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  Nakamura hung his head and shook it. "A festival."

  "And pony rides, a petting zoo and a small carnival." Nakamura actually winced. "The basic el-cheapo carnival with about half a dozen rickety rides, and games. This one seems to be legitimate, if not thriving. Wasuski Brothers Carnival. They were here for the Fourth of July and did pretty well so they came back for the festival. My men patrol the carnival as well as the festival open to close, repeatedly check the games, and we've never caught anybody with weighted teddy bears … yet."

  "And all those people are still here, in town?" Gascoyne asked.

  "I got the contact information for anybody with a pulse who was on the school property today, and I told those who were transient to settle down and get comfortable, they weren't going anywhere for a few days."

  Brice sat back down on the edge of a desk and spread his hands.

  "But as you can see, that is a mountain of information to sift through, names to check for criminal records, basic background information on everybody. I don't have the manpower for that."

  "Our job, Sheriff McGreggor," Agent Arya said, pushing his Gandhi glasses up on his nose. "If you'll get your deputies to bring us lists of names and addresses, we'll start with the NCIC computer databank, see if anybody pops, start running background checks."

  When Brice's report was complete, Nakamura stood and took over. He assigned tasks to the various agents, then turned to Brice.

  "I'd like you to accompany me to the school, please. I want to talk to the teacher, the principal and the last children who saw Riley." He had sent agents Gascoyne and Trimboli to the Campbells' house to talk to the boy's parents. "Then I want to meet the Campbells."

  They continued to talk on the way to Brice's cruiser.

  "Have you spoken to the boy's parents? Do you know them personally?"

  "No and no. They came barreling down to the school — along with the parents of at least half the children in the building — and were so upset they were no help at all. I told them the FBI would want to spend some time with them."

  He got in behind the wheel of the cruiser and Nakamura got in on the passenger side.

  "I don't know them personally. They've been married twelve years. Riley is the oldest of their two children."

  "Nasty divorce in either one's past? Custody fight?"

  Brice pulled away from the curb and flipped on his bar lights but used no siren.

  "Divorce, yes, but appears garden-variety nasty. Mrs. Campbell — Jeanette — was married before, and we need to look closer. Her ex-husband lives in Maryland. I don't know anything about the current Mr. Campbell, name's Norman. He's a broker for a local firm, Waterhouse Securities, and Jeanette is a legal secretary in Bill Stanley's office — McNutt & Stanley. My records show no reports of domestic violence at the Campbells’ address and from what my deputies have been able to gather from the neighbors, they're good people."

  Nakamura looked at Brice appraisingly but said nothing. Clearly, the man was keeping score.

  Brice looked at his watch. Riley Campbell had been missing for—

  "Five hours," Nakamura said, without looking at his own watch, "and fifteen minutes."

  Chapter Six

  Bailey figured Brice wouldn't even bother to go to bed that night, but she at least tried. She climbed in between the cold sheets and when the image of the school picture of a little freckle-faced boy filled her mind, as she knew it would, she replaced it with the only image powerful enough to banish it. Bethany.

  In the beginning, when she'd first been exiled from everything and everybody she knew and loved, Bailey would sometimes pretend it wasn't so. She'd imagine all was right with the world, conjure up the sound of Aaron's joyous laughter and the baby-giggle of her little girl, a sound so unutterably precious that it stole Bailey's breath. She never did that anymore, though. Bailey had quickly learned that the illusory happiness of make-believe was not worth the agony when the delicate fantasy she'd so carefully crafted suddenly burst with a little sparkle like a soap bubble. The blow of reality afterward was staggering.

  So no, she didn't pretend that Bethany was asleep in her bed just down the hall. But to banish the face of the freckle-faced little boy who'd vanished yesterday afternoon off a school playground, she did allow herself to tiptoe through a minefield of real memories.

  The whole front of Aaron's shirt is covered in a fine dusting of fragrant baby powder, but his smile is so bright she hasn't the heart to tell him he'd put the diaper on backwards.

