Kevin didn’t have an answer. It was all hypothetical, after all, and the Brain preferred stats.

“Cell phone?” Wyatt asked.

That Kevin could handle: “Recovered one from beneath the dash, registered in the driver’s name. That’s it.”

Wyatt considered the implications. “Do you know any kids who don’t have cell phones?” he asked Kevin.

“Me? You’re assuming I know kids.”

“Your nieces, nephews . . .”

“Sure, they all have iPods, smartphones, whatever. Generally speaking, it’s in our own best interest to keep some kind of electronic device in their hands. Otherwise they might talk to us.”

“So assuming our kid is a nine- to thirteen-year-old girl, it’s probable she also has a phone, in which case . . .” He tried to think of how to best put it into words. “Why not use it? Why not simply stay inside the car, where at least it’s relatively dry, and call for help, for herself, for her mom, instead of heading out into a storm? We have a cell signal?”

Kevin nodded. “Driver’s phone shows the service provider to be Verizon. Same as me, and I have four bars.”

“So it’s not that she couldn’t call. But maybe . . .”

He was trying to think it through, put himself in a scared girl’s shoes. Kids could be resourceful, tougher than you thought. He knew that from both professional and personal experience.

“Poor girl’s adrenal system had to have been screaming fight or flight,” Kevin offered up. “Maybe she chose flight.”

“Or maybe she’s hurt, too. Hit her head, disoriented.” Frankly the possibilities were endless. Which made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t help but picture Sophie, nine years old, already been through hell and back, with her thousand-yard stare. In this situation, what would she have done? Given her reputation, probably retrieved her mom from the front seat and dragged her up the muddy ravine with her bare hands. She was that kind of kid.

And she didn’t hate him. She just didn’t smile at him. Or talk to him. Or acknowledge his existence in any meaningful manner. But that was okay. The battle was still early and he had many more tricks up his sleeve. Maybe.

“Let’s follow up on a possible cell phone,” Wyatt said. “Contact the driver’s service provider, see if there’s any other names attached to the calling plan, you know, like a family plan or something. Because if she has a phone . . .”

“We can track it,” Kevin filled in.

“And where there’s a cell phone . . .”

“There’s a teenage kid attached to it.”

“Exactly.”

Happy to have finally offered up something useful, Wyatt continued with his cursory inspection of the wreck. He passed around to the driver’s side door, where the spiderwebbed glass had shattered out, onto the ground. Maybe hit by the driver’s elbow from the inside. Or pounded out by her fist as she desperately sought escape.

He peered inside. As was consistent with most front-end collisions, the dashboard had been compromised, the steering column shoved into the driver’s seat. He could make out a tangle of unspooled seat belt, which would indicate the driver had been wearing one at the time of impact, then removed it in order to make her escape. Must’ve been tricky for the driver to extricate herself from such a mess, he thought. Especially given her own likely injuries—foot or ankle fractures from stomping the brakes in a futile attempt not to go sailing into the abyss, knee damage from the collapsing front dash, or even bruising to the stomach, ribs, shoulders, from the seat belt. He’d seen drivers burn their hands on the deploying airbags, break their thumbs on the steering wheel, crush their sternums against the steering column.

And this crash had been a hard one. He could tell by one more distinct clue: blood. Lots of it. Staining the steering wheel, smeared across the dash, printing the back of the light-silver seat, the top of the door. The driver had been bleeding, probably lacerated in several areas given the large shards of broken clear glass—the scotch bottle—and smaller tinted pebbles from the shattered safety windows. He could make out entire bloody handprints where she’d obviously sought leverage, grabbing the dash, the edge of the seat, something, trying to haul herself out.

He wondered if she’d been unconscious for the bulk of the crash. Passed out driving one moment. Woke up wrecked the next. Or had it been worse than that? Had she regained consciousness just as her vehicle went airborne? Screamed? Tried frantically to apply her brakes? Or reached back reflexively for her daughter, as if at this late date, she could somehow undo the terrible mistake she’d obviously made?

Wyatt couldn’t decide. Maybe he respected the driver’s efforts to drag herself out of the wreckage and crawl back to the road in order to seek help for her child. But then again, wasn’t that kind of like respecting the arsonist for escaping the burning building?

He frowned, his gaze falling on the gear shift, which sat in neutral, instead of drive as you’d expect. He glanced over his shoulder at Kevin.

“Anyone been inside the car?”

“No.”

“Turn off the engine?”

“Nah, must’ve stalled out. I don’t know. Todd was first one on the scene. Once he heard about the kid, that’s been our focus.”

Wyatt nodded; protecting life always took precedent. “Gear’s in neutral,” he commented.

Kevin’s turn to think. “Shifter might’ve been bumped? Lots of things bang around during impact. Loose objects, purses, elbows. Or maybe the driver, while trying to wriggle herself free, knocked it into neutral.”

“Maybe.” Wyatt straightened, not completely satisfied, but now was not the time. Later, after the vehicle had been towed from the site, when entire doors and whole seats had been meticulously removed and sent to the state’s lab for testing, then they’d get down to it. The position of the driver’s seat. The mirrors. Imprint from right hand here; imprint from left hand there. Not to mention the Total Station analysis as well as the stats recovered from the electronic data recorder. An accident like this wasn’t reconstructed in a matter of hours, but in a matter of days, if not weeks.

But they would do it. Thoroughly. Meticulously. So the whole world could know what a Glenlivet-swilling mother had done to herself and her child one dark and stormy night.

As if on cue, Wyatt heard barking from above. Canine unit had arrived.

He straightened, stepping away from the vehicle, glancing at his watch instead.

Eight twenty-two A.M. Approximately three hours and fifteen minutes after first callout, they had an accident still to investigate and, more important, a child yet to find.

In the end, he decided, all paths led in the same direction. Back up the muddy ravine, to the silver ribbon of road, where this tragedy had first started and where the search dog now waited.

He and Kevin started climbing.

Chapter 3

L OOK AT ME , Mommy! Look! I can fly.”

She runs away from me, arms stuck straight out from her sides, rosebud mouth supplying the appropriate airplane noises. I admire her long dark hair bouncing behind her, as her little legs chug around the tiny space.

I wonder if I’d been this energetic when I’d been her age. Or this brave as she leaps over one obstacle, weaves expertly around the next.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I already know the answer to this question and it’s better off left alone.

Enjoy this moment. Four-year-old Vero, learning to fly.

She giggles, revving up now, gaining momentum. And the sound of her joy lifts the weight off my own chest. She turns a corner, around the ragged brown sofa—stuffing coming up through a tear, someone should fix that, should I have fixed that?—and I can see her face, chubby cheeks flushed pink, gray eyes bright beneath thick lashes, as she zeroes in on her target and heads straight for me.