As she stared at the path in front of them, looking for trip wires, she was suddenly aware that they hadn’t seen any of Garrett’s or Lydia’s footprints for a long time. She swatted what she thought was a bug on her neck but it turned out to be just a rivulet of sweat, tickling as it ran down her skin. Lucy felt dirty today. Other times—evenings and days off—she loved to be outside, in her garden. As soon as she got home from her tour at the Sheriff’s Department she would pull on her faded plaid shorts and T-shirt and navy blue running shoes that trailed stitching and would go to work in one of the three cuts of property surrounding her pale green colonial home that Bud had eagerly signed over to her outright as part of the divorce, laid low by a fever of guilt. There Lucy tended her long-spurred violets, yellow lady slippers, fringed orchids and orange bell lilies. She scooped dirt, led plants up trellises, watered them and whispered encouragements as if she were speaking to the children she’d been so certain she and Buddy would one day have.

Sometimes, after an assignment took her into the Carolina hinterland, serving a warrant or inquiring why the Honda or Toyota hidden in someone’s garage happened to be owned by someone else, Lucy would notice a fledgling plant and, the police work disposed of, would uproot it and take it home with her like a foundling. She’d adopted her Solomon’s seal this way. A tuckahoe plant too. And a beautiful indigo bush, which had grown six feet tall under her care.

Her eyes now slipped to what she was presently passing on this anxious pursuit of theirs: an elderberry, a mountain holly, plume grass. They passed a nice evening primrose, then some cattails and wild rice—taller than any of the search party and with leaves sharp as knives. And here was a squaw root, a parasitic herb. Which Lucy Kerr also knew by another name: cancer root. She glanced at that one once then looked back to the trail.

The path led to a steep hill—a series of rocks about twenty feet high. Lucy scaled the incline easily but at the top she stopped. Thinking, No, something’s wrong here.

Beside her, Amelia Sachs climbed up to the plateau, paused. A moment later Jesse and Ned appeared. Jesse was breathing hard but Ned, a swimmer and outdoors-man, was taking the hike in stride.

“What is it?” Amelia asked Lucy, assessing the frown.

“This doesn’t make any sense. For Garrett to come this way.”

“We’ve been following the path, like Mr. Rhyme told us,” Jesse said. “It’s the only stretch of pine we’ve come across. Garrett’s prints were leading this way.”

“They were. But we haven’t seen them for a while.”