy. He’d been nowhere near the mountains. A minister came to the Duncan building to confirm that Bick had driven seniors to Dinosaur Provincial Park in a church van on the days in question. He had pictures.

At that point, Graham resumed discussing Bick with his commanding officers. Between making calls and handling other cases in his office, Inspector Stotter had watched most of the questioning from the other side of the room’s transparent mirror.

Graham said, “Our guy’s not connected to this.”

Stotter held Graham in a stare that bordered on concern for a tense moment.

“Kick him loose and go home, Dan. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Driving from work, Graham had to pass his wife’s roadside shrine again.

He had to pass it every day.

The windswept stretch where she’d died was on the only highway to their home. The white cross jutted from the earth like an accusation but he didn’t stop to face it today. Not this time.

Something deep in his stomach turned cold but he kept driving, asking for forgiveness as he passed the site.

Their property was southwest of Calgary on the upper slope of an isolated butte. One of the few modest old ranch homes still standing, it sat on a ridge overlooking a clear stream and the mountains.

Since the day he’d arrived in Alberta, Graham had wanted this acreage, known as Sawtooth Bend. After he’d shown it to Nora, she fell in love with it, too. Six months after they were married they bought the land.

They belonged here.

They’d had dreams for building a big new ranch home and raising children here.

But those dreams had vanished with the ashes he’d released to the wind.

Loneliness greeted him when he opened the door.

He took a hot shower, changed into his jeans and a T-shirt. He wasn’t hungry. He poured a glass of apple juice, collapsed in his swivel rocker, turned to the window to watch the sun sink behind the Rockies.

How could he live without her?

How could he go on chained to his guilt?

He glanced at their wedding picture on the mantel, loving how she glowed in her gown. An angel in the sun. He beamed in his red serge. For that moment in time, his dreams had come true.

He was born in a working-class section near Toronto’s High Park neighborhood. He grew up wanting to find the right girl and become a cop, just like his old man, a respected Toronto detective. When Graham’s dad followed a case to Quebec, he met Marie, a secretary for Montreal homicide. They fell in love and that was that.

The younger Graham grew up in Toronto fluent in English and, thanks to his mother, French. He dreamed of being a Mountie, a federal cop with the most recognized force in the world. His father and mother had tears in their eyes the day his graduating troop marched by them at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina. His first posting was in southern Alberta, where he’d made some key arrests at the Montana border. It led to a detective job with GIS in Calgary. Then he joined the Major Crimes section where he’d excelled at clearing the hardest cases.

But now?

He ran his hand over his face.

Now, his confidence had been shattered. He didn’t know if he was on the right track, a fact reflected in the way Stotter had looked at him. Bick was not connected. Graham had no solid evidence to prove the case was anything more than a terrible wilderness accident.

So why the hell was he trying to make it into something more?

Did he believe it was something more?

Was he missing something?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. It was black outside and he went to bed. But night winds rattled the windows and tormented him with questions.

Maybe what happened to the Tarvers was no accident? What about the missing laptop? The stranger at Ray’s table? The meaning of “Blue Rose Creek,” the last note Ray had written? Earlier, Graham had run the term Blue Rose Creek through databases but got nothing concrete.

Then there was the big insurance policy. There was stress in the Tarver home, money problems and the fact that they still hadn’t found Ray’s body.

Did he flip out, kill his family with plans to emerge and collect the insurance?

Go back.

What if Ray was onto a big story and someone killed him and his family?

How big does a story have to be?

Any way you cut it, a wilderness accident can be a perfect murder.

Mother Nature is your murder weapon.

The wind shook the house. Graham tossed and turned and in his dream state he heard Nora whisper to him as she did when he’d been underwater in the river facing death.

Keep going, Daniel. You have to keep going.

Little Emily Tarver’s dying words haunted him.

Don’t—daddy.

But the girl’s voice was so soft, so small and the river was deafening. These factors raised doubts. Did she actually speak at all? Or did he dream that she did?

Was he dreaming now?

Or was he mining his subconscious as her last breaths played in his memory. He could hear her again. But this time she said more.

