“I’ll work with you,” Adam said. Rob’s brown gaze veered back to him. He nodded curtly.

Russell said, “In that case, I’ll assist Deputy Lang.”

“Good enough.” Rob turned away.

Apparently he hadn’t forgiven Adam for turning him down the night before—which was the very reason Adam didn’t like to get involved with coworkers. When it went wrong, it went really wrong.

Anyway, they were here to do a job. Anything else was just too bad.

Except he liked Rob. And perhaps in the back of his mind he had been hoping that after this case wound up, once he had his plane ticket home, maybe… But it looked like no.

That was really better anyway.

Russell moved over to join Zeke’s team, and Zeke looked about as thrilled as Adam figured he would, which was about as thrilled as Rob had looked. Maybe the two of them would bond over bitching about their senior officers.

Volunteers and law enforcement moved to the edge of the search radius, formed search lines, the final round of instructions were given, and the hunt for Tiffany resumed, bolstered by the reinforcements from neighboring counties. There was nothing like a pretty, teenaged girl gone missing to mobilize the troops, and the weather was on their side. It was a bright, sunny February day. The night’s snowfall had been light and was already starting to melt in patches.

The difficulty of course was they did not know for sure whether they were looking for a victim or an offender. Did Tiffany want to be found? That remained a question.

The air was thin and sharp as they left the grassy lowland and began to climb through the trees and hillsides. It had been warm in the sunlight, but that changed fast. The snow was pristine and pillowy beneath the trees and in the crevices and creases of landscape. The temperature dropped sharply as they worked their slow way up the mountainside. The clear air was invigorating, and it felt good to stretch his muscles and really push himself.

About ninety minutes in, Rob joined Adam. “You doing okay?”

“Fine.” He was. He was in good shape—he’d passed his biannual fitness exam with flying colors in January—and he was enjoying pushing himself. Even so, this was one hell of a workout. They were going to start losing volunteers in another mile or so.

He shoved his damp hair back, and Rob said, “Your nose is red. I hope you’re wearing sunscreen.”

Adam wrinkled his nose. “That’s from the cold not the sun.”

“Cold!” Rob scoffed at the idea that this was cold weather, although the way his breath hung in the air didn’t exactly support his argument. Nor did the fact that he was wearing his heavy uniform jacket and gloves. Adam wasn’t sure he even owned a pair of gloves. His entire winter wardrobe consisted of a couple of wool sweaters, one of which he was wearing now under his FBI jacket. Thank God he’d remembered to pack jeans and boots. This was not a trek he’d want to make clad in Business Casual.

Rob nodded toward Adam’s left. “That’s Billy—Bill—Constantine. And over to his left, near that stand of sugar pine, is his dad.” Rob added neutrally, “You should be aware that Buck Constantine is a big man around these parts.”

Buck Constantine looked vaguely familiar, though it took Adam a few seconds to remember where he’d seen him before. The lakeside restaurant. Constantine had been wearing the same ridiculous fringe coat the night Adam had dined there.

“How big a man?” he inquired.

“Most of the undeveloped land around here that isn’t national forest belongs to Constantine.”

“I see.”

“Which means we need to be careful when we interview Bill about Tiffany.”

“Are we interviewing him?” Adam hadn’t missed that we.

Rob nodded. “It’s looking that way. Anyway, we have to start somewhere. I did some checking last night. Bill used to tutor Tiffany.”

“In what?”

“Science. She flunked biology her freshman year.”

“Interesting.”

“I figured you’d think so.”

“There’s obviously a connection. Nobody keeps a photo that doesn’t mean anything.” Adam glanced sideways. Rob was smiling. It was a grim smile. “I’ve been thinking though. It’s an odd photo.”

“What is?” Rob asked.

“The photo of Bill Constantine and the other kid. The one who drowned. Watterson. It’s not the kind of photo you give someone.”

“So?”

“So Bill probably didn’t give that picture to Tiffany. She probably found it somewhere and appropriated it for her own use.”

Rob was frowning. “Appropriated it? What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure exactly.”

They were silent as they reached a spill of rocks.

“You think Tiffany had a crush on Bill, and maybe Bill didn’t know about it?” Rob was watching Bill. As though feeling the weight of Rob’s gaze, Bill glanced over at them. Rob nodded at him in greeting.

Self-consciously, Bill nodded back.

“He may or may not have known about it,” Adam said. “I don’t think he gave her that photograph. You have a scenario where she wants a photo of him—assuming it wasn’t the Watterson kid she was interested in—but doesn’t have access through the normal channels.”

“Access through the normal channels,” Rob said wonderingly. “Is that FBI-speak? Whatever happened to simple English? You mean she couldn’t ask him so she snagged it from somewhere else?”

“Correct.”

“Possibly the target of her emotional interest was not equally engaged and experiencing reciprocity?” Rob suggested.

“Oh, shut up,” Adam said.

Rob laughed. He patted Adam on the back and dropped behind to speak to a couple of volunteers who were starting to lag.

Bill was looking his way again. Adam nodded politely. He didn’t blame Constantine for feeling uncomfortable. Even innocent people started acting paranoid when they came under the scrutiny of law enforcement.

“Do you think we’ll find her?” Bill called.

“We’ll do the best we can,” Adam replied. Equivocation was a big part of the job description. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. That was one of the lessons they didn’t teach you at the Academy. You learned it facing the bereaved families of the victims you failed to save.

“We’ll find her,” Buck Constantine said grimly.

His son didn’t look reassured.

“Let’s try and keep this line together,” Rob directed. “We want to be sure that we’ve covered every inch of ground in our sector.”

Everyone assented. They were starting to lose volunteers from their eight-member team. The terrain was too rough, and people were starting to say aloud what Adam privately thought: that there was no way Tiffany had come this far. Not at night. Not in the pitch dark.

Regretfully, apologetically, some of the older and less fit searchers started to turn back. Rob’s radio crackled into life and he stopped to answer it.

He whistled sharply. Adam glanced back and Rob waved to him.

Adam turned to start back down the slope. The combination of snow on pine needles didn’t provide much purchase for the soles of his hiking boots. His right foot slipped, the rocks under his left foot crumbled away, and the next thing he knew, he was crashing face first down a ravine.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear Rob yelling. It happened so fast Adam didn’t have time for much more than a gasp—mostly of disbelief.

“Shit!” His landing knocked the wind out of his lungs and cut short his protest. Brush and snow softened the collision, but he saw stars. His ears and nose seemed stuffed with snow, and for a few dazed seconds he feared he was going to smother.

“Adam? Adam!” Rob’s voice floated down to him. He sounded as short of breath as Adam.

Adam rolled onto his side, heaving in a mighty lungful of oxygen. Pain flashed along his ribs, and his gloved hand hurt where he had smacked it hard on a rock.

He wiped snow off his face. A few glittering flakes stuck to his eyelashes. “I’m okay,” he croaked.