The temperature has dropped and the sky looks black, though it can’t be much past two o’clock. I can see wisps of my own breath beyond the dripping hood of my poncho as I wonder if I’ve gotten us hopelessly lost. I’m exhausted by all of it, the self-doubt and the exertion, the building pressure and the dread. The voices in my head telling me I’ve failed her already, missing the most important clues and signs.

And then it happens. I look up and know I’ve found the right ridge. I scramble through clinging brush and mud to the top, and there’s the Pomo shelter, down below, past shadowy wet deadfalls and bracken, beneath pines and hemlocks heavily drooping with rain—there. The teams behind me make too much noise arriving, drawing their firearms, and I feel myself tensing to the breaking point.

I touch my Glock through my jacket to be sure it’s still there as Will double-checks his safety. “I think he knows we’re coming,” I tell him.

“What makes you say that?”

“The way he told me not to follow him, as if he knew I could figure it out.”

“You were alone that day, when you saw the shelter. You’re probably the only person in the world who could put this all together, even with the photo in his garage.”

“Right,” I say, feeling no better about our odds. “I guess we’ll know soon.”

—

When Will gives the signal, we move down the rise through drenched brush and foliage, a small army trying to keep surprise and stealth on our side, and most likely failing. Maybe one man should have gone alone first, I think. Maybe we should have posted snipers above on the rise—but it’s too late to wonder, and then too late entirely.

When we get there, the shelter has been destroyed, or nearly. The whole site looks as though a cyclone has come through. The support poles and pieces of bark are scattered like kindling. No sign of Caleb.

“Cameron!” I shout, but she’s not here. Inside on the soaked earthen floor I see only traces of her struggle, smears of blood on a tangled sheet that looks like a lurid watercolor painting, and lengths of shredded, sodden ligature. A bucket on its side smells like a latrine. A stained plywood bed looks like an altar and probably has been exactly that as he’s raped and tortured her these weeks she’s been his captive.

Will signals to most of the team to spread out and keep searching. Then he radios out to have the park entrance blocked. When he turns back to me, his expression looks grave, driven. “He’s taken her somewhere. What are you thinking? Where would he go?”