He heard her clearly.

An icy chill rocketed up Graham’s spine, forcing him to sit up, wide awake.

The time glowed: 2:47 a.m.

He made coffee, sat in his chair and considered his case. Then he went to his computer and by dawn he’d completed a new case status report. He showered, had fresh coffee and scrambled eggs for breakfast then drove back to the office and placed his updated report on his boss’s desk.

Graham was convinced he now knew Emily Tarver’s dying words.

“Don’t hurt my daddy.”

After reading Graham’s report, Inspector Stotter removed the jacket of his mohair suit, hung it on the wooden hanger, and then hooked it on his coatrack.

“I know you’ve saved our team many times with solid detective work, Dan.”

Graham sat in one of the cushioned visitors’ chairs watching Stotter.

“You stood your ground when everyone else thought you were wrong.”

Stotter loosened his tie then rolled his sleeves to the elbows.

“But I don’t see it here. I don’t see a reason to grant your request to go to the U.S. and look into Ray Tarver’s history.”

“Why not?”

“I think you’re using this case as a means of repentance.”

“What?”

“I think it’s got something to do with why you were in the mountains in the first place and why you jumped in the river after the girl.”

“I jumped in to help that girl.”

“The result was heroic but the act was suicidal.”

Graham averted his stare.

“Danny, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for what happened to Nora. You can’t go back and undo what happened. It was an accident, which is probably what happened with the Tarver family.”

“She spoke to me.”

“Who spoke to you?”

“I told you. The little girl, Emily. In the river. Just before she died.”

“Dan.” He let a long silence pass. “Dan, are you sure you’re ready to be back on the job?”

“I swear it happened, Mike.”

Stotter looked at him for a long moment, thinking.

“This isn’t in your report.”

“It was chaotic. I was unclear at first.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy’?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“She say anything else?”

“No, just, ‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’ Why would she say something like that? There has to be something else at work.”

Stotter looked hard at Graham for a long time then scratched his chin.

“You’ve attended traffic accidents, Dan. You’ve seen badly injured people in shock. They fight off people who try to help them. They say all kinds of things that don’t make sense when they’re in shock. I don’t think you have a clear dying declaration here that would warrant a criminal investigation into suspicious deaths. You have no solid evidence.”

“We still haven’t found Ray Tarver, or his laptop. He met some stranger the day before this happened. The guy was a freelance investigative reporter from Washington, D.C. And there’s another thing, the last handwritten entry in his notebook, this Blue Rose Creek.”

“All circumstantial. It will not hold up in court.”

“But…”

“You know real cases are not like TV crime shows, Hollywood movies or books. There are always loose, inexplicable threads that cannot be tied up neatly at the end, and have no bearing on a criminal act.”

“My gut’s telling me there’s more to this.”

“Your gut?”

“Sir, you’ve got nothing to lose by signing off on a thorough investigation.”

“Dan, our budget’s tight. We’re shorthanded. I need you on other cases.”

“We’re talking a multiple death case with unsettling circumstances.”

Stotter crossed his arms, cognizant of the fact Graham was one of his best, that he needed to keep him on his game and that this case could be crucial to preserving his confidence. After ruminating on the situation, Stotter grabbed Graham’s report.

“Give me an hour.”

Some forty minutes later, Stotter, holding Graham’s rolled report like a baton in his hand, waved him into his office.

“Shut the door. I talked to the superintendent.”

“And?”

“Apart from his life insurance—” Stotter had circled part of Graham’s report “—Ray Tarver took out a small Canadian travel insurance policy when he booked their trip.”

“Right. It doesn’t pay much for death.”

“In cases where bodies are not recovered the policy has a standard presumption-of-death clause.”

“You’re going to let me do this, let me go to the U.S. and check his background?”

“Listen to what I’m telling you.”

Graham took out his notebook.

“You get in touch with the LO in Washington and give him what he needs to set you up down there. This is how you approach this: You tell people that you’re completing paperwork that confirms Ray Tarver was in peril at the time of his presumed death. All efforts to locate him have been exhausted. You’re asking a few routine background questions, basically to ensure that he hasn’t surfaced, wandering like an amnesia victim, or was acting out of character before the tragedy.”

