‘I just got back, so I know that anger’s not directed at me,’ Cord said as he stepped into the room.

Alyssa whirled around. ‘How’s Sara?’ Earlier, he’d called to see how she was doing, and something in her voice had prompted him to run home to check on her.

The word pride may as well have been written in glowing letters on his forehead. ‘That woman is a warrior. I don’t know how she does it.’

‘You know if you need to go be with her—’

Cord sealed her argument with the one thing he knew she wouldn’t rebut. ‘If that were Isaac or Holly out there, how would you feel if all hands weren’t on deck? And Sara really is fine at the moment, and she’s not alone, either. Now’ – he waved his arm dramatically over the mess Alyssa had made – ‘want to tell me what this is all about?’

‘Rosalyn Benson was right – the Del Luna PD of 2012 was inept at best and outright criminal in their negligence to follow up on Hayden’s disappearance. They ruled him as an eighteen-year-old kid who skipped out on his responsibilities and left us with nothing but a half-assed attempt at a police report to go on. No witness statements, no efforts of even the most rudimentary search in case they were mistaken. Because clearly, if there’s no vehicle and no phone, then there must be no crime. What police academy did they attend?’ Had those officers been under her – or Captain Hammond’s – supervision, there would’ve been hell to pay.

Shoveling her fingers through her hair, she stared at the diagram Joe and Sandra had created while she and Cord were in Colorado. Gabriel, Lydia, Addis, Emerson, Elizabeth, Grace, Mack, Rosalyn, Hayden, Helen, Alexander, and now Alexandra Greene’s names were scrawled along the top. Alyssa had added Campbell (?) to the end. ‘It seems to me that half the names listed up there circle back to Alexandra Greene. So, where is she now?’

‘I wish the lab would hurry up with that DNA analysis of the blood found in Addis’s phone case,’ Cord said. ‘Wouldn’t it put a pretty bow on things if it came back as belonging to Alexandra?’

‘It would, but that still wouldn’t tell us where the girls are.’

‘What wouldn’t tell us where the girls are?’ Sandra walked in and set down a coffee brew box and two dozen doughnuts on the table. ‘I know it’s a cliché, but I figured we’d need copious amounts of both sugar and caffeine for the all-nighter I suspect we’re about to pull. By the way, Joe and Hal are right behind me.’

‘I’m ready to rock and roll,’ Joe said around a yawn, followed by a mile-wide grin when he spotted the coffee and doughnuts. ‘Whoever brought these, you’re my hero.’