Dan Gleeson smiled at the man and the boy, a warm look of recognition on his face.

“Haven’t seen you in a blue moon.”

Sam Castile smiled. “Been a while. Nice to have some time off. Me and the boy are going out on the boat.”

“Weather’s been rough lately.”

“Yeah, it has.”

Dan looked at Max, who stood silently beside his father. “What can I get you? Turkey jerky? Healthy stuff, you know.”

Sam answered for Max. “Nope, we want the nastiest, greasiest corn dogs you’ve got rolling around that hot case of yours.” He looked at his boy; the kid was smiling ear to ear.

A girl behind the cash register rang up the sale as the store owner handed over a couple of corn dogs and packets of yellow mustard.

The man’s eyes landed on the counter. Light-blue flyers were stacked next to a pink one that advertised a food drive at the fire station later that week.

“The girl’s dad brought those in. Said I’d hand them out. Posted one on the bulletin board too.”

Sam’s heartbeat quickened, but he didn’t show a trace of concern. “Never a dull moment around here.”

“You got that right.”

He took a flyer and promised to post it. The headline was in big handwritten letters:

Have You Seen Her?

“Look familiar?” Dan Gleeson asked.

Sam shrugged and started for the door, his son trotting after him with a mouthful of nearly incandescent yellow mustard and batter-dipped hotdog. “The young pretty ones all look alike to me.”

“That they do.”

As he got in his vehicle, he noticed the blue flyer on the bulletin board flapping in the chilly breeze off the water.

Have You Seen Her?

He had.

No matter what she told Josh Anderson or Charlie Keller, Serenity decided that it was in her best personal and professional interest to hold back one little tidbit of information from both detective and editor. She didn’t feel particularly great about the lack of disclosure, but the tradeoff seemed worth it somehow. The anonymous caller had confided a detail that was tantalizing for a young reporter hoping to make a name for herself-and looking to find a way out from this dead-end job. What he had revealed was etched in her memory.

“I popped my cherry on another girl,” he’d said.

Serenity, at home at her kitchen table with the TV playing in the background, set down her pen. Was it truth or lie? Exaggeration or fact? The caller was hard to read with complete certainty. His voice was husky, foggy.

“What do you mean ‘popped a cherry’?” she asked, although she was familiar with the expression meaning to lose one’s virginity. But this man hadn’t really been talking about sex: although he’d described what he’d done to the dead girl, it had been about violating her.

His pleasure, it was clear, was her pain. Her death was his orgasm.

“Done it before,” he’d said. “Will most likely keep doing it. Until I get it right, Ms. Hutchins.”

His words blasted a chill down her spine. He said her name, and it startled her. Of course, he’d sought her out, dialed her number. Wanted to tell her. Even so, that he had used her name to conclude the conversation seemed so personal.

Ms. Hutchins.

The pervert was slightly polite, which unnerved her even more.

April 19, 1:15 a.m.

South Colby

She was naked, running through the deep green of the forest. Overhead, she could see the contrails of a jet scratching the powder-blue sky. Could the people in the plane see her? She ran faster, her arms working like pistons as she propelled herself up an incline between a hemlock and a fir. Where to hide? Who could help her? Sweat oozed from her pores, and she ran faster and faster. Would she have a heart attack? Would she fall to the ground into the black mud, be sucked into the mire, lost forever? The woman was screaming as loud as she could, but it was for naught. There was no one to hear her screams. At one point she dared to look behind her, and she could see the form of a man rushing toward her.

“Help me! Help!”

“Babe, what is it?”

Kendall shot up in their bed; her husband had turned on the light and was putting his hand on her drenched shoulder.

“Oh,” she said, realizing where she was. Who she was. “Oh, Steven, it was so real.”

“A bad dream?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking out across the black waters of Yukon Harbor through the window, its antique glass rippling the view.

“Yes. I was running from someone.”

“You’re safe now.”

She blotted her face with the sleeve of her robe. “I know, but it was so real.”

“Just a dream,” he repeated.

Kendall knew he was correct, of course, but she didn’t tell him the part of the dream that seemed so troubling, so very disconcerting. It wasn’t that she was running from someone. She wasn’t herself in the dream at all. Kendall was sure that the woman in her dream was Celesta Delgado.

“I’m going to get some water,” she said, heading toward the door.

As the tap ran, Kendall thought of the woman she would never meet. Coworkers at Azteca adored her. The owner of the brush shed had not one single harsh word for the young woman. And, of course, Tulio Pena had insisted from the very beginning that something very dark had occurred that afternoon in the woods. The clump of hair all but confirmed it.

She drained her glass, set it next to the sink, and went back to the bedroom, stopping only for a moment to check on Cody. She wondered if her son’s mind ever conjured up such frightening images as she just had. Were his dreams empty, blank? Was autism a cocoon that kept a person buffered from the pain of the world around them?

Is it better to know fear, she asked herself as she pulled up the covers next to Steven, who was fast asleep, so that you can appreciate love and the safety of those around you?

In her job as a detective, Kendall had seen terror and its opposite over and over. She wasn’t sure if she had the answer to her own question.

The row of flowering cherry trees had dropped a blushing blanket of snowing petals on the ground outside the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Several cars circled the front of the building trying to find a place to park in response to TV reports that a Navy aircraft carrier was coming into Bremerton that morning. A small group of people, Kendall Stark among them, gathered to observe the ship as it came into view. She stood with coffee cup in hand, feeling rushed and tired at the same time. She wore tan slacks, a crisp white shirt, and an ice-blue sweater, her hair a little more spiked than she liked, given a night of slumber interrupted by the dream of the frightened young woman.

Later, Kendall would recall the dream, wondering if it had been something more than the workings of a mind trying to solve a problem.

Serenity Hutchins, clunky old newspaper-issue Nikon camera in hand, nodded at Kendall as their paths crossed in front of the Kitsap County Administration Building.

“Here to take some shots of the carrier?”

Serenity smiled. “That and whatever else they tell me to do. Jesus, I know Keller won’t run this story anyway-not if there’s some major breaking news about a missing llama in Olalla or something.”

Kendall retuned the smile. “Nice job on the Delgado story.”

“Thanks. Any update?”

Kendall shook her head. “I’ll let you know. But between you and me, nothing.”

“I got another call from the weirdo the other day, saying he knew something. I called Josh-Detective Anderson-about it.”

“I heard,” Kendall said. “I’m sorry that you’ve been getting those. It can be very upsetting. I know.”

Serenity slung the camera strap over her shoulder. “Our jobs are sort of alike in that regard, Detective.”