She stared at the ring lying on the table, then looked at her palm, where a circular white line now lay across the fading red line that was all that was left of the earlier frostnip.

"Shit." She lifted her gaze to the woman and found her pale, her eyes both shocked and eager.

"You saw something. What did you see?"

"Who are you?"

"Don't you know? Can't you-"

"Who are you?"

"I'm-Caitlin. Caitlin Graham. Lindsay's sister."

Despite the clear skies and bright moon, Lucas and Jaylene were having a frustratingly slow and difficult time of it. Not to mention exhausting. And judging by the intermittent radio and cell contact with the other two teams, they weren't the only ones; the terrain in these isolated spots was so rough it was as though they had been swallowed up by some more-primitive time, the strained roar of their vehicles' engines alien. When they could use vehicles, that was.

Sometimes, it was literally hacking their way through clinging, thorny underbrush.

Jaylene held the flashlight to illuminate the map spread out on the hood of their vehicle, and Lucas crossed off the second property on their list.

"At this rate," he said, "we don't have a hope in hell of covering all these places by tomorrow afternoon."

"Not much of a hope, no." Deputy Glen Champion, who Metcalf had assigned to go along with the federal agents because he was not only trustworthy but had grown up tramping all over these mountains, shook his head. "This is some of the roughest terrain in the state, and most of the places are like this one was- inaccessible by anything but a heavy-duty all-terrain vehicle, on horseback, or on foot."

They had borrowed a four-wheel-drive ATV from the sheriff's department motor pool, but even it had found the narrow, rutted dirt roads a challenge, especially after the late-afternoon storm and its torrential rain.

Jaylene said, "Just getting from one spot to the next takes time. Look at the next place-am I wrong, or is it at least five miles away?"

"Five miles of a winding dirt road," Champion confirmed.

"Shit," Lucas muttered.

Jaylene glanced at the deputy, then asked her partner, "Any hunches?"

"No." Lucas was still frowning, and even in the moonlight she could tell his face was beginning to take on that drawn, exhausted look it always acquired as they got deeper and deeper into a case.

She knew better than to comment on it. "Then we move on to the next place on our list."

Champion drove, again more experienced with this type of road than either of the agents. But even with his skill, it still required nearly an hour to travel the five miles.

He parked the ATV seemingly in the middle of the road and the middle of nowhere and cut off the engine. "It's about a hundred yards farther along, just past the top of that next rise."

The area was so heavily wooded that the trees literally pressed in on them from both sides of the road, and since the leaves hadn't yet begun to drop, even the bright moonlight did little to illuminate the road ahead.

It was also very quiet.

Jaylene checked her detail list with the aid of a pencil flashlight, and said, "Okay, this property hasn't had a house on it in about fifty years. Thirty acres of mostly mountainous pastureland and a big barn is all that's left. Says here the barn's still in good shape, and it was sold to an out-of-state developer about a month ago."

"Does the developer have a name?" Lucas asked.

"Not yet. It's a holding company. Quantico's checking all this, but it'll be tomorrow at the earliest before we know any more than we do now."

They got out of the ATV, moving quietly, and kept their voices low for the same reason that Champion had turned off the police radio a good ten minutes back: because sound carried oddly up here, smothered by underbrush or trees in one spot and bouncing around madly in another.

"We'll stay together until we get the building in sight," Lucas said. "Then split up to search the area."

Jaylene checked her watch and said, "It's almost ten. As much as we'll all hate the lost time, we should definitely stick with the plan and meet back at the station for food and caffeine at midnight. Otherwise, we'll never be able to keep this up all night."

"That is the plan." Not saying whether he agreed with it-or whether he intended to have more than his customary coffee at the break-Lucas concentrated on moving as silently as possible, his gaze probing the dark road ahead of them. "The good news is, we'll be able to move faster once dawn breaks tomorrow."

"And the bad news?" Champion murmured.

"You said it yourself. Not much hope of getting through every property on our list. So we'll have to find her before we do that."

"Maybe we'll get lucky, and she'll be here or the next place we check," the deputy offered.

"I never had much faith in luck," Lucas said. "Unless I make it myself. And I like shortcuts."

"I'm game for anything you suggest," Champion said promptly. "Lindsay's a friend as well as a fellow cop." He paused, then added less certainly, "I guess you've already talked to Miss Burke."

Jaylene thought he was one of the very few around here who would refer to Samantha with so much respect, but she left it to Lucas to reply.

"That's why we're searching these properties, Deputy."

Jaylene heard the note of frustration in her partner's voice but, again, remained silent. She had picked up absolutely nothing from Samantha's belongings at the station but was nevertheless aware of much the same uneasiness he felt.

If they had not been so desperately pressed for time, she had little doubt that Lucas would be at the Carnival After Dark, doing his best to get at whatever it was that Samantha was keeping to herself.

As it was, they simply had no time for anything but the concerted search for Lindsay.

"We should be able to see the building as soon as we top this rise," Champion breathed.

He was right. As they emerged from the dense forest surrounding them, the top of the rise showed them a moonlit clearing just ahead, with a dark, hulking building at its center.

This was the third property they had checked, so their responses as a team were becoming more certain; with barely a gesture wasted between them, they split up and moved cautiously across the clearing to the barn.

After the long journey to get here, it took no more than ten minutes for them to reach the barn-and see, from the two big doors that were open and half off their hinges, that no one was being held in this derelict place.

Still, they were all cops and all thorough, so they turned on their big flashlights and began to search the interior.

"Moldy hay," Jaylene said, her voice normal now. "Rusted farm equipment. And"-she stiffened but managed not to cry out when something skittered across her foot-"and rats."

"Okay?" Lucas asked her.

"Oh, yeah. I just hate rats, is all." She continued searching the old barn.

"Judging by all this junk, the building hasn't been used for anything but storage in decades," Champion said, his flashlight directed to one wall holding a hanging collection of rather lethal-looking farm implements.

"Hold on a second." Lucas had stopped near one corner, where an old stump-years dead, but still in the ground the barn had been built around-sprouted a rusted hatchet.

Champion said, "Probably used that to slaughter livestock at one time. Chickens, at least. For Sunday dinner."

"I doubt a farmer left this," Lucas said. "Take a look." When the other two joined him, he indicated the folded piece of paper wedged in between the edge of the hatchet and the stump.

While Jaylene held her flashlight steady, Lucas produced a small tool kit and used a pair of tweezers to carefully extract the note and then unfold it on the stump. And they could all see what was block-printed on the paper.