'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 clusters of scrub oak that separated the houses in this area of the subdivision.
'Savannah!'
A crunching sound behind him.
He whirled to see Jessie emerge from the junipers down the sightline of his pistol.
'What's wrong?' she screamed. 'Where's Savannah?'
She must have read his expression, the panic, the sheer terror, and clapped her hands over her mouth.
Preston turned back to the field, tears streaming down his cheeks, trembling so badly he could barely force his legs to propel him deeper into the empty field toward the rows of fences and the gaps between them where paths led to the neighboring streets.
'Savannah!'
His voice echoed back at him.
He fell to his knees, rocked back, and bellowed up into the sky.
'Savannah!'
ONE
June 20th
Present Day
I
'How much farther?' Lane Thomas asked. He swiped the sweat from his red face with the back of his hand.
Dr. Lester Grant had grown weary of the question miles ago. These graduate students were supposed to be the future of anthropology, and here they were braying like downtrodden mules.
'We're nearly there,' Les said, comparing the printout of the digital photograph to the surrounding wilderness.
It was the summer session, so rounding up volunteers had been a chore, even though the opportunity to be published in one of the academic journals should have had them chomping at the bit. Granted, they had left the University of Wyoming in Laramie several hours before the sun had even thought about rising and driven for nearly three hours before they reached the end of the pavement and the rutted dirt road that wended up into the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains. Another hour of navigating switchbacks and crossing meadows where the road nearly disappeared entirely, and they reached the foot of the game trail that the hiker who had emailed him the photographs had said would be there. That was nearly two hours ago now. They'd taken half a dozen breaks already, and would be lucky if they'd managed to reach the three mile mark.
'Can we switch off again?' Jeremy Howard asked in a nasal, whiny tone. 'Breck's making it so that I'm bearing all of the weight.'
'Give me a break,' the blonde, Breck Shaw, said. She hefted the handles of the crate they carried between them for emphasis, causing Jeremy to stumble.
'That's enough,' Les snapped. They were adults, for God's sake. Sure, the crate containing the university's magnetometer was quite heavy, but they all had to pay their dues, as he once had himself.
They proceeded in silence marred by the crackle of detritus underfoot.
The path had faded to the point that it was nearly non-existent. At first, it had been choppy with the hoof
