Ilse shook her head, staring at Sawyer. “I don’t have a name for the guy. Don’t even have a face,” she said, simply. “And I can’t tell you everything my client and I discussed, but I can tell you she thought she was being stalked. Being hunted by someone from her past.”

“Stalked?” Sawyer said, frowning. His young features beneath prematurely silver hair made his face stand out like moonlight beneath cloud cover. The slight wrinkling of his brow wasn’t so much a gesture of emotion, but rather one of instinct. This, she determined, wasn’t a face accustomed to the wiles of emotion. He spoke in monosyllabic words, short sentences, lending the silence and his piercing gaze to communicate on behalf of his lips.

“Yes,” Ilse replied. “Stalked. She claimed she was abducted as a child.”

“Abducted?”

“It was never reported. She said she was abducted, and said the man who’d abducted her was a killer.”

Sawyer’s frown darkened even further. For a moment, he glanced off toward one of the parked cars, his eyes trailing to the trees and the old mountain roads. “Have you heard about the murders nearby?” he said, softly.

Ilse winced. “Do you think it’s connected?”

Instead of answering her, he turned toward the police officers. “Expand the search,” he murmured. “Report to me if you find anything.”

“Sir,” said one of the officers, “Detective Lopez asked us to stay here, to watch the road.”

“And I’m saying expand the radius. Call it in, get more boots on the ground. Anything at all; report to me.”

The officers shared a look, glancing back to where two silhouettes were moving about the trail. But then they nodded and began to move, one of them reaching for his radio, the other stalking toward the old dirt path.

Agent Sawyer glanced at Ilse. “I need you to come with me. That’s my car. Think you can follow back to the precinct?”

It was the longest sentence he’d uttered since she’d shown up, and now it was Ilse’s turn to simply respond with a gesture; a quick, nervous bob of her head. She brushed her hair past her ear and then began to move along with Sawyer, both of them hastening toward their vehicles.

Ilse sighed as she unlocked her car, sliding into the front seat and turning on her headlights. She should have listened. And now that she hadn’t, now that she’d second-guessed, Samantha was out there somewhere.

Back in the hands of her old captor?

Ilse winced. She pictured the postcard that had shown up on her doorstep. Pictured her own memories rising to the surface. The soft feathers of the pigeon beneath her fingers. The hard, calloused fingers of her father’s hands over hers.

She grimaced against a sudden crunching sound as Agent Sawyer pulled from the shoulder, his lights flashing across the asphalt road as he began to drive away. He made no effort to slow down or make it easy for her to follow.