His expression doesn’t soften. “Come inside. It’s been a long day. There’s a lot to catch you up on.”

With Cricket trailing me, I follow Will to an empty conference room with bad fluorescent lighting. He plunks down in the nearest chair. “Well?”

“I just got excited, I guess.” I take a seat across from him, feeling increasingly as if I’ve been sent to the principal’s office. “When I opened the file, I found the address for Cameron’s birth family was in Ukiah. Isn’t that eerie? What are the odds?”

“So you went to Ukiah? Was the family still living there?”

“The parents are out of the picture now, but I met an uncle and Cameron’s brother, Hector. I’ll tell you, it’s heartbreaking the way these two kids were split up by social services, Will. Hector never even knew where they took his sister. He got blindsided, and then shuttled through foster care. You can see it’s really messed with him.”

Will’s face remains flat and expressionless. “Did you interview this guy or run a group therapy session?”

I feel a spear of shame. “Why are you being so hostile?”

“You don’t know?” He takes off his hat and drops it between us with emphasis. “You’ve been gone all day without checking in, making decisions that concern this case without prior authorization, and now you come back with nothing but a script for a made-for-TV movie.”

I swallow back more embarrassment, his words knocking me further off-balance. “I’m sorry. I should have touched base first. I just had a feeling I should go alone.”

“My department doesn’t run on feelings, Anna. And this investigation doesn’t, either. I should have been there, or one of my deputies. Then at least we’d have had two sets of eyes on the situation. How do we know this Hector’s not a suspect?”

“He’s not. I know it.”

“You know how? Did you check to see if he had a criminal record? What about the uncle? You get license-plate numbers for me? Aliases? Alibis for the night of September twenty-first?”

No was the answer, but he was missing the real point. “You sit behind a desk too much, Will. Instinct is fifty percent of the job at least. And shit. Hector probably does have a record after the number the county did on his childhood. But he cares about his sister and wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her, even if he had access to Cameron, which he didn’t.”

“Hold up. I’ll ask again, Anna. How are you coming to these conclusions? First you’re sure Drew Hague is the guy who abused Cameron, and we’ve got nothing. Then you tell me Steve Gonzales isn’t a suspect based purely on some feeling you have. Thankfully you got lucky on that one.”