“Never have before. But then I’ve never crossed the Divide in a helicopter before. Certainly not in the dark.”

“That’s okay. Neither has the pilot.”

She watched my face turn ashen before she said, “Kidding. Says he does it all the time. Come on.”

The pilot was walking toward us. He was a little older than me and had the easygoing been-there-done-that manner of Marty Klein, my ER doc friend. He was dressed in corduroys and a polo shirt covered with a jean jacket and a down vest.

He introduced himself and said, “We’re ready. You know the rules?”

I looked at Lucy. She was impassive. I said, “No.”

“Do what I tell you. If for any reason you need to quickly exit, do so toward the front. If you can see me, you’re okay. Got it?”

I said, “Yes.” But I was thinking, Why might I need to quickly exit?

“She’s fueled. Let’s go.”

The cameraman and the pilot took the front seats and Lucy and I climbed into the back and buckled up. I asked her if she did this sort of thing often.

“I dated a guy who flew in the Air National Guard. But that was a while ago.”

I discerned her last few words by lipreading. The pilot had started the engine of his Bell Jet Ranger and was pantomiming to us to put our headphone/microphone units on.

The engine noise disappeared and the Bose headphones offered the clear voice of the pilot. “Any questions?”

“How do you know where you’re going?”

He laughed. “I know the way. I also have a GPS-Global Positioning Satellite-system. The thing can guide me to a specific elk during hunting season if I ask it to. The people we’re meeting have a portable GPS, they’re going to call in the coordinates to me. We’ll hit them like a hammer hits a nail.”

I wasn’t fond of the analogy.

A moment later we lifted off gently, and I was immediately mesmerized by Boulder’s lights as we headed northwest.

Lucy asked, “Tim, is there a way you can separate out our headphones from the ones you guys are using up front? There are some things we need to talk about privately.”

“No problem.” He touched a button on the control panel and raised his fingers in an okay sign.

Lucy touched me on the knee to get my attention. The lights had disappeared below, and I wondered how close we were flying to the ridge tops I was seeing so clearly.

“Yes?”

“Two new developments that I think you should know about. First, I think you should know that MedExcel contacted the Arapahoe County DA’s office this morning about an extortion attempt that was phoned in to Ed Robilio’s secretary late yesterday.”

“What kind of extortion attempt?”

Lucy shrugged. “There’s no tape of the call. But the secretary thought the voice was of a young female. She threatened to, quote, ‘bring the company down’ if ‘their’ demands weren’t met. Said it was about Dr. Robilio. Something that the company wouldn’t want made public.”

“Do you think it’s related to these kids? What are the demands?”

“Don’t know. And no demands yet. A voice in the background, a young male, was screaming at the caller to hang up. The secretary thinks he sounded angry, agitated. We think maybe he was timing the call, afraid of a trace. Silly, how would MedExcel have the capacity to trace a call that they didn’t know was coming?”

“Caller ID on the phone?”

“No such luck.”

“You think it has to do with these kids, Lucy? Did they find something at Robilio’s cabin? Or is it a bluff because they know half the cops in the state are looking for them?”

“I don’t know what to think, Alan.”

“What could they have found?”

She turned her palms up.

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else should I know? You said there were two things you thought I should know.”

“Oh, yeah. The missing girl’s mother, hell, what’s her name?”

“Madison’s mother? Miggy Monroe?”

“Yes, good. Miggy Monroe. She called us at five-fifteen this evening, feels certain her daughter came home while she was at work today.”

“Really?”

“She says a couple of things are moved around and that some heavy boots and gloves are missing that she was sure were there before.”

“That’s it? Madison would risk coming home for some boots? Do you guys give much credence to this? It doesn’t make sense.”

“We’re not sure what to think. Her daughter has a key, of course. The place wasn’t a crime scene, so we didn’t work the place for physical evidence before, and the mom’s living there, so it’s hard to tell whether or not the story has merit. She’s the kid’s mom, so it could just be wishful thinking on her part. On the other hand, she could be right on. Maybe Madison is still in Boulder.”

“Anybody see anything?”

“Wits? Are you kidding?” She tapped the pilot on the shoulder and indicated that she wanted the communications opened again.

We listened in as Tim made radio contact with the local authorities and had the Routt County Sheriff provide wind speed and direction information for their location. He asked them to check for wires and other obstructions near the landing site.

They asked him how he wanted the site marked. He requested a fifty-foot square of highway flares.

I surmised from their conversation that we were supposed to land in a corral at the Somersby Ranch, about a mile from the location of the suspect motor home. A while later, I looked down as we were dropping from the sky toward the corral, which was lit with the requested highway flares in a square that seemed to be about the size of a king-size bed. I felt as though we were trying to land on a postage stamp in an ocean of black water. I didn’t like our odds.

The touchdown was uneventful.

On the ground we were met by eight deputies of the Routt County Sheriff’s Office, the entire Oak Creek Police Department, four deputies from Summit County, a firefighter from Steamboat Springs, and a few troopers from the Colorado State Patrol.

So far the authorities had surrounded the site but had made no contact with the kids and had seen no signs that they were even in the RV.

After introductions were made, Lucy said, “You probably know that they had a motorcycle yesterday. Is it there?”

“We know about the bike. We haven’t seen any sign of it.”

“Okay, what’s the plan?”

The kids had selected a pretty good spot to stash the huge motor coach. At this time in the spring, the backcountry in Routt County, outside Steamboat Springs, was relatively untraveled.

Haldeman, the RV, was cloaked in a tight clearing in a thick grove of denuded aspen and lush ponderosa pine. A dirt road climbed straight up the hill toward the clearing. Madison and Brad had cut branches from the pines and covered the entire top and front of the vehicle with foliage.

A maintenance man for the nearby Somersby Ranch had been checking the perimeter of the property for fence problems and had spotted the camouflage. He had reported the suspicious vehicle to the Routt County Sheriff. The Routt County cops knew that the Summit County Sheriff was looking for a big, fancy RV and within minutes the Boulder Police Department had been notified, too, and was negotiating to send an observer to the scene.

The plan was organic. Surround Haldeman. Assess the situation. Rouse the kids from a distance. Negotiate their surrender.

The firefighter from Steamboat was fitting a headset and camera rig over his head. Lucy asked him what it was.

“It’s called IRIS. We just got it. It’s a remote infrared imaging system. Helps us see through smoke inside buildings. Thought we might be able to use it tonight to locate your suspects.” He scanned us and pronounced the device operable. Then he focused the headset on the Holiday Rambler for about two minutes, scanning in narrow bands. Finally he said, “I don’t think anyone is in there. I’m not picking up anything hot. Not even anything warm.”