At the end of the tunnel, she could see a sprawling ranch-style home surrounded by tall, dry weeds. It might as well have been in a pond of gasoline. As Eve got closer, she could see there was a car parked in front of the house. It was a metallic-blue 2017 Mercedes E-class, the fire on the roadway making the fake Swarovski crystals sparkle around the license plate. The car belonged to Donna Stokes, the missing Realtor.

Caitlin was here.

Eve knew she didn’t have much time. The flames were closing in and the house was a tinderbox. She pulled up beside the car, grabbed her crowbar, and got out, leaving the motor running. She ran up to the front door and tried the knob. It was locked. She wedged the crowbar between the door and the jamb, put her full body weight into the bar, and split open the door.

The house was empty and unfurnished, the hardwood floors covered with a fine layer of dust. Cobwebs filled the spaces between the wooden beams on the pitched ceilings. The smell of burning wood was everywhere.

“Caitlin!” Eve yelled as she dashed through the house, checking every cabinet or closet that a child might fit in and finding only dust and rat droppings. “Caitlin!”

She ended up in the family room, where she stopped cold.

The room was furnished with a couch, a coffee table, a rug, and an old TV set with a DVD player on top. There were cases of bottled water stacked against one wall.

A sleeping bag, the one Eve had seen on the hill overlooking Tanya’s house, was on the couch. An empty bag of Doritos, Ding Dong wrappers, and discarded Coke cans were on the coffee table . . . and so was an open Planet of the Apes DVD case, the disc missing. There was no doubt now that Coyle had brought Caitlin here.

But where was she?

“Caitlin!” Eve yelled out again. She went back through the house, checking each room again, but finding no sign of the child.

She peered outside one of the bedroom windows and saw a wave of fire coming toward the house, driven by wind and fueled by the dry brush on the abandoned property. Breaks in the smoke allowed her to see a large field between the back of the house and a rocky hillside a hundred yards away.

Eve went back to the family room and sat down on the couch. The flames licked the windows on one side of the house and the crackle of fire sounded like a monster gnashing its teeth.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let her breath out slowly, forcing herself to be calm, to clear her head so she could think.

Caitlin is here. Where is she hidden?