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.
'Are you all right?' she asked.
He shook his head, releasing streams of tears down his cheeks. No, he would never be all right ever again.
'Do you still blame me, Jessie?'
'You invited the danger into our home, whether intentionally or not,' she whispered. 'I will always blame you.'
'So will I,' he said, and struck off toward his car again. 'I hope you have a good life, Jess. You deserve to be happy.'
He heard her start to softly cry as she closed the door.
'Don't ever let him out of your sight,' Preston said. 'Ever.'
His heart broke once more as he walked away from the love of his life.
III
Les stood beside one of the cairns in the outer ring and watched his students perform their tasks as they had been taught. Jeremy guided the magnetometer in straight lines between the short walls that formed the spokes of the wagon wheel design. He wore the sensing device's harness over his shoulders and held the receptor, which looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner, a foot above the ground. It interpreted the composition of the ground based on its magnetic content, and forwarded its readings into a program on Les's laptop that created a three- dimensional map of the earth to roughly ten meters in depth. Every type of rock had varying content of ferrous material and left a different magnetic signature, as did extinguished campfires, the foundations of prehistoric ruins, and various artifacts lost through the ages. Often, one ancient site was built upon another when a more modern culture eclipsed its forebear, like the Acropolis in Athens rose from the rubble of a Mycenaean megaron. If there was an older structure beneath this one, they would be able to find and map it without so much as brushing away the topsoil, but of greater importance were the relics left behind by the Native Americans who had meticulously crafted this ornate design. Hopefully, these buried clues would provide some indication of the function of the medicine wheel, the identity of its creators, and the reason it had been erected in the first place.
The magnetometer would also serve a secondary function he had chosen not to vocalize. Primitive societies often built cairns to mark the burial mounds of individuals of significance. If there were indeed corpses interred under their feet, then the magnetometer would reconstruct their unmistakable signals as well in hazy shades of gray. Fortunately, they had yet to isolate any remains. Based on the condition of the stones and the level of preservation, he feared any bodies they discovered might not be as ancient as he might prefer.
So far, the only signals had come from rocks under the soil, in no apparent pattern and of varying mineral content, save one square object roughly a foot down, midway between where he stood now and the central ring of stones. Breck and Lane had cordoned off the square-yard above it with string and long metal tent pegs, and had
