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The aftershocks of the party rippled for days.

Connecting with people and the past had not been easy, Luke thought as he patrolled his sector in North Division.

We knew we’d face this sooner or later. Going to Lacey and Clay’s party was a first step.

But it was a painful one, both for Carrie and himself, especially with Reeger’s animosity toward him. The rumor that Vern had killed his wife was one Luke kept to himself and wished he’d never heard. To top it off, Luke’s conscience was eating at him for all of his sins.

All of it, pushing down on all of us.

On the surface, Carrie seemed to be coping. She’d resumed work and her virtual sessions with Dr Bernay.

As for a silver lining, at least this week, Reeger was away on a course in Austin and Shelby Slade was swinging up from South Division to cover Reeger’s territory in East Division. Shaking it all off, Luke focused on his car’s monitor and his next call, a theft at a drugstore. It was at the edge of North Division, taking him through town. He was nearly there when the call was canceled.

That’s when he happened by the Whataburger.

Looking at the A-frame roof, the orange-and-white color scheme, he fell back through time to that summer night when he was seventeen.

He’d finished his chores on his family’s small farm near Dixon and pocketed the pay his father gave him. He was saving for his dream—buying the beat-up 1996 Corvette Stingray at Phil Dooley’s dealership—but it was a stretch. He had to be content for the moment to use the family’s old pickup, an ancient Dodge.

Lonely and bored, he did what he did most Saturday nights: drove around by himself. This time he went into Clear River. Hungry, he stopped at the Whataburger to eat. He was thunderstruck by the girl with the bright smile serving him.

Luke overheard a worker call her “Carrie.” Finishing his burger, he asked after her and learned what high school she went to, that her dad was the county sheriff. Being shy, Luke never spoke to Carrie, but he drove home in the Dodge that night with his heart swelling. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and visited the same Whataburger a few more times, hoping to see her again. He even drove to the big Halloween dance in Clear River. Amid the music, crowd and lights, he searched for her in vain.

Not long after that, the story broke about the murders in Wild Pines Forest. Like most everyone, he’d soon learned that the sole survivor, found near death in the river, was the sheriff’s daughter, Carrie Hamilton. Luke was stunned. He didn’t know her. He wanted to help her. But there was nothing he could do.

Time went by.

His life unfolded and after high school, a buddy who had moved to California urged Luke to join him there. As a young man, Luke was eager to leave the farm and Texas, so he moved to Los Angeles. He never got the Stingray. Instead, he used his savings to study criminology at college, working part-time as a security guard before getting on with the LAPD.

A few years later, at a function for a community program led by the department, he met Carrie Hamilton, whose agency was handling promotion. Neither he nor Carrie could believe the odds of them meeting. They talked about growing up in East Texas. It was incredible, like the first time he saw her.

Only now, he wasn’t so shy.

They started dating. Carrie told him about surviving the double murder and nearly dying in the river. How she remembered little from all those years ago. He said he was aware of her tragedy from media reports at the time. She’d told him that, outside of her sessions with a psychologist, she didn’t like talking about her past, and he never pressed her on it.

He told her that he never knew his real mother—she’d given him up. His adoptive parents, Royce and Rhona Conway, were older, stern churchgoers. By his midteens, Luke often felt they used him like a workhand on their farm. Sometimes he resented it; other times he was just grateful to have a home. Then Royce and Rhona died in a motel fire while attending a wedding in Longview. It was a hard time for Luke, leaving him with complicated emotions. Wanting to leave the farm, he eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he met Carrie all over again.

They kept dating, fell in love, got married and bought a bungalow in Montecito Heights. Then they had Emily, who was the sun in their world. Everything was going well, Luke thought, until—

…the woman lying on the street, blood oozing…

Luke pressed a hand to the back of his neck, telling himself he’d been cleared. But it didn’t matter.

He couldn’t forgive himself.

The air burst with a sudden crackle of his radio.

“Dispatch, twelve-o-nine.”

Luke picked up his microphone.

“Twelve-o-nine, Dispatch.”

“Luke, can you see a Kent Purcell at the site office at the Fawn Ridge development?”

He hesitated, then said: “That’s East Division—I thought Shelby was covering the East?”

“He’s tied up with a traffic hazard at the Loop near Pinecrest Acres. I’ll send you the info for Fawn Ridge. It’s a status thing.”

“Ten-four.”

