“I don’t. I need it. Fuel.”

  Kerri smiled faintly. “The best kind.”

  “No news?”

  “You’ve been there all night. You’d have heard my radio.”

  Valerie knew it to be true, but sometimes fear could make a person ridiculous. She was being ridiculous. She was also feeling resentful, angry and impatient. What the hell were all those people doing out there? Looking? Or getting too weary to see? Her stomach churned.

  When the coffee finished brewing, she carried two cups to the living room and handed one to Kerri. “I should have asked if black is okay.”

  “It’s great. Thank you.”

  Valerie resumed her watch of the street outside, waiting for some sheriff’s vehicle that wasn’t going to show.

  She spoke again. “When does Gage Dalton get to the office?”

  “Usually around eight.”

  Valerie nodded and glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes. Her decision made, she dumped her coffee in the kitchen sink.

  “I’m going out,” Valerie said to Kerri. “If she wakes, tell May I’m checking on things.”

  Kerri simply nodded.

  Dressed in a fresh black slack suit, one free of dog fur, she set out for the sheriff.

  Gage Dalton’s story was known all over town and Conard County, even to people who had been too young to have remembered it when it had happened. A former undercover agent for the DEA, he’d seen his wife and kids blown up by a car bomb that had been intended for him. That had also burned him badly.

  When he’d arrived in Conard County, apparently a friend of the old sheriff, he’d been a man lost in a bleak abyss. Living in a room above Mahoney’s bar, he’d established a nightly routine: one drink followed by an endless walk along empty night streets. Hate and despair had burned in his dark eyes, frightening away anyone who might have spoken to him.

  Back then the locals had called him hell’s own archangel.

  Then Emmaline Conard, the local librarian, had drawn him steadily back into the light. Into the world of the living. Had brought smiles to his face.

  Valerie was certain the grief had never left him, the guilt must have remained, but he’d reconstructed his life.

  Now he was known as the new sheriff, despite all the years he’d held the position, but this county had loved the old sheriff too much to let go of him entirely. Now they loved their new sheriff, too. They certainly admired him.

  But this would be the first time they met on equal footing, her being a cop, too. A detective.

  One who wasn’t going to sit on her hands, able to do nothing but try to comfort her sister.

  One who was determined to get involved or there’d be hell to pay.

  * * *

  GUY REDWING SAT in the mobile command post, radios crackling around him, questions coming at him like annoying mosquitoes. No news yet.

  He sipped the coffee someone had brought him. It was cold now, as cold as his heart. The little girl still hadn’t been found. No trace of her anywhere.

  A local Amber Alert had gone out yesterday, but no one held any hope that it would bring news. The child couldn’t have wandered that far, far enough that someone who didn’t know her might see her. The worst fear was that she was alone in the range that surrounded Conard City.

  The sun was rising and hope was dying as a new day dawned. They’d keep looking but he was beginning to believe that they’d find Lizzie Chamberlain’s body out there. When they found her.

  But the longer the little girl remained missing, the more he began to have a darker thought: kidnapping. Like it or not, they were going to have to start looking at that possibility, even without a ransom note or phone call. And there could be other reasons besides a ransom for stealing a child, all horrifying to contemplate. As soon as he got to the office, he was extending the Amber Alert if Gage hadn’t already.

  He rose after the day became fully bright. He shook off fatigue and turned to his second-in-command, an experienced deputy named Connie Parish. “I need to get home and change. I probably smell like a wet dog that’s been rolling in poop.”

  Connie smiled faintly. “Not quite that bad, Guy. But go. You’ll be back just in time for the food train.”

  And train it would be, Guy thought as he stepped outside into the chilly air. People from all over would be showing up with food to lay out on long folding tables. As searchers switched out, coming in for a break, they’d be starving and cold. Exhausted, too.

  And Maude, the owner of the City Café, would be arriving with yet another truckload of insulated carafes of coffee. Bless her.

  At home in his small apartment, he showered and changed into a fresh uniform. He tied his long black hair back with a leather thong. One thing he refused to get rid of.

  Despite his promotion to detective, he still wore the uniform of a deputy. He was Native American and had met prejudice all his life, but that uniform helped a bit to grease the wheels in his professional dealings with the people he was sworn to protect. People he was sworn to serve who hated him merely because he wasn’t White. The irony didn’t escape him.

  Nor did a bitter anger, which he tamped down as far as he could. It rose again when he faced overt prejudice, but he’d learned to keep a smooth face even when he wanted to punch someone. Life’s lessons well and painfully learned.

  Some among his own family didn’t approve of him either. They saw him as a sellout.

  Straddling the fence could be painful sometimes.

  Then he shook his head, grabbed his windbreaker and headed for his official Suburban, a tan monster covered with road dust, in need of a good washing. The words To Serve and Protect seemed to mock him from where they were painted on the vehicle’s side. Yeah. Okay then.

  He rubbed grit from his tired eyes and told himself to quit the pity party. He’d made his choices and he lived with them. This BS was emerging only because he was so weary and worried.

