“I take it you haven’t rustled up a likely suspect over the phone,” Harlene said.

He grunted. “I eliminated the ones I knew who were too old or too married for the girl, but there are still a lot of names on the list.”

“Being older and being married’s not necessarily going to stop a girl.”

He looked at her sharply. Her face was bland. “I had to do something to whittle the size of the pool down, or I’ll be here all day. There are just too damn many McWhorters.”

“Before you start in on the McWhorters, I’ll remind you my mother was a McWhorter before she wed.”

“So was my maternal grandmother. I’m sure you and I are related somehow.”

Harlene patted her springy gray curls. “You can tell by our resemblance.” Harlene was a good ten years older and a head shorter than he, as straight and square as a weathered wooden plank.

“We-e-ell,” he temporized. “I’ll ask my mom. You know how she is. Loves all that genealogy stuff.” The idea waltzed in on the heels of his statement. “My mother.”

“What about her?”

“You know how she is,” he repeated. “What does she love even more than genealogy?”

“All her causes. Save the whales and get out the vote and all that.”

“Exactly. She’s president of the local branch of the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. And I’ll bet five bucks for the doughnut kitty that she knows a thing or two about our missing girl. Eugene van der Hoeven said his sister had met with the local ACC members.” He stood. “I’m going to my mother’s house. I’ll keep my truck radio on in case anyone needs to reach me.”

His dispatcher eyeballed his baggy camos and long-sleeved thermal T-shirt. “If you’re going to go on duty, you ought to check out a squad car and get changed. You still keep the spare uniform down in the evidence locker, don’t you?”

He waved her suggestion away. “As soon as I get a lead on this Michael McWhorter, I’m out of here. I plan to spend the afternoon reading a good thriller.”

She snorted. “Now I know you’re over the hill. Taking the day off when there’s a live case to work? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

There was cold air. The smell of earth. And blood. Where was she? The pain made it hard to think. Becky tried to take a deep breath to clear her head, but the movement jolted her sides as if someone had touched her with a live wire. Little, shallow breaths, then. Dog-panting.

She opened her eyes. Her face was half in the dirt. She could see the road, and beyond that, tree trunks, bracken, and dead leaves. The angle was wrong. It made her feel queasy. She shut her eyes. She pressed against the ground, trying to shift her weight. Her arms shook. With a stabbing pain, she rolled onto her back.

She didn’t want to move; she didn’t want to think; she didn’t want to be in her body right now. She stared into the sky. Why was the November sky, even on a sunny day, so much less blue than in October? In October, it always felt like she could reach up and touch the sky. Now, high and pale, it had retreated to the edge of the world. Soon it would snow.

The noontime sun shone straight overhead, warming her and the rocks and the dirt indiscriminately. But this was mid-November, and the sun was like a ball tossed in the sky, quick up and quick down. Within a few hours, it would be growing dark. And cold. When the sun set, the temperatures would sink below freezing. She ached so badly, she wanted to lie in the dirt and the sunshine and pretend that her dad would discover her at any moment. But she couldn’t count on that.

She rolled over again. Palms flat against the ground, she pushed herself, shoulders up, rump up, until she was on her hands and knees. She would get herself to her car. She wasn’t too far, maybe a hundred yards, maybe two hundred. If she could make it to her car, she could roll it down to the county highway. There would be traffic there, people that would stop at the sight of a woman with a bloody head. She could use the cell phone hanging off its charger.

She crawled downhill. Small rocks bit through the knees of her jeans, adding an undercurrent of teeth-gritting pain to the constant, throbbing ache that was her head and the sharp electrical jolts whenever she breathed too deeply or moved the wrong way. She inched forward, and forward, and forward, in a haze of pain and sweat and dirt and sunshine, and when she paused to see how far she had come she almost wept.

She wasn’t more than fifteen feet from where she started.

Think. What if she tried to walk? It would hurt, sure, with her broken ribs, but it already hurt crawling. At least she’d get to her car before sunset. Recalling that ribs were supposed to remain stable, she sat back on her heels and wrapped her arms around herself. Then slowly, ponderously, she staggered to her feet. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. She bared her teeth in a half smile, half grimace. Took a step. Took another. Her mind supplied her with an inane song from one of those Christmas shows that ran every year. Put one foot in front of the other. Down the road. Around the bend.

Where her car should have been, there was nothing.

A part of her mind that was well away from the pain noted that her Albany friends were right. She shouldn’t have left her keys in the car.

She wrapped her arms more tightly around her. She was cold, cold from the inside out, her feet and fingers almost numb. Okay. She was headed for the county highway. She’d just have to walk, that’s all.

So she walked. Put one foot in front of the other. She walked a yard, two yards, three. Made it past another bend in the road. Her head swam, and for a moment everything darkened, but she breathed, and the world came back into view. She was tired. So tired. She had to sit and rest. For just a moment. She sank onto the road, bracing herself with one hand. “Help,” she called tentatively. She took a deeper breath. “Help!” Noticeably louder. “Help!” she screamed, causing a group of crows to burst out of the trees and wheel through the clear sky above the road before disappearing up the mountain. “Help! Help! Help!” she howled, until the woods around her echoed with the sound.

Enough. Get to the road. She rolled to her knees and pushed against the dirt, trying to leverage herself up again. She felt a hot pain, biting and chewing at her guts. Deep inside her, something tore loose-oh, that’s not good, that’s not good, she thought and then everything tilted and a stream of dark bubbles roared up around her head and she was gone.

Shaun Reid stood in his office, considering the rest of his life. He had driven all the way home from his AllBanc meeting only to idle in the driveway, staring at his garage door, wondering what was the matter with him. Why the hell couldn’t he take the money and run? Terry McKellan was right: He’d have enough bucks to retire and live in style with his gorgeous young wife. Hell, he was still young himself, by today’s standards. Fifty was just breaking middle age. He had thirty, thirty-five years ahead of him if he watched his cholesterol and kept active.

That prospect was like looking into a puzzle box picture, where an endless series of boxes opened before him, and each box was a gray and empty room. He reversed out of his driveway and drove to the mill, down streets he had driven for thirty years. More, if you counted the times he had been sitting in the seat next to his dad.