  Bethany is looking in wonder at sand draining through her fingers as Aaron empties another fifty-pound sack of it into the other end of the sandbox he's building for her.

  She's splashing happily at the bubbles popping to the surface from the dislodged patch in her blow-up baby pool while Aaron tries to keep it inflated with a bicycle pump.

  The smell of baby-shampooed hair.

  The dimple in Aaron's chin.

  Tiny high-top sneakers.

  Little handprint smudges on the chrome front of the refrigerator.

  Lazy Saturday mornings in bed.

  The trouble with allowing yourself to remember was that other images lurked in the darkened shadows behind memories, prowled there. And if you weren't vigilant, they'd jump out and bite you.

  A rain-drenched street.

  The stench of a homeless woman's wet clothes.

  A firecracker pop.

  A Rockport filling with rainwater.

  A dumpster.

  Rats in the mud.

  Images from the nightmare five minutes that'd destroyed her life took her mind hostage then, rumbled through it and destroyed every good thing in savage brutality.

  A boy in one of the foster homes where she'd been parked for a time by Child Protective Services when she was a kid had been enormously proud of his "washboard abs" and used to invite the other kids to punch him in the belly. All they got for their trouble were sore hands until the day the new kid sucker-punched him and he doubled over and couldn't breathe.

  This was that. Prepared, Bailey had finally grown strong enough to withstand the razor-edged assault of the uglies. But sitting up in bed in the midnight dark, stroking Sparky's stuffed-animal-soft fur, she'd been sucker-punched.

  Sparky whimpered and she realized she was squeezing him too tight. That broke the spell, and she shook horror out of her head, got up and padded barefoot into the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. And, of course, a dog biscuit for the too-cute-for-words pup.

  She didn't bother to go back to bed, just curled up on the sofa with an Amish quilt and a soft dog and surrendered. She didn't want to think about the missing … kidnapped boy, but there was no help for it now.

  Riley Campbell. His face had been all over the news.

  In the self-absorption of the past two-and-a-half years of personal misery, Bailey had believed there was no worse fate a mother could endure than being separated from her child. She'd been wrong. Somewhere in Shadow Rock, Riley Campbell's mother could testify to that error.

  Bailey snuggled Sparky closer and thought about Macy Cosgrove, the gap-toothed little girl whose portrait Bailey had painted, been compelled to paint — because of Oscar, the bullet she'd put in her own head. Or maybe it had nothing to do with Oscar at all. Whatever the reason, Bailey had awakened in the hospital after her attempted suicide with a strange "gift." Just like T.J.'s mother, who'd also suffered a head injury in the same Watford House kitchen almost sixty years ago, Bailey could paint "what hadn't happened yet."

  Six weeks ago, she had painted a portrait of Macy Cosgrove — dead. Drowned. And Bailey had drowned with the child as she painted the picture — a horror so awful Bailey had sworn she would never, ever paint another portrait like that again.

  But Macy Cosgrove was home safe in her own bed right now — and maybe that was because of Bailey's painting.

  Riley Campbell was not home. And he was not safe.

  Time drained away. Bailey stared out the big window on the front of the house
at black sky with impossibly bright stars, watched the color begin to dissolve into deep blue with fading twinkles and soft pink/gold edging — what passed for sunrise in a valley where the sun didn't actually crest the mountain to the east until mid-morning. She faced it then, acknowledged the conclusion she'd been trying all night not to reach. Maybe her "gift" could help the police find the missing little boy.

  Could she do that — again? She'd sworn she couldn't. Wouldn't. Sucked into another reality that was unutterably awful. Just that part was a life experience nobody'd want to repeat. But that wasn't the worst part. T.J.'s mother'd painted portraits of encounters with the black underbelly of human existence — death and dismemberment in its ugliest forms. A man whose hand was chopped off. A little girl who was strangled. A family burned to death in a fire.