  Before he’d even backed out of his driveway, his radio crackled to life with his call sign. He was too tired to feel even a small lift of hope as he heard the dispatcher, Velma.

  “You better get to the office,” Velma said in her smoke-roughened voice. “Seems like there might be a little problem. I just know Gage wants to see you yesterday.”

  “Hell,” he said, not caring if Velma heard it, not caring if every police radio for miles around heard it.

  What now?

  * * *

  VALERIE WAS CERTAIN that she was adding to the unpleasantness of Gage Dalton’s morning, but she didn’t care. She was past caring about anything except getting her niece back from the clutches of wild nature, or the clutches of some kidnapper.

  Because she couldn’t ignore the possibility of kidnapping, not when so many people were out there looking at the area around the town and into the scrub that surrounded it.

  Her niece wasn’t out there. Lizzie was lost, all right, but after the cold night just past, the idea of a kidnapping offered some hope, meager as it was. If anyone found Lizzie out there now amongst the grasses, in the uneven and treacherous terrain, they weren’t apt to find her alive.

  “It’s got to be a kidnapping,” she said, aware of Detective Redwing sitting beside her as they both looked at Sheriff Dalton across his desk. “No one’s seen any sight of her. No clue as to her whereabouts.”

  Dalton’s face had been burned on one side, shiny with old scar tissue that kept him from moving one side of his mouth and the eyebrow above one eye. It was a constant, scalding reminder to those who saw him. It was the face that must remind him every morning, as he stood before the bathroom mirror, of the wife and children he had lost through betrayal of his true identity.

  But Gage had clearly learned to live with it. Learned to live with the pain that made him wince sometimes when he moved.

  “You know we’re doing everything we can, Detective.” Acknowledging her experience.

  It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I know about the search parties. They’ve come up with nothing. What about kidnapping?”

  He leaned forward, wincing, and picked up a pencil, tapping the eraser end on his desk. “There are a few problems with that.”

  “There’s one hell of a big problem with all of this.” Her hands tightened. She was not about to be sidelined or dismissed.

  “I don’t disagree. But there’s no evidence of an intruder in your sister’s house. None. So we’re left with a problem, as in how did anyone remove that child from her crib?”

  Good question, much as Valerie hated to admit it. “We need to investigate the possibility anyway. And I want to be part of that investigation.”

  “You’re talking about some truly ugly things here. You’re a detective. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, hating what he hadn’t said. That mothers do sometimes kill their own children. That fathers too often kidnapped them after a divorce. To get even. To assuage the bitterness and anger that could come from both rejection and from losing full custody. There would have to be an investigation of both May and her ex-husband.

  His voice gentled. “You also don’t need me to tell you that you’re much too involved in this. That you could wear blinders and not know it. Like right now, you’re sitting there convinced that neither May nor Chet could be involved.”

  He was right and she prickled a bit, but she knew something else. “I’ll look under every rock. Right now everyone is a suspect.”

  Gage nodded slowly and turned his attention to Guy Redwing. “How do you feel about Valerie becoming involved?”

  Valerie looked at the face of the man beside her. A strong face with high cheekbones that broadcast his ancestry. She didn’t think about what that might mean for him. Didn’t give a thought to the fact that he might feel she was in some way denigrating him by insisting she become involved in his investigation. Never thought he might attribute her determination to a prejudice against the Indigenous people. Never thought that he might believe she was questioning his abilities because he was Native American.

  Since yesterday, she had gone far past any kind of political correctness.

  Guy Redwing paused a few moments. His expression remained stoic. “All help is welcome, Gage. We need to find that little girl.”

  “Well then,” Gage said, dropping his pencil. His dark gaze bored into Valerie. “You need to understand one thing, Detective Brighton. Guy is the detective in charge of this case.”

  Outside on the street, a cold breeze freshened the air with threat. The unfeeling blue sky remained.

  Guy Redwing put his uniform Stetson on his head. Tan like the rest of his uniform except for the dark green official jacket. Tall. Standing straight.

  “You’re a detective,” she said to Guy Redwing. “Why do you still wear a uniform?”

  “Look at my face,” he said flatly.

  It was then she began to understand. But she still didn’t care. “No other detective to help with this case?”

  “Not right now. Our other detective, Callum McCloud, is away in Boston. You’re stuck with me.”

  She gave a short nod. “How much experience do you have?”

  “In law enforcement? Quite a few years. As a detective? I’m sure it’s not as much as you have.”

  * * *

  THE ANGER BURNED in Guy once again. Questioning his ability to manage this case by himself? There could be only one reason.

  She was a tall, slender woman in crisply tailored clothes that were very much out of place here. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and pretty, the epitome of White.

  Now he’d have to deal with her sense of superiority, especially given her longer experience with being a detective. He’d have to deal with her emotional involvement in this case. As if the case weren’t difficult enough. He squared his broad shoulders, reminding himself that this was all about one small child. That child mattered more than anything.

