"Rachel?"

I got down on my hands and knees and first examined her without touching her. She was lying facedown and her hair had fallen forward to further hide her eyes from my view. I was suddenly reminded of my daughter as I used a hand to gently pull the hair back. As I did this I noticed blood on the back of my palm and for the first time realized I was wounded in some minor way. I decided I would worry about that later.

"Rachel?"

I couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. It seemed that my senses were working on the domino theory. With my hearing gone at least temporarily, the coordination of the other senses was gone as well. I patted her cheek lightly.

"Come on, Rachel, wake up."

I didn't want to turn her over in case there were unseen injuries that I might aggravate. I patted her cheek again, this time harder. I put my hand on her back, hoping that I would feel the rise and fall of breath as I could with my daughter.

Nothing. I put my ear to her back but this was laughable considering my condition. It was just instinct moving ahead of logic. I was thinking that I had no choice and had to turn her over when I saw the fingers of her right hand twitch and then form a fist.

Rachel suddenly lifted her head off the ground and groaned. It was loud enough that I could hear it.

"Rachel, are you all right?"

"I-I'm… there's evidence in the trailer. We need it"

"Rachel there is no trailer anymore. It's gone."

She struggled to turn over and sit up. Her eyes opened wide at the sight of the burning debris of what had been the trailer. I could see that her pupils were dilated. She had a concussion.

"What did you do?" she asked in an accusatory tone.

"It wasn't me. The place was rigged to go up. When you opened the bedroom door…"

"Oh." She turned her head back and forth as if working a kink out of her neck. She saw the black cowboy hat on the ground next to her.

"What is this?"

"His hat. You grabbed it on the way out."

"DNA?"

"Hopefully, though I'm not sure what good it will be."

She looked back at the flaming trailer bed. We were too close. I could feel the heat of the fire. But I still wasn't sure she should be moving.

"Rachel, why don't you lie back down? I think you have a concussion. You might have other injuries."

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea."

She put her head down on the ground and just looked up at the sky. I decided that wasn't a bad position and did the same. It was like we were at the beach or something. If it had been night we could have counted the stars.

Before I could hear them coming, I felt the approach of the helicopters. A deep vibration in my chest made me look to the southern sky and I saw the two air force choppers coming over the top of Titanic Rock. I weakly raised an arm and waved them in.

What the hell happened out there?" Special Agent Randal Alpert's face was rigid and almost purple. He had been waiting for them in the hangar at Nellis when the helicopter landed. His political instincts had apparently told him not to go to the scene himself. At all costs he had to be able to distance himself from the blowback that would rise from the explosion in the desert and possibly reach all the way to Washington.

Rachel Walling and Cherie Dei stood in the huge hangar and braced for the onslaught. Rachel didn't answer his question because she thought it was only the opener on a tirade. She was reacting slowly, her head still a bit fuzzy from the blast.

"Agent Walling, I asked you a question!"

"He had rigged the trailer," Cherie Dei said. "He knew she-"

"I asked her, not you," Alpert barked. "I want Agent Walling to tell me exactly why she could not follow orders and how this whole thing has gotten completely fucked up beyond recognition."

Rachel raised her hands palms out as if to signify there was not a damn thing she could have done about what happened out there in the desert.

"We were going to wait for the ERT," she said. "As Agent Dei instructed. We were on the periphery of the location and that's when we realized it smelled like there was a body in there and then we thought maybe there could be someone alive in there. Somebody hurt."

"And how the hell did you get that idea simply because you smelled a dead body?"

"Bosch thought he heard something."

"Oh, here we go, the old cry for help routine."

"No, he did. But it was the wind, I guess. Out there it picks up. The windows were left open. It must have created a sound that he heard."

"And what about you? Did you hear it?"

"No. I didn't."

Alpert looked at Dei and then back at Rachel. She could feel his eyes burning through her. But she knew it was a good story and she wasn't going to blink. She and Bosch had worked it out. Bosch was beyond Alpert's reach. If she was acting on Bosch's alarm she could not be faulted either. Alpert could rant and rave but could do nothing more than that.

"You know what the problem with your story is? It's with your first word. We. You said we. There was no we. You were given an assignment of maintaining a cover on Bosch. Not joining him in the investigation. Not joining him in his car and driving up there. Not questioning witnesses together and entering that trailer together." "I understand that, but given the circumstances I decided it was in the best interest of the investigation to pool our knowledge and resources. Quite frankly, Agent Alpert, Bosch was the one who found that place. We wouldn't have what we have right now if not for him."

"Don't kid yourself, Agent Walling. We would have gotten there."

"I know that. But velocity was a factor. You said so yourself after the morning briefing. The director was going before the cameras. I wanted to push the case so that he would have as much information as possible."

"Well, forget about that now. Now we don't know what we have. He postponed the news conference and has given us until noon tomorrow to figure out what we have out there."

Cherie Dei cleared her voice and risked intruding again.

"That's impossible," she said. "That's a well-done crispy critter out there. They're using multiple bags to get it out of there. ID and cause of death are going to take weeks, if an ID and cause of death are even possible. Luckily, it appears that Agent Walling was able to obtain a DNA sampling from the body and that would speed things but we have no comparative evidence. We-"

"Maybe you weren't listening ten seconds ago," Alpert said, "but we don't have weeks. We've got less than twenty-four hours."

He turned away from them and put his hands on his hips, striking a pose that showed the burden that weighed upon him as the only intelligent and savvy agent left on the planet. "Then let us go back up there," Rachel said. "Maybe in the debris we'll find something that-"

"No!" Alpert yelled.

He spun back around to them.

"That won't be necessary, Agent Walling. You have done enough."

"I know Backus and I know the case. I should be out there."

"I decide who should be and shouldn't be out there. I want you to get back to the field office and start the paperwork on this fiasco. I want it on my desk by eight a.m. tomorrow. I want a detailed listing of everything you saw inside that trailer."

He waited to see if she would argue the order. Rachel remained silent and this seemed to please him.

"Now, I've got the media all over this. What do we put out that doesn't give away the store and won't upstage the director tomorrow?"

Dei shrugged.

"Nothing. Tell them the director will address it tomorrow, end of story."

"That won't work. We have to give them something."

"Don't give them Backus," Rachel said. "Tell them agents wanted to speak to a man named Thomas Walling about a missing persons case. But Walling had rigged his trailer and it exploded while agents were on the premises."