  And his mother had lived those experiences as she painted. Lived them. Felt the terror, the panic, the desperation, the pain of all those people. Died with them, as Bailey had died with Macy Cosgrove.

  Was Bailey willing to do that on purpose — to slide into someone else's head and … yeah, and what? What had happened to Riley Campbell? If Bailey painted his portrait, she'd find out! If he'd been … go on, brutal honesty here — if he'd been murdered, Bailey would be murdered right along with him.

  Murdered.

  But what if he hadn't been killed — yet? What if he was still alive? What if Bailey could see something out his eyes that would help Brice find him before … find him and save him?

  That really was the only thing she should consider here. The ultimate bottom line: could Bailey save Riley Campbell's life? She had no idea, didn't even know if she could simply decide to paint a "future" portrait and make it happen. She didn't know—

  Oh, stop it!

  It didn't matter what she did or didn't know, whether she could or couldn't do it. If there was any possibility, even the slightest hope that she could save a little boy's life, Bailey had to try. Of course, she did.

  She was standing in the front yard waiting for Sparky to make a deposit when Brice pulled into her driveway eighteen hours after Riley Campbell vanished off a school playground. He got out of his cruiser and came to stand beside her. Clearly, her guess had been correct. He probably hadn't even gone to bed.

  "T.J. out of town?" he asked, nodding to Sparky.

  "No, just a doggie playday." About once a week now, she invited the mini golden doodle with the perpetual smile to spend the night at her house because she so enjoyed his company. And no, she did not intend to get a dog of her own. That was … that felt too much like having a child, and the emotional fallout from entertaining such a thought was too painful to endure. "I took him with me for a run this morning, and it raised an interesting question."

  Sparky was batting at the fuzzy top of a dandelion and when it exploded into thousands of wispy flying seeds, he snapped at them, then tried to catch them as the wind carried them away, barking furiously. "Those are meanies." She indicated the dandelion seeds. "It's his job to protect me from meanies and he takes his work very seriously."

  "The interesting question?" Brice prompted.

  "Oh, that. It occurred to me to wonder … I ran six miles, on two legs. Sparky was right beside me, on four legs. So does that mean he went twice as far as I did, since he has twice as many legs? Or did he go half as far as I did?"

  Brice merely looked confused, clearly not completely certain whether or not she was serious. And actually, she wasn't sure either.

  "Did you even go to bed last night?" he asked.

  She started to run a bluff but was too tired to bother.

  "That's the pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?"

  "It's my job." There was a one-beat pause. "I know why you texted me, asked me to stop by for coffee. And the answer's no."

  "You're not allowed to say no until I ask the question."

  Turning back toward the house, Bailey patted her leg to summon Sparky, saving from certain death the hump-back beetle he was pawing at in the grass, and tossed words over her shoulder. "And no offense, Sheriff McGreggor, but I don't need your permission." She stopped at the door and turned to face him. "The decision isn't yours to make; it's mine."

  She opened the screen and stepped back with a sweeping come-in gesture. "And stop looking so fidgety. I know you're in a hurry. I'll put your coffee in a to-go mug."

  He stood looking at her. "Five minutes, then." He took the stupid-looking, flat-brimmed sheriff's hat off as he stepped inside.

  She'd set out a to-go mug on the counter beside the coffee pot that filled the room with wake-you-up aroma. He didn't sit at the table. A man the size of Brice McGreggor standing tall could be intimidating. She knew he used that to his advantage when he needed to. Well, it wouldn't work today.

  Pouring his coffee with her back to him, she opened her mouth to recite the speech she'd constructed in her head as she'd stared into the darkness. Then gave it up and just blurted it out.

  "I want to paint a portrait of that little boy, Riley Campbell." She turned and extended the cup of coffee. "I might paint some detail that would help you find him."

  "No."

  She couldn't help a surprised look.

  "After the portrait of Macy Cosgrove, you said you didn't ever want to paint another picture like that ever again."

