The land was still owned by Caleb Ross, as far as Chris knew, although the boy had sold off the house in town he’d shared with his father. Chris figured Caleb held on to El Dorado for the same reason he drove out to walk its paths—it was now a memorial to Evelyn Ross.

They both believed the woman was out there, somewhere.

If she was, El Dorado had stubbornly refused to give up its secrets. Her secrets. More than five years had passed since her disappearance, and no one truly knew what had happened to her. In the end, for all the crimes Sheriff Ross had seemed ready to justify or accept responsibility for, he’d never admitted to killing Evelyn. It was a thing Chris had never understood, that had never made any sense. The not knowing, the never knowing. And how often did Caleb—far away and safe in Virginia—think of that place anymore? How often did he still dream of his mother buried beneath the scrub, lost forever beneath the oak brush and red oak, in the shadows of the mountain peaks? In its own way, it was a beautiful thought—it was truly a beautiful place—but still cold comfort. If her spirit was all that remained to haunt the land, then she wandered alone through its empty vales and creek bottoms and uncaring rocks and swaying timeless trees tipped by sunlight.

Except for Chris’s occasional visits, Evelyn Ross had all of El Dorado to herself.

Although his bad leg wasn’t much good for hiking, he always tried to give it a couple of hours, marking each new path with chalk, small signs he could read on the spruce, fir, and aspen: a map of where he was going and where he’d been. It was futile, but also important; a sense of duty that he forever owed victims, like Evelyn Ross. Like all those who’d been hurt or lost or forgotten since he’d taken up the badge, including America Reynosa, who despite all her strength and success was still a victim. A victim of Fox Uno and men like him—Dupree, Ross—who’d always cast long, inescapable shadows in her life.

He kept coming back again and again and again to that young girl who’d stood outside Mancha’s and asked for his help. Who, now years later, was still in desperate need of it, even if she didn’t believe that anymore.

Was it just about her, though, or also that young deputy he’d once been? A boy both foolish and serious enough to make a girl promises as large and immovable as the mountains that surrounded El Dorado and the Big Bend.

Impossible to scale . . . impossible to keep.

But that boy, that deputy, had made them all the same: I’m going to do everything I can.

—

GARRISON TOLD CHRIS what he’d learned, and what he was now starting to suspect.