“Right.”

“You say that you’re tending to an administrative matter while you’re in the U.S. following up on other unrelated matters. This will be low-key with no potential for ruffling feathers or causing embarrassment between the force and U.S. law enforcement. Besides, I’m sure some of the guys will be busy with the papal visit. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”

“Got it.”

“You are not authorized to conduct a criminal investigation in the United States. Is that clear, Corporal Graham?”

“Crystalline.”

“Register your trip with the travel branch. You have one, maybe two weeks, unless I call you back sooner.”

17

Los Angeles, California

Please, God, let it be Logan.

Blurry images of a boy played on the screen before Maggie.

Let it be him. Please.

A few days after Maggie’s ordeal with Madame Fatima, a new hope had emerged.

“We believe this is your son,” Ned Rimmer said just as the video froze and static snowed on the images.

Rimmer was an LAPD detective—“retired six years now” after a drug dealer’s bullet took his left eye. Rimmer wore an eye patch, a ponytail and a sour disposition most days. He was still a detective, just not the kind he’d planned on being.

Rimmer and his wife, Sharmay, an emergency dispatcher with a penchant for dangling earrings, belonged to the Guardian Rescue Society, a national group of law enforcement types who volunteered their money, resources and time, to find children in parental abduction cases who’d slipped through the cracks.

Logan’s file was passed to them months ago when Maggie had first sought help from support groups who’d circulated her plea among their circles.

She’d never heard of the society until today when Sharmay called her at the bookstore, identified herself, then said, “We believe one of our Guardians may have located your son, Logan Conlin.”

Stunned into silence, Maggie gripped the phone.

“Hello? Maggie?”

“My God, do you have him? Where is he? Is he okay? I have to see him!”

“We don’t have him yet. We’d prefer to discuss details at our Los Angeles office. Please come as soon as it’s convenient so we can advance the case.”

An hour later, after following Sharmay’s directions, Maggie had parked her car on a street that bordered Culver City and West L.A.

The society’s L.A. chapter was in a second-story office above the Flying Emerald Dragon takeout restaurant. The aroma of deep-fried chicken and stir-fried vegetables filled it now as Maggie sat before the video monitor.

“Here we go. Fixed it,” Rimmer said. “This footage comes to us from our New York chapter from Wayne Kraychinski, retired NYPD detective first grade.”

As the Rimmers had explained it, Kraychinski checked Logan’s profile with his school sources, as he does with all the cases his chapter takes on.

Kraychinski got a lead in Queens concerning a boy fitting Logan’s age and description. According to the history, the boy had recently moved to the community with his father, a trucker, who fit Jake Conlin’s general profile.

Kraychinski and some of the other Guardians initiated surveillance.

“We’ve got a series of sequences recorded over a few weeks,” Rimmer said.

The camera shook and a boy about eight to ten years old in a hooded sweatshirt swam into view but not in sharp focus. Maggie couldn’t see his face clearly, or his full body and gait. The boy was among a group walking through a schoolyard to a basketball court.

“Now, this is where they reside.”

The video jumped to a row of tired-looking two-story detached homes shoehorned into a Queens neighborhood. One house had a rig out front. No trailer. A green Peterbilt. Being married to a trucker, Maggie knew vehicles. Jake drove a Kenworth but he could’ve sold it or traded it for a Peterbilt.

Next, the boy was in a park with other kids on skateboards.

Again, his back was to the camera. He was wearing a ball cap and was sitting on the grass bordering the skating area. Maggie caught her breath as he turned to offer his profile, but a shadow blocked the image before it disappeared.

Maggie covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a groan.

Is it Logan? She couldn’t be certain.

“Now,” Rimmer said, “this next sequence, which is the money sequence, was obtained by Kraychinski’s friend, Ella Bell. She’s a former Customs officer. Ella used a minicamera hidden in her hat to employ a ruse for interaction.”

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