  "I don't want to paint a picture of Riley Campbell!" She hadn't meant it to come out with such revulsion. But there it was. "I have to."

  "Have to?"

  Bailey set the cup of coffee down on the countertop and tried to think how to explain.

  "Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and think — this can't be real. I've even gone to look at the portrait T.J.’s mother painted of me and tried to come up with some other explanation for its existence than …"

  Than the supernatural. Than … what? Magic?

  "Thirty years before I was born, the woman painted a portrait of my face in perfection, down to the moles on my neck, and the mosquito bite on my forehead I got five minutes before T.J. showed up with the painting! And, oh, by the way, she knew I was going to …" She hesitated. Bailey didn't like talking about that part, about trying to kill herself. "And I can't come up with an explanation, an answer to the central question — how?"

  She stopped, turned and looked him in the eye.

  "While I was wide awake all night, I finally gave up. Surrendered. Ran up the white flag. I don't know how, never will know. Or why me? But I've finally made my peace with that part, I know where I stand. I'm committed now, like I got hired, like I was the one millionth customer at the grand opening of a Walmart and the prize was a paranormal ability. It's been given to me. That's just the way it is! And because it has, that somehow … obligates me to use it, to … oh, I don't know, do the right thing with it, I suppose."

  She almost reached out and took his hands, but didn't.

  "I just know that little boy's gone, Brice, and if there's a chance, even the most slender thread of hope that I could help find him, I have to take it."

  Brice said nothing.

  "Come on, it's just a shot in the dark, probably won't even work." His face was impassive. "Trying to paint one of those portraits instead of being compelled to … I don't imagine T.J.'s mother ever tried anything like that, so there's no reason to believe I could do it."

  "You think you can, though, don't you?"

  "I have no reason to believe …" Hadn't they agreed not to play games with each other? No, actually they hadn't, but Brice had claimed they had an "unspoken agreement" to that effect and that it was "the most binding kind." "Yeah, I think maybe … what's the harm in trying?"

  "The harm?" Now, he held up his hand to silence her. "I know you don't want to go there, but Oscar—"

  "My bullet, my brain, my problem," she snapped. Her suicide attempt two months ago had left a bullet Brice named "Oscar" lodged in her head that could kill her if she sneezed too hard. Or might sit snug as a bug in a rug if she went over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

/>   She was about to launch into the speech about not letting a little piece of metal become the hall monitor of her life, when he said quietly, "It's just … I've seen what painting these pictures costs you."

  "Macy Cosgrove is alive now because I paid that price. I painted her drowned. And we saved her before that happened. You sorry I did?"

  He leaned back against the counter and took a long drink of coffee.

  "As I have already made abundantly clear, I don't need your permission, but I'd like your help. My plan, such as it is, is to take the picture of Riley that's in this morning's newspaper, and see if that will … will whatever, make whatever it is that happens happen. But if you have an actual photograph …"

  Brice gave it up.

  "We're holding a handful of nothing, Bailey. Checked out parents, family members and friends, neighbors, the people who live near the school … The FBI ran background checks on every human being who was on that property when the boy was taken. Nothing. There are no registered sex offenders in Shadow Rock. We've gotten the usual number of bozo calls on the Amber Alert. Otherwise, zip. And every hour that boy is missing makes it less likely that we'll find him …"

  "You think he's still alive?"

  "If he is, the clock's ticking."

  Bailey set down her own cup of coffee.

  "Can you get me his picture?"

  He said nothing, just looked at her. Then he let out a breath.

  "I have his picture." He patted his shirt pocket where a plastic baggie stuck out over the top. "Off the bulletin board in his classroom."

  "Then let's do this before I change my mind."

  Bailey started out of the kitchen.

  Brice stopped her, turned her around and put his hands on her shoulders.

  "Are you—?"

  "Sure? No."

  She pulled free and headed down the hallway toward the studio.