“I thought he hired you,” she says.

“He did,” Brewer says. “And I’ve known him for fifteen years, but you’re a fool if you think he’s a friend to anyone.”

“I see,” Kateri says, completely unmoored by what is happening, how things are revealing themselves.

“He’s a sociopath.” He laughs again. “He always has been.”

“I’m sure someone would like to get a statement from you,” Kateri says.

Brewer breathes into the phone, a low hum. “Shit sure is wild,” he says.

At home, the dog has chewed through her hiking boots. When she opens the door, he lies with his head flush to the floor, in a land mine of leather and rubber debris.

“Oh, no,” Kateri says to him, and he shifts his body onto his side, his belly exposed, his tail thumping weakly.

“Buddy,” she says.

His back legs flail. If she’s not careful, he’ll start to pee.

She picks up the scraps of leather and gets the dog more water, her body slow-moving and stiff. She’s sitting on the floor with the dog pressed into her when Hurt calls.

“Buick spotted near Brasher Falls,” he tells her. “Side roads,” he continues.

She feels empty, raw. Her jaw is tired from clenching. The dog smells like a velvety biscuit.

“Did you send anyone?” she asks.

“Stopped at a Stewart’s, paid cash,” he says. “Kid in the front seat. Driver bought her Skittles. Security footage from Stewart’s shows the kid clear as day,” he says. “Driver in a flannel shirt and a knit cap. Kept their face down the whole time.”

“Is it Park Jenkins?”

“He hasn’t been released,” Hurt says.

“You checked.”

He laughs a little. “It’s the first thing I checked, Fisher.”

“Did you run the plate?”

“Either they wrote it down wrong or it doesn’t exist.”

“No record?” she asks.

“None. We put deputies on 374, and there are road blocks on 30 and 11,” Hurt says. “But there are so many back roads, it’s hard to say. They won’t get past us,” he adds.

“Unless they do,” Kateri says. She’s weary down to the bones, her shoulder still ringing from the kick of her weapon. She looks at the map of the roads winding through the mountains, many of them not even marked. An email comes in from Hurt, who is still on the line with her. It’s the surveillance screen grab of the little girl, her face turned up to the camera, her hair in two puffball ponytails. She holds on to the shirt of the person who pays, her little hand tucked into the hem.

TWENTY-NINE: SHANNON

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3

I lean my head against the glass door. No one is around. I know that it’s Thursday, because the arraignment is set for tomorrow, on Friday, when the judge will decide what to do with me and then set another date. Everything inches forward.

I want to know what Kateri knows.

Why won’t Bear answer?

I tried him twice, with no pickup, no voice mail, nothing but endless ringing.