She had driven to this spot in the middle of County Road nowhere, parked obediently where Officer Durkee directed her, and sat patiently in her Shelby while Russ escorted Debba past the halogen-light poles shoved upright in the snowbanks on the opposite side of the road and the two of them disappeared into the shadows leading toward the reservoir.

But when the cars and pickups and SUVs started to arrive, stringing along the edge of the narrow roadside and disgorging members of the volunteer fire department, it suddenly struck her: Maybe Allan Rouse really was alive, injured, disoriented, slowly freezing to death in the snowy woods. And here she was, sitting on her tail in her comfy car while other people prepared to turn out and look for him. It wasn’t so much that she decided to volunteer, but that she was out of the car, pulling on her hat, before she decided not to.

“You. Were in the army.” Huggins squinted at her. He unsnapped a kangaroo pouch on his anorak and pulled out a topographical map, similar to the ones his men were spreading out over the hood of his truck. He folded it open and handed it to her. “Can you locate us on this map?”

The moon was near full, spotlighting down on them all when it wasn’t covered by fast-skimming stratocumulus clouds promising more snow. Of course, the search and rescue boys all had flashlights trained on their maps. She glanced over at them, then squatted down, her back to the warm artificial lights, and let her eyes adjust to the moon’s hard brightness. She scanned the map, flipped it over, unfolded it, and located the road and the reservoir. “Here,” she said, rising and holding the map out to Huggins.

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “Can you show me the inside and outside search boundaries?”

This guy wasn’t as much of an amateur as she had taken him for. “What’s the average walking speed in snow?” she asked. At his expression, she said, “I trained for warm-weather operations. Desert Storm. The Philippines.”

“Say two miles an hour.”

“Do you have a grease pencil?”

Huggins fished inside his big pocket and handed her one. She knelt in the crushed and dirty snow and spared a moment to thank her brother Brian, who had sent her the ripstop snow pants she wore. Then she did the math in her head, read the contour lines of the map, and drew in two circles, smoothly rounded over the reservoir, jagged where they followed the lines of the hills around them.

She got to her feet and handed the map to Huggins. He studied it. He looked at her. “Why’d you include the reservoir?” he said.

“It’s not fifty feet from the road right here. Dr. Rouse could have walked out, thinking he was getting clear of the trees, and-” Huggins was shaking his head. “No?”

“Well, yeah, he may have wandered out there, if he was disoriented. But we’re not going out there.”

“Isn’t it still frozen over? I heard the ice doesn’t leave most of these lakes until mid-April.” Clare surreptitiously flexed her toes inside her boots to help ward off the chill. Next time, wool socks.

“Parts of it may still be a few feet thick,” Huggins said. “But the temperature’s gone above freezing more’n once over the past week. And we’ve had rain. There’ll be rotten spots all over the surface. Too much risk of…” He made an expressive gesture indicating someone falling through ice.

“Oh.”

“Tell you what. You say you came out with Chief Van Alstyne?”

“I drove the woman who was out here with Dr. Rouse.” Huggins’s eyebrows went up, and she realized how that sounded. “I mean, she was the last person to have seen him. They were, um, visiting the cemetery.”

“Don’t worry,” Huggins said, “I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years now and I’ve seen it all. Doesn’t matter to me what folks do. I only come in if they get lost after doing it.” He spread the map open again. “I’ll give you this section, along the reservoir edge. It’ll be easy viewing and less chance of you stepping into a woodchuck hole and breaking your leg. Seeing as how you trained for warm-weather operations. Hey, Duane!”

A mustachioed man in a Day-Glo orange parka detached himself from the rest of the team. “Duane, this is Clare Fergusson. She’s been trained for search and rescue by the army.”

She forcibly squashed her irritation and reminded herself that Huggins was doing her a favor by letting her help. Calling him a Neanderthal wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Besides, he probably thought it meant a brand of German beer.

Duane nodded at her, then looked at her more closely, interested. “Are you Reverend Clare Fergusson? The priest?”

“She’s a priest?” The disbelief in Huggins’s voice would have been priceless if she hadn’t been worried he was going to turn her down for sure now. “I been a Catholic my whole life. There aren’t any women priests.”

“Ah, I guess you haven’t been to mass lately, have you?” She let the shot hit home as she turned to Duane. “Have we met?”

“No, no, but I work part-time as a patrol officer. In Millers Kill. I’ve heard a lot about you at the station house.”

Huggins was now looking uncertainly at her, as if wondering what other surprises were forthcoming. “You don’t have a record, do you?” He looked up at Duane. “Has she been in trouble?”

“She hasn’t been arrested or anything.” Clare thought that answer artfully sidestepped the question. “She’s a good friend of Chief Van Alstyne.”

Oh, crud. She could see on Huggins’s face the same expression he had shown when she stumbled over her description of Dr. Rouse and Debba. “Ah,” he said. “You know Russ from his army days?” Evidently he had just decided to ignore the whole priest thing. Too much to try to fit in.

“Nope,” she said. She was saved from further explanation by a pair of headlights coming toward them. Huggins stepped into the road and waved his light back and forth. The vehicle, a Chevy Suburban with skis racked on top, slowed to a halt. The driver unrolled the window. “What’s up?” he said. Clare could see a woman and a couple of teens in the car.

“A man’s gone missing along this stretch,” Huggins said. “Mid-sixties, about my height, gray hair. You haven’t seen anyone, have you?”

The driver shook his head. “Sorry. We’re heading home from Hidden Valley.” He pointed toward the roof. “Last ski trip of the season.”

“Where’s home for you folks?”

“New York City.”

“Okay, drive safe.”

“Thanks.” The Suburban’s window scrolled up and the car resumed its trip down the mountain.

“Flatlanders,” Huggins said. “That’s the third group so far tonight. Nine times out of ten, when we’re called for search and rescue, it’s one of them. I don’t go down to the city and get lost and make them come looking for me. I don’t see why they can’t return the favor.” He looked at Clare. “You’re from away, too, aren’t you?”

Hardball Wright had been a big believer in retreating to a ground of your own choosing. She decided now was the time, before she got lumped in with all the other incompetent flatlanders. “Do you want me to take that waterfront stretch now, or do I need to wait until you’ve organized the rest of the team?” She gestured toward the Jeep, where the map meeting had evidently ended.

He followed her hand, saw the men waiting for him to be done with her. “The waterfront. Yeah.” He marked off a section rounding the edge of the reservoir and handed her the map. “Duane, give her a walkie-talkie and a flashlight.” Duane handed over the goods. She shoved the walkie-talkie in her parka pocket and switched on the flashlight, testing it. “Walk slowly,” Huggins went on, thankfully sounding less interested in her relationship with the police chief and more like a man delivering a well-rehearsed spiel. “Better to cover less ground thoroughly than more ground and miss something. You see anything, give a squawk. You get into trouble, give a squawk. We’re on-what channel are we on, Duane?”