He knew Evelyn was probably in Alaska somewhere, too, which also made it hard for him to leave. He didn’t want to go any farther from her than he had to. He wished he could be in two places at once, but Detective Lewis insisted he was handling everything on his end as quickly as possible, and he had remained in close touch.

“The media is about to go crazy with this,” Amarok told Lewis on the phone.

“It’s already been on the news here several times. And I’m being bombarded for updates on the case.”

“It won’t be long before an army of journalists flood into town. They’ll be banging on the doors and windows at my trooper post, plus trying to stop me whenever they see me.”

“That type of thing doesn’t make our jobs any easier.”

Amarok rubbed a hand over his face. “When you’re as small as Hilltop, there aren’t a lot of places to go in order to avoid them.”

“Is there someone else you can refer them to so you can stay focused?”

He’d refer them to Shorty. Shorty could be tight-lipped when necessary; Phil couldn’t. Phil was too kind and gregarious for his own good. “I’ll muddle through.”

“Maybe the media coverage will be a blessing. They’ve been running the video you sent me. I’m hoping it will help us identify him. So far, it’s brought in quite a few dead ends, but I have a lot more leads to sift through.”

“That video is pretty blurry.”

“Still, there’s an identifiable person in it.”

“Maybe you’re right. We need to ID him fast. Evelyn has been gone for five days. Her chances dwindle with each passing second.”

So did his hope of getting her back.…

“When’s the last time you slept?” Lewis asked.

Amarok had slept in snatches—a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there when he simply couldn’t go on—but he hadn’t been resting or eating as he should. He could tell by the way his clothes fit him that he was already losing weight. He hadn’t bothered to shave, either. For the first time since he was twenty-two, he had a beard.

The only good news was that the swelling in his hand had finally gone down. He was beginning to think he hadn’t broken it. It hurt when he tried to use it, but it seemed to be healing. “I have no idea. It’s not as though I’m keeping track.”

“Well, I can tell you it’s not enough.”

Shorty, Molly and Phil had been saying the same thing. They were almost as distraught by what was happening to him as by what had happened to Evelyn. They’d already alerted his father to the fact that he wasn’t taking care of himself. Hank had called him twice and begged him not to run himself into the ground. He was threatening to come to Hilltop and stay with him, to try to force the issue, but they all knew there wasn’t anything Hank or anyone else could do.