Day dawned over the valley, bringing a clear morning with it. Teresa sighed with relief as she saw light spreading through a clear sky; it bode well for their search. She’d managed to sleep in half hour snatches interleaved by bleak thoughts that made her shudder in the dark, her heart in her mouth. It had been difficult to stay put, to bide their time. It was even harder, now, to be forced to direct the search operations from the bottom of the valley. She wished she was up in the forest, doing the searching herself instead of having to rely on the artificial eye of a drone. The memory of how they’d chased down Lucas Ebran was exhilarating. She had felt alive, useful, her body and mind still working properly, performing their duties. That was no longer something she could take for granted, and yet she still felt the urge to throw her body forward in search of clues, to use every bit of energy she had left until she could stretch out her hand and reach for the child.

But which child? It occurred to her that there were two of them involved in this case.

Now that she knew how this story of abuse and death had begun, she could finally see the truth about who Andreas Hoffman was: a victim himself who had somehow survived and lived in this world despite everything he’d been through. Teresa had tried to imagine what his life might have been like to draw up a new profile for him, but neither statistics, nor research, nor her experience could come to her aid now, perhaps because no other creature like Andreas had ever existed in the world. No one had helped him learn the skills needed to adapt to life—yet somehow he had done it anyway, developing his own tools instead. She wondered what they might be. His mind was unborn, and yet it was active in its own way.

He had lived a life without love.

The air ambulance was waiting on the flat expanse next to the construction site for the new ski resort, ready to retrieve the baby as soon as it was found. Two more search and rescue helicopters were already circling the area. Hugo Knauss’s men had set off at first light to clear the way. An army detachment had arrived and was preparing to comb through the woodland that stretched halfway up the mountain. From that point onwards, expert mountaineers from various law enforcement agencies would have to take over the search. The Austrian police had also been alerted and the border was being closely monitored.