As he stared at the gruesome photos, and the faces of the victims, his concentration left his computer screen and went to the VSP web page for missing persons. Samantha Moore’s case—represented by a little female icon—would soon appear on the map of the other unsolved cases across the state.

To Noble, it would signal defeat. He couldn’t give up.

He looked at Sam’s picture and met Sam’s eyes.

Tell me what happened. Help me find you.

CHAPTER 11

Queens, New York City

The little boy wearing the white ball cap looked directly at the camera for a fraction of a second.

In that streak of time, everything Ray Wyatt had to live for had flashed before him. The image—the grainy ordering of pixels that formed the boy’s face—gave him hope, gave him a reason to get up in the morning. Again, he froze the frame of the video footage on his computer monitor, staring at it as if he could absorb its light.

Is this my son? Is this Danny?

Wyatt had obtained the video through Italian tourists, and it was his most recent and strongest lead in his odyssey to determine the truth about what had happened to his son. Wyatt had refused to accept the official conclusion that Danny was among the 18 people who died when their hotel caught fire during a family vacation in Banff three years ago.

Canadian investigators had found the toy that Danny was holding at the time of the inferno—a cherished small moose—but they never found Danny’s remains. Danny could’ve dropped the moose, Wyatt thought. They’d concluded that Danny had died in the tragedy, and that his remains—even his teeth—could not be recovered and identified because they were incinerated in the severe heat.

But Wyatt and his wife had refused to believe that Danny was gone.

Wyatt had been a reporter with First Press Alliance, a worldwide wire service headquartered in Manhattan. He had two Pulitzer nominations, and was a journalist who dealt with facts. He couldn’t accept his son’s death without incontrovertible proof. Besides, experts had told him teeth often survive intense fires.

Wyatt and his wife held fast to their belief that in the immediate chaos and panic someone— intentionally, by mistake, or because of being traumatized—took Danny and disappeared into the Rockies. Or to Calgary and the airport, or somewhere across Canada. Or to Vancouver, and south to Seattle. Or east to Toronto. Or anywhere.