On he drove through the undergrowth, pursuing the echo of his cries but never catching up. He pushed on harder because he was panicked and he pushed on harder because of the tears streaking down his face. He didn’t want anyone to see his hurt, immersing himself in the trees, dirt and despair, Nick just a few steps behind, his protector. In the short time Gabriel had he couldn’t have taken the kids far. That was the hope he clung to. That they had to be somewhere nearby. With enough effort, with enough people, they should be able to find them.

His thoughts turned to consider Gabriel as he was and Davie as he had been back then. The boy that had turned into a serial killer, driven by revenge, driven by hatred of what had happened to him. All of which traced back to the search on this hill all those years ago. He wondered whether this was indeed his plan, his final revenge: to have Chandler crawl through the woods in a desperate attempt to find his children; Chandler turned into Arthur. Nobody, not even the Devil, could be that cruel. To put him, nearly eleven years later, on the other side of the search.

But this time he would not give up. Not if it took him the rest of his life.

Chandler stayed out all night, burrowing through the trees, heading in the general direction of the burned-out cabin, not because he thought his children would be there, only that it was as good a direction to go in as any. It was only Nick reminding him that they should check in to see if anyone else had news that made him turn, storming back towards the car park via an alternative route that proved equally as fruitless as the original.

Nothing was found that first night, the search now focused solely on the Hill, the extensive search of the town proving a bust.

During the next two days the search increased in scale, quickly outgrowing that held for Martin, which seemed bitter irony to Chandler as he traipsed through the brush leading off from where Gabriel had been gunned down.

Overhead, drones whirred just above the level of the trees, sent up at first light and remotely controlled from the base in the car park. So far, all they had beamed back was a carpet of pale green, dotted with vivid red, no Sarah, no Jasper.

It took sixty hours for Chandler’s body to shut down, forced into two hours of restless sleep before continuing, against all advice, into the night. People sought to give him sympathy, which he merely deflected. He couldn’t have cared less for fucking sympathy. He didn’t need or want the negativity. He didn’t need or want anything, the hugs, the words, the attempts at providing comfort, food, air – he needed to walk until he found them.