something...wrong with the scene around him.
He reached the center of the clearing and used the coiled trunk of a pine to propel himself up to the top of the ring of stones. The ground inside was recessed, the inner stones staggered in such a way as to create a series of steps. And at the bottom, in the dirt, saved from the wind, was a jumble of scuff marks preserved by time. The aura of coldness seemed to radiate from within it.
'Dr. Grant,' Jeremy called from the tree line. 'We need a little help setting up this machine.'
'You're just trying to force that piece where it doesn't belong,' Breck said.
'Then you do it, Little Miss Know-It-All.'
Les sighed and climbed back down from what he had unconsciously begun to think of as a well, and headed back to join the group. For whatever reason, he dreaded assembling the magnetometer.
He suddenly feared what they would find.
II
Preston sat in his forest-green Jeep Cherokee, staring across the street toward the dark house. He couldn't bring himself to go in there. Not today. But he couldn't force himself to leave yet either. Once upon a time, it had been his home, a place filled with love and laughter. Now it was a rotting husk, a shadow of its former self. The white paint had begun to peel where it met the trim, and there were gaps in the roof where shingles had blown away. The hedges in the yard had grown wild and unkempt, the lawn feral.
His life had ended in that house. The world had collapsed in upon itself and left him with nothing but pain.
And it had been all his fault.
His child, the light of his life, had been stolen from him because of his involvement in a case, and he still didn't know why. Over the last six years, he had begun to piece together a theory. Unfortunately, that's all it was. A theory. Grasping at straws was what his superiors had called it before his termination. Over the past year, nearly eight hundred thousand children were reported missing. While most were runaways, more than a third of them were abducted by family members or close friends. Many of these children resurfaced over the coming weeks, while still others never did. It was the smallest segment, the children who vanished at the apparent hands of strangers, that was the focus of his attention. At least privately. Professionally, he performed his job better than he ever had. After Savannah's abduction, he had thrown himself into it with reckless abandon, and at no small personal sacrifice. On a subconscious level, he supposed he hoped that by helping to return the missing children to their frightened parents that the universe might see fit to return his to him. But there was more to it than that. It was a personal quest, an obsession, and it had finally led him to a pattern.
Factoring out all of the kidnappings for ransom, the abductions by estranged parents or family friends, and the crimes of opportunity, where the child was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, left Preston with a much smaller field to investigate. By narrowing his scope further to encompass only missing children from stable, two-parent, at least superficially loving homes, he winnowed the cases in his jurisdiction down to a handful each year. And of those, if he set the age range at Savannah's at the time of her disappearance, plus-or-minus three years, he was left with four cases annually over the past six and a half years. Not an average of four. Not three one year and five the next. Exactly four. And they were spread out by season. One child each year in the spring, another in the summer, a third in the fall, and a fourth in the winter. And all within two weeks of the four most important dates on the celestial calendar---the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices.
The kidnappings were the work of a single individual: The man who had stolen his daughter from him. The same man who had sent the photographs of him at the Downey house, who had been within fifty yards of him at a point in time when if Preston had known, he could have prevented the abduction of his cherished daughter, and the twenty-three children who came after her, with a single bullet.
Why could no one else see it? Why didn't they believe him?
Because he knew all too well that the parents of missing children would say or do anything if there was a chance of learning the fate of their son or daughter, even if it meant formulating a theory from a set of points that on paper appeared completely random, like forming constellations from the stars in the night sky.
Preston focused again on the house, but still couldn't bring himself to press the button on the garage door opener and pull the idling Cherokee inside. There was only solitude waiting for him within those walls, and the heartbreaking memories he was forced to endure with every breath he took. The house was a constant reminder of the greatest mistake of his life, but more than that, it was a beacon, the only location on the planet that Savannah had ever called her own. He still held out hope that wherever she was, one of these days she would simply appear from nowhere and return to her home. To him. It was the reason he would never allow himself to sell it. The one wish he allowed himself to pray would come true.
It was all he had.
He slid the gearshift into drive and headed south, pretending he didn't know exactly where he was going. Ten minutes later he was on the other side of town, parked in front of a Tudor-style two-story, upon which the forest encroached to the point of threatening to swallow it whole. Light shined through the blinds covering the windows. With a deep breath, he climbed out of the car and approached the porch.
The house positively radiated warmth, reminding him of what should have been. He pressed the doorbell and backed away from the door.
Shuffling sounds from the other side of the door, then a muffled voice.
'Just a second.'
The door opened inward. A woman stood in the entryway, cradling a swaddled baby in the crook of her left arm. She brushed a strand of blonde bangs out of her eyes with the back of her right hand, which held a bottle still dripping from recently being heated in boiling water.
'Hi, Jessie,' he said.
She still had the most amazing eyes he'd ever seen.
'Philip,' she whispered. 'You shouldn't be here.'
'He's beautiful, Jess.' He nodded to the baby. 'How old is he by now?'
'Phil...'
They stood in an awkward silence for several long moments.
'You remember what today is?' Preston finally asked.
'Of course,' she whispered. 'Do you honestly think I could ever forget?'
He shook his head and looked across the lawn toward the forest.
'What happened to us, Jess?'
'I'm not getting into this with you again.'
'Does he at least treat you well?'
'Who? Richard?' Anger flashed in her eyes. 'He's emotionally stable, physically available, and isn't hell-bent on his own systematic destruction. And I don't cringe when he touches me. What more could a girl want?'
'But does he make you happy?'
She sighed. 'Of course, Phil. I wouldn't have married him if he didn't.' The baby started to cry, and quickly received the bottle. Jessie shuffled softly from one foot to the other in a practiced motion Preston remembered well. Only it had been with a different child, in a different lifetime entirely. 'Why are you really here?'
'I needed to know that you were okay.' He glanced back at her and offered a weak smile before looking away again. It was still impossible to think of her as anything other than the woman he had loved for the better part of his life, since the first time he had laid eyes on her. It hurt deep down to think of her as anything other than his wife. 'That's all.'
He had to turn away so she wouldn't see the shimmer of tears in his eyes, and used the momentum to spur his feet back toward his car.
'Phil.'
He paused, blinked back the tears, and turned to face her again. Even with the recent addition of the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes, she was still the most stunning woman he had ever seen. And the baby seemed to make her glow. He couldn't bring himself to ask her his name.
