candles.
The camera flashed and the group of girls surrounding her clapped again.
'What did you wish for?' Preston asked.
'You know I can't tell you, Dad. Sheesh.'
'Why don't you girls run outside and play while I serve the cake and ice cream,' Jessie said. 'And after that we can open
'All right!' Savannah hopped out of the chair and merged into the herd of girls funneling out the back door into the yard. More laughter trailed in their wake.
Preston crossed the kitchen and closed the door behind them.
'So are all eight of them really spending the night here?' he asked, glancing out the window over the sink as he removed a stack of plates from the cupboard. The girls made a beeline toward the wooden jungle gym. One had already reached the ladder to the tree house portion and another slid down the slide.
'Do you really think the answer will change if you ask enough times, Phil?' She took the plates from her husband, set them on the table, and began to cut the cake. 'Besides, they'll be sleeping in the family room with a pile of movies. The most we'll hear from down the hall is a few giggles. Could you grab the ice cream from the freezer?'
'So what you're saying is they'll be distracted.' Preston eased up behind his wife, cupped her hips, and leaned into her.
She swatted his leg. 'With a houseful of kids? Are you out of your mind?'
'I wasn't proposing they watch.'
'Would you just get the ice---?'
The phone rang from the cradle on the wall.
Jessie elbowed him back, snatched the cordless handset, and answered while licking a dollop of frosting from her fingertip.
'Hello?'
Her smile vanished and her eyes ticked toward her husband.
'I'll take it in the study,' Preston said. He removed the gallon of Rocky Road from the freezer, set it on the table, and hurried down the hallway.
'He'll be right there,' Jessie said. Her voice faded behind him.
He ducked through the second doorway on the right and closed the door behind him. All trace of levity gone, he picked up the phone.
'Philip Preston,' he answered.
'Please hold for Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Moorehead,' a female voice said. There was a click and then silence.
Preston paced behind his desk while he waited. He pulled back the curtains and looked out into the yard. Two of the girls twirled a jump rope on the patio for a third, while several others fired down the slide. Savannah and another girl arced back and forth on the swings. He couldn't believe his little girl was already ten years-old. Where had the time gone? In a blink, she had gone from toddler to pre-teen. In less than that amount of time again, she would be off on her own, hopefully in college---
'Special Agent Preston,' a deep voice said. He could tell by his superior's tone that something bad must have happened.
Preston worked out of the Denver branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, thirty miles to the northeast of the bedroom community of Evergreen where he lived. The Lindbergh Law of 1932 gave the Crimes Against Children Division the jurisdiction to immediately investigate the disappearance of any child of 'tender age,' even before twenty-four hours passed and without the threat that state lines had been crossed. As a member of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment, or CARD, team, he was summoned to crime scenes throughout the states of Colorado and Wyoming, often before the local police. It was a depressing detail that caused such deep sadness that by the time he returned home, even his soul ached. But it was an important job, and at least at the end of the day, unlike so many he encountered through the course of his work, his wife and daughter were waiting for him with smiles and kisses in the insulated world he had created for them.
'Yes, sir.'
'Check your fax machine.'
'Yes, sir.' Preston allowed the curtains to fall closed and rounded his desk to where the fax machine sat on the corner. A stack of pages lay facedown on the tray. He grabbed them and took a seat in the leather chair, facing the computer. 'Okay. I have it now. What am I---?'
His words died as he flipped through the pages. They were copies of slightly blurry photographs, snapped from a distance through a telescopic lens. Even though they were out of focus and the subjects partially obscured by the branches of a mugo pine hedge, he recognized them immediately.
'I don't get it,' he whispered. 'Where did these come from?'
'They arrived in the mail here at the Federal Building today. Plain white envelope. No return address. A handful of partial fingerprints we're comparing against the database now. We're tracking the serial numbers on the film to try to determine where they were processed.'
There were a dozen pictures. One of him approaching a small white ranch-style house. Another of him standing on the porch, glancing back toward the street while he waited for the door to be answered. Several of him talking to a disheveled woman, Patricia Downey, mother of Tyson, who had disappeared five hours prior. He didn't need to check the date stamp to know that these had been taken nearly three months ago in Pueblo, just over a hundred miles south of Denver. No suspects. Loving mother and doting father, neither of whom had brushed with the law over anything more severe than a speeding ticket. Middle class, decent neighborhood. And an eight year-old boy who had never made it home from the elementary school only three blocks away on a Thursday afternoon.
'This doesn't make sense,' Preston said. 'Why would anyone take these pictures, let alone mail them to us?'
He parted the blinds again and looked out upon the back yard. Nine girls still giggled and played. Savannah swung high, launched herself from the seat, and landed in a stumble. She barely paused before clambering back into the swing.
'Look at the last one,' Moorehead said.
Preston's stomach dropped with those somber words. He shuffled past a series of pictures that showed him walking back to where he had parked at the curb after the hour-long interview with the Downeys.
'Jesus.'
His heart rate accelerated and the room started to spin.
In one motion, he removed his Beretta from the recess in his desk drawer and jerked open the curtains again. Little girls still slid and jumped rope, but only one swing was occupied. The one upon which his daughter had been sitting only moments earlier swung lazily to a halt. As did the branches of the juniper shrubs behind the swing set.
'No, no, no!' he shouted.
The phone fell from his hand and clattered to the floor beside the faxed pages, the top image of which featured a snapshot of his house from across the street, centered upon Savannah as she removed a bundle of letters from the mailbox.
He ran down the hall and through the kitchen.
'Phil!' Jessie called after him. 'What's going on?'
He burst through the back door and hit the lawn at a sprint, nearly barreling into one of the girls twirling the rope.
'Savannah!'
The activity around him slowed. Two of the girls stared down at him from the top of the slide, faces etched with fear. He ran to the girl on the swing, a dark-haired, pigtailed slip of a child, and took her by the shoulders.
'Where's Savannah?'
Startled, the girl could only shake her head.
Preston shoved away.
'Savannah!'
He shouldered through the hedge and hurdled the split-rail fence into the small field of wild grasses and
