The lack of spatial cues made it feel as if we'd entered a huge, dark room as big as the world; every step was tinged by the threat of vertigo.

Reduced to stiff, small movements, I edged forward, feeling the rocks rolling under my shoes. Larger, sharper fragments caught on the leather, like tiny parasites attempting to burrow through. As the stones grew progressively larger, contact became painful. I got past the discomfort but remained unable to orient myself. Clumsy with indecision, I stumbled a few times, came close to falling, but managed to use my arms for balance. Several feet in front of me, Milo, encumbered by the rifle, had it worse. I couldn't see him but I heard him breathing hard. Every so often the exhalations choked off, only to resume harsher, faster, like a labored heart making up for skipped beats.

Ten more minutes seemed to bring us no closer. No lights up ahead. Nothing up ahead but walls of rock, and I started to feel I'd been wrong about Crimmins returning to the scene. A fourteen-year-old in his grasp, and we were baby-stepping toward nothing.

What else was there to do but continue?

Three times we paused to risk a quick, cupped flash-lighting of the path. The tracks endured, and immense boulders started appearing, sunk deeply into the ground, like fallen meteorites. But no rocks directly in front of us, so far. This was a well-used clearing.

We kept moving at a pitiful pace, shuffling like old men, enduring the loss of orientation in angry silence. Finally, the moonlight obliged a bit more, revealing folds and corrugations in the granite. But I still couldn't see two feet in front of me, and each step remained constricted, tension coursing up my tailbone. Finally, I got a handle on walking by pretending I was weightless and able to float through the night. Milo's breath kept cutting off and rasping. I got closer behind him, ready to catch him if he fell.

Another hundred yards, two hundred; the peaks enlarged with a suddenness that shook me, as if I'd taken my eyes off the road and were headed for collision.

I reassessed the distance between Fairway's eastern border and the Tehachapis. Less than two miles, maybe a mile and a half. In daylight, nothing more than a relaxed nature stroll. I was sweating and breathing hard; my hamstrings felt tight as piano wire, and my shoulders throbbed from the odd, stooped posture that maintaining balance had imposed on me.

Milo stopped again, waited till I was at his side. "See anything?"

"Nothing. Sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?"

"My theory."

"Better than anything else we've got. I'm just trying to figure out what we do if we get there and it's still nothing. Head straight back, or trail along the mountains just in case they dumped a body?"

I didn't answer.

"My shoes are full of rocks," he said. "Let me shake them out."