  “As for kidnapping,” he said, “I’ve been considering it. But the search is going to continue whether you think it’s a waste of time or not. No stone unturned. You said it yourself.”

  She answered with a brisk nod. “I wouldn’t want the search stopped. There’s always a chance...”

  He drew a deep breath and blew it out between his lips. “We’ve got to question the people most directly involved. Are you up to it?”

  “I’m not sure May is up to questioning, honestly. As for Chet, I have no idea. He’s been out searching, I was told.”

  “He is. But what about you?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  Now came the part Guy had spent the better part of yesterday and last night hoping to avoid. Questioning the parents. God!

  He spoke again. “I’ll take the lead. It’ll be easier on you.” It would make it easier for him, too, not having her intervene, perhaps encouraging certain answers.

  Again she didn’t reply to him. He hadn’t expected her to.

  * * *

  CHET CHAMBERLAIN WAS a man of moderate height with a thick head of brown hair and eyes that were often gentle. As an OB-GYN, he had a great many opportunities to be gentle. Usually he was impeccably dressed for this area, in neatly pressed clothes that were Western enough to fit in.

  Right then he was grungy, his jeans covered with blades of dry grass and small twigs, his chiseled face smeared with some dirt he must have gotten on his hands. As he sat on the black leather couch, one arm wrapped around an ashen May, he looked like a man reaching the end of his tether. And May looked like the spitting image of her sister.

  “Anything change?” he asked Guy Redwing as soon as Guy crossed the threshold. Then he spied Valerie. “Hi, Val. May was hoping you’d come.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” Guy answered. He didn’t sit until Chet waved him to a nearby chair, also black leather but with chrome legs. “Except that we’re considering a new line of inquiry.”

  Valerie had already taken another chair. Her hands were twisted together, Guy noted. Why had she wanted to be part of this interview? It was going to tear her apart.

  “I need to ask you both some questions,” Guy said, returning his attention to Chet and May. “I know this will be difficult, but I’ve still got to ask them.”

  Chet nodded, his jaw tightening. “Ask. Val?”

  “She’s part of the investigation now,” Guy answered. “Working with me. Any objection?”

  May spoke, her voice tremulous. “I want her to be part of it if she’s willing.”

  Guy managed a faint smile. “She demanded it. Her willingness isn’t in question.”

  “What are your questions?” Chet demanded. “Do you want to know if one of us did something awful to Lizzie?”

  May drew a sharp breath. “Are you kidding me?”

  “We’re looking into the possibility of kidnapping,” Guy answered, evading the ugliest question now that May had brought it up herself. He had his answer to that one, for now. “The questions aren’t going to be pleasant for you, but we need every possible bit of information to help find Lizzie.”

  May sagged again into the crook of Chet’s arms. “I’d never hurt my baby. Neither would Chet.”

  Guy looked at Valerie Brighton. Her face had grown paler, but he saw no anger there. Okay. At this point she wasn’t going to interfere with necessary questions. He turned back toward the couple on the couch. He needed to ignore the ache in his heart for these parents—to focus instead on his ache for the child caught in all of this.

  Chet spoke. “Saying it isn’t going to be enough, May. They have to ask questions, if there’s any possibility that Lizzie was kidnapped. Or...”

  He left the thought unfinished, but Guy realized the doctor was getting the full picture of the possible suspicions that might be directed their way. Chet’s face had hardened, and his posture had grown more protective of May.

  Guy changed tack. “Has anyone gotten seriously angry with either one of you recently?”

  They both shook their heads.

  Guy continued. “Anyone at all who might hold a grudge?”

  Chet answered. “Not that I know of. May?”

  “I can’t imagine. Anything’s possible, I guess.” Tears began to roll down her face again. “Why would anyone steal our little girl?”

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Valerie said, speaking for the first time. “Anything at all you can think of.”

  Apparently neither of them could.

  Guy changed tack again. “When did you last see Lizzie, Mrs. Chamberlain?”

  “I already told you that!”

  “We need to go over it again. We’re looking at everything from a different angle this time. So please, just tell me when last you saw her.”

  “When I put her to bed at eight. When I sat reading her a story and singing a lullaby. She was asleep when I left the room. I checked in on her maybe an hour later before I went to bed.”

  She shook her head and another tear trickled down her cheek.

  “And you, Dr. Chamberlain?”

  Chet’s face had grown even harder. “Three days ago, when I stopped by to see her.”

  Guy nodded. “Is that your usual visitation schedule?”

  This time Chet’s voice cracked a little. “No. I took a chance. May and I disagreed about me just dropping in, but it was nothing major. She understands that I love Lizzie. May?”

  “It’s true. I felt like he was disrupting Lizzie’s schedule. I can’t have this pop-in-and-pop-out happening any old time. I told Chet he should at least call first.”

  Guy nodded. “Raising a child, especially one who’s still not yet three, can be challenging and tiring.”

  May went from teary-eyed to angry. “Who cares?”

  “It’s a full-time job, and I hear the Terrible Twos can be fatiguing.”