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EVERYTHING EVAPORATED FROM his mind. The multiple crime scenes in and around his own home. The killer fugitive in the area that he personally had failed to keep contained. His three housemates in the local hospital, two of them fighting for their lives. Sheriff Clayton Spears even set aside his romantic disappointment, the most crushing letdown he’d experienced since his wife’s departure. He could think of one thing only, which was that the little boy in the motel named Joe Leeler was, in fact, actually a little girl named Zoe Savage who had been kidnapped from her parents in Omaha and had somehow ended up here. All the stupid ideas Clay had been building up for years about what kind of hero he wanted to be in life went up in smoke instantly.

He had to be a different kind of hero now.

Clay felt the muscles in his shoulders bunching, his hands balling into fists, and his jaw locking tight. He got out of his squad car, slammed the door shut, and strode the six paces to the motel room door like a death machine lumbering robotically toward human prey. The lock smashed out of the doorframe as his boot hit the wood, the hinges popping, the whole door falling flat on the carpet with a breathy whump. Zoe screamed in shock and dropped her iPad, leaping up and scrambling to the bed beside April.

The woman wrapped an arm around the child. Clay felt his lip twist in fury. When he spoke, every word came out with a struggle, the syllables wrapped in pure, white-hot anger.

“Zoe,” Clay said. He put out a hand. “Come here.”

The child looked at April. April’s hand tightened on the kid’s shoulder.

“I’m going to take you home,” Clay said. He put a hand on the butt of the pistol on his hip. “We’re going to stay real calm. All of us. Nice and calm and quiet. You’re going to come over here and stand by me, and I’m going to take you home to your real parents.”

Zoe started crying. Clay eased a breath through his nostrils that was hot on his upper lip. April scooted the little girl closer to her, her other hand creeping up the surface of her thigh toward her pocket.

“I am Joe’s real parent,” April said. Her eyes held none of the warmth and light Clay had so fixated on when he first met her. They were almost unseeing, but glared into his own.

“Don’t,” Clay said. The hand that had beckoned the child was now turning, making a stop sign. His eyes warned her. “April. Do. Not. Move. I don’t want to pull a gun in this room. Not in front of the kid. Not—”

“This is my child,” April insisted, her hand still moving. Suddenly her fingers shot to her pocket. “I’m—”

Clay pulled out his gun and fired once.

Later, Clay would recall the sound of the blast and wonder if his own personal heartache had made him do it. Maybe it was because Shauna Bulger had already tricked him earlier that night. Maybe all his trust was used up; maybe the good nature that sometimes got him in a pickle on the job had been eroded to a point that it failed to launch. He didn’t know. But Clay shot the woman who only moments earlier he’d considered the potential love of his life. A part of him hoped the reason he did it was his love, and fear, for the child she had abducted.

April flopped off the bed and onto the floor. Clay dropped his gun, ran forward, and scooped up the stiff and numb little girl.

He carried her out of the room, using the weight of her in his arms to fuel one last little dream about having a child of his own. He glanced back, and spied the handle of the knife April had been going for, butting out of the pocket of her jeans.