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For Luke, leaving the scene on River Road was a failure like… Los Angeles…standing over her, his hands dripping with her blood…

Carrie cannot die. Luke would never let go.

But hours had passed, and in the gloom, pulsing with emergency lights, watching Carrie’s Ford loaded onto a flatbed, Luke retreated. Not to give up, but to gear up.

For the fight of his life.

Finding his wife.

By evening, the intense activity of the investigation had enveloped Luke and Carrie’s home. Lacey was there, watching Emily, while Luke and Vern, their faces tense with grief, cooperated with detectives and deputies.

Amid tapping on laptops, subdued phone conversations and crackling radio transmissions, Ellerd, Mallory and Cobb directed efforts. They communicated with forensic and cyber techs, people still searching the scene, and other agencies following leads in the expanding case.

Luke had answered their questions. He knew how these situations unfolded, that a clock could be running down on Carrie’s life. Guilt ate at him for Carrie, and for still not telling anyone about Joyce-Anne Gemsen. What’s wrong with me? He had to think; he had to do something. He’d go out into the night and search for his wife.

But where should I go?

Hope pinged in the back of his mind, chiming with threads to answers—but he couldn’t connect them. Not yet. He considered the location of Carrie’s car, how fate had placed it near where he had struck Joyce-Anne, the missing Oklahoma woman.

His thoughts accelerated.

Something’s emerging.

Luke got out his laptop, phones and notes, and withdrew to a private corner, his brain whirling. The location and his cryptic investigation had yielded the cell tower warrants and phone numbers Garth Reeger had sent him. As expected, Luke’s number was there, but Reeger had said the other two numbers dead-ended. Luke scrolled through them on his phone.

I haven’t even checked them yet.

Luke opened the missing person poster. Studying the array of photos, he was drawn to the still images taken of Joyce-Anne in the truck stop near Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, where she’d vanished.

Luke looked at the snack displays, the posters for events, recalling Derek’s latest enthusiastic call at finding more information. What did he say? Prior to the truck stop, the woman and her boyfriend had gone to a street market, then argued about the boyfriend’s spending.

Spending on what?

Luke’s thoughts went back to the roadside press conference, seeing Clara Price and Ray Nash, the detectives asking him about previous interactions.

Is there anything you’re not telling us?

And that reporter from the Chronicle , gesturing like she needed to talk. Luke opened up today’s story, scanning it, going to the photos, to those showing Abby and Erin. Abby in the shirt her family said she wore the day she died.

It was pink.

Tapping on Luke’s shoulder startled him.

He turned to Vern.

“We need to talk.”

Luke closed his laptop, pocketed his phones, went with Vern to a bedroom and shut the door behind them.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just tell you.”

Luke steeled himself, expecting to hear they’d found Carrie’s body, listening as Vern began, revealing that he had only months to live. “Before I leave this world, I’m going to tell you the truth.” Vern then related everything that he and Carrie had discussed—the truth of what had happened in Wild Pines Forest. The truth about Hyde’s confession.

He’d stunned Luke.

“You’re telling me, Carrie killed Abby and Erin and you covered it up; you’re telling me everything in the paper today is true?”

Vern nodded. “Yes.”

“No, no.” Luke shook his head. “I don’t believe any of what you’re saying.”

“This is why she blocked the memories.”

“No, I can’t believe this. Carrie’s not a murderer.”

“It might’ve been self-defense. And, here, now, she may have run off.”

“No. She wouldn’t leave Emily. Her purse was still in the car. Vern, she was lured, lured by someone smart, someone calculating.”

“Or maybe she hitched a ride. Walked off. I know she was feelin’ guilty and confused.”

Tears welled in Luke’s eyes. “No damn way I believe this, Vern.”

“What I’m telling you is based on what I know. And I am tellin’ you this, Luke, so you’re braced and prepared for what may come—” he nodded outside “—whatever they find.”

Luke gripped the side of his head, feeling like it was about to explode.

“I can’t stay here.”

He strode from the bedroom, headed for the front door, leaving a wake of staring investigators.

Outside, everything was slipping away.

He refused to believe what was happening—what Vern had confessed.

It can’t be. It just can’t be.

Luke’s life was disintegrating, his world crumbling.

Flailing, falling into an abyss, he steadied himself against one of the cars parked at his home. Alone in the cool night air, his brain a firestorm of emotion, he forced himself to think.

Think.

Because the answer had to be there, somewhere—the clues were swirling and sparking like embers as the key elements blazed again.

Carrie’s last location, the missing Oklahoma woman, arguing after going to a street market, security camera images, phone numbers from warrants, pink fabric, pink shirt.

Hold on.

Check the phone numbers.

The warrants had captured a number of users in the area on the night of the construction site theft, and later, on the night Luke had struck the missing woman. Reeger said they had yielded nothing.

But I never looked.

Raising his phone, Luke found the numbers Reeger had sent. There were three, including his, according to the notes from the service providers.

Luke tried the one number that was in the area the night and time of the theft from the construction site. He got a recording.

“We’re sorry. You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service…”

That one was probably a burner that dead-ended.

The last number, a burner, according to Reeger’s notes, had been captured on the date and time of Luke’s incident.

Luke called it.

It connected.

He heard it ringing on the phone line, but at the same time he heard a faint ringing near him. Confused, he lowered his phone and ended the call. The faint ringing stopped.

Weird.

Sounded like it was close by; a muffled ringing coming from one of the cars parked at his house.

He tried the number again.

Again, the faint ringing started. Listening intently, Luke moved toward the sound. After the storm some people had opened their car windows.

Luke listened.

Moving among the parked vehicles, the ringing grew louder until Luke stopped at a car.