Luke had hesitated to take the call, not just because it was Garth Reeger’s area. But also because it was the location where Luke had thought he’d struck a woman, who could’ve staggered off. Stop worrying. It didn’t happen. You imagined a woman , he told himself. At the party, the update from the Clear River detective confirmed that the woman found dead in town couldn’t be connected to his incident.

What more do I need? I didn’t hit anyone. It was all in my head. Paranoia. Just like the shrinks in LA said.

Minutes later, he was rolling through the familiar countryside, coming to the billboard of dreams and one of the entrances to the new Fawn Ridge subdivision.

He drove along emerging streets, busy with tradespeople working on houses that were in varying stages of completion. He navigated around mixer and dump trucks, finally finding the double-wide trailer that served as the jobsite office. He climbed the wooden ramp and knocked on the door.

“It’s open,” a voice called.

Inside, the air conditioner hummed. The place smelled of cut lumber and coffee. Several people sat at a table, reading plans. Above them, a map detailing building lots covered one wall. At one end of the trailer, Luke saw a tangle of cords, computers, monitors for a closed-circuit TV system and file cabinets, as well as a microwave, fridge and coffee maker.

A man sitting at his terminal saw Luke and said, “Kent?” to the man at the planning table, the one talking on his phone. He turned and held up a finger to Luke.

“Today, Miles,” Kent said into his phone. “We need that load today or we’re done. Read your contract.”

Ending his call, the man’s attention went to Luke.

“Kent Purcell.” He shot out his hand. “Assistant supervisor.”

“Luke Conway.”

“Conway? Our front office told me Reeger was handling this.”

“Right, well, he’s in Austin. I guess wires got crossed.”

“The front office was hoping Reeger could give us an update or hand us a report on the investigation. Can you do that?”

“No, I’m sorry. My understanding is that it’s still under investigation.”

“Damn. It’s been over two months now. It was forty thousand in material and tools. We gave Reeger video we had from our cameras. Front office says the insurance claim is an issue.”

“I’ll advise him. He’ll be back Monday. Sorry for the mix-up.”

Purcell pressed his lips together and broke eye contact. “All right, sorry you had to come out. This could’ve been handled with a phone call.”

“Wish I could’ve been more help.” Luke had just turned to leave when an idea—a risky one—stopped him. He looked to the end of the trailer where the closed-circuit TV system was. “While I’m here, can you tell me how long your security system keeps recordings?”

Purcell directed Luke’s question to the man sitting at the computer. “A long time, right, Dean?”

Dean swiveled in his chair.

“Yeah, we can go back as far as six months.”

“Do your cameras pick up traffic on River Road?”

“The one near the south entrance does.”

“Would it be possible to go back several weeks and see what’s there?” Luke asked.

“Sure, I can pinpoint it.” Dean shrugged. “Got a date and time?”

Luke gave him the date he drove home from the bar and the time he would’ve been on River Road.

“Why’re you asking?” Purcell said. “This related to us?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “We had an unverified tip that maybe a person in distress was seen at that time near here along River Road.”

Luke knew he was taking a risk, a big one . But this could prove that I imagined hitting a woman because of my trauma.

Dean tapped away on his keyboard, then pointed at a monitor showing footage. Luke and Purcell stepped closer. The small TV screen offered a fuzzy full-color view of the road, obscured by sheets of rain, glistening like a snowstorm.

“Can’t see much,” Dean said. “I’ll speed it up.”

A blip of light streaked by. Dean reversed the footage, ran it again slowly.

Luke flinched.

Details were hazy, but it was clear enough to see an eastbound vehicle passing by. It was impossible to see a plate, though, or determine the model or make before it vanished.

Luke swallowed.

That’s me , he thought. It has to be.

But the footage did not encompass the range to show him colliding with a person. Dean continued running the recording, branches and debris skipping across the road. Then a shadowy figure appeared, a small, intense light raking in the storm before disappearing.

“That’s interesting,” Dean said. “Is that a person looking for something? What’s up with that?”

The recording continued with nothing but the storm and windblown limbs and trash bouncing across the rain-soaked road. Dean accelerated the footage, but then something flared by.

He reversed the footage and ran it again a few times. Even slowed down, it was an enigmatic flickering. But in the sequence, there was an illumination from a car’s approaching headlights, a blip of color, a flash forming and a figure rising from the ditch before vanishing from the frame. For a long, troubled moment, Luke was frozen, stunned.

Ice prickled at the base of his scalp.

The blip of color was pink.