Nowhere to Run

He’d seen most of them before in the initial briefing before he’d struck out with the search-and-rescue team, and others on fliers the Shobers had posted, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by not looking at them. He did look at them to try to find what it was about the unknown woman he’d seen that made him think of Diane Shober. Maybe a profile or an expression? But thus far, none of the photos made a direct co

Most of the shots were of Diane ru

“Here,” Je

Joe took it. The photo was not from a track meet, but from training. In it, Diane wore tight ru

“Justin sent us that picture,” Je

Joe nodded. As he studied the photo, it hit him. He jabbed at the shot with his index finger. “Oh, man,” he said.

On Diane’s left arm was an iPod in a pink case.

“This looks exactlylike the case Caleb had in his daypack,” Joe said softly.

“Bobby made the co

“Yes, he did.”

“Brent was supposed to show that to you today, but he was so upset he forgot. That’s why I came back.”

Joe shook his head. What was the possibility the case he’d seen in Caleb’s daypack was similar but different? Given the remoteness of the tableau, the odds were tremendous they were the same item.

He looked up. How to say it without upsetting her? “Mrs. Shober, they look the same. Yup, they do. But that doesn’t mean she’s up there with them. I told you I was probably mistaken. And there’s the possibility they found this case on a trail or even stole it from a car or something.” Or found it on her body and took it, he thought but didn’t say.

He started to hand the photos back, but one of them nagged at him. He flipped through the stack again to a shot of Diane in a heated discussion with two other women ru

“Oh, that one,” Je

But what Joe was struck by was the gesture Diane was making: stabbing her right index finger into the palm of her left hand to make a point.

“Your daughter,” he said, “has she always been blond?”

Je

“Yes.”

Joe looked up. “Do you know the name Terri Wade?”

Je

Joe’s jaw and shoulders dropped. He flashed back to that moment when he saw the faces reflected in flame.

Je

“Mrs. Shober-I saw Diane. She’s using the name of your old housekeeper,” he said. “A name she’s comfortable with. She let her hair go brown and she dressed frumpy so I wouldn’t recognize her. But at one point outside that burning cabin, she turned away and then turned back. The angle of her face or the way the fire made her hair look lighter and her face look younger and resembled the photo on all the flyers. It made me think there were two women when there was only one.” He thought back again to that scene in the woods, that one quick glimpse of the “fourth face.” Wade turning away into the darkness, then the flash of one he’d thought was a different woman. Except it hadn’t been. It had been Diane all along. He shook his head in amazement. “And she’s got the brothers thinking her name is Terri Wade because they used it when they talked to her. I told you earlier I was probably mistaken but I don’t think so now. She was alive when I saw her last. So you need to know that. But. ”

Her expression didn’t change but her eyes glistened with tears. “So you won’t help us?”

He couldn’t look into her eyes any longer. He handed the photo back and said, “I’m sorry.”

She started to say something, but her throat caught with a sob and she snatched the photo back and turned angrily away.

As she shoved the photos back into the envelope, Joe stared at the ceiling, the window, the floor. Anywhere but at her.

“Joe?” It was Marybeth, from behind him. He hadn’t heard her come into the house from the garage and place her briefcase on the kitchen table. And he didn’t know how long she’d been there in the doorway to the kitchen, or how much she’d heard.

He turned.

“Go,” she said. “Go find her.”

A minute after a sobbing and grateful Je

“You promised me when we didn’t know it was really Diane up there,” she said. “And when I put myself in Mrs. Shober’s shoes, if Sheridan or April or Lucy were missing. ”

Joe nodded. “If you’re sure. ”

“Take Nate,” she said.

“Of course.”

When the doorbell rang, Joe expected either Brent or Je

From the kitchen, Marybeth said, “What is it, Joe?”

“Dad,” he said.

22

They were riding blind, still bearing west toward the high rim of the last cirque, Parnell in the lead, when Farkus said, “So all this time we were tracking a deer?”

Parnell didn’t answer. He glowered, though. Farkus thought the man was humiliated but didn’t want to show it.

Farkus said, “What I gather is these guys are theCline Brothers? Of the Cline Family? What was their mother’s name? The one in the news?” It came to him and he answered his own question: “Caryl Cline. I remember seeing her on TV. She had a following out here, you know. But why did the game warden say their name was Grim?”

“Because I’m sure that’s what they told him.”

“Why would they do that?”

Parnell started to answer as he approached the edge of rim, but he suddenly reined his horse to stop with a violent pull. “My God! There’s someone down there.”

“Is it one of the Clines?” Smith asked. “Did you see him? Did he see you?”

Parnell shook his head slowly, “It isn’t one of them. You are notgoing to believe the scene down there.”

Intrigued, Farkus, Campbell, and Smith nudged their horses forward. As the horse walked, Farkus stood in his stirrups and strained to see over the rim. With each step of the horse, he could see a little more terrain below as it opened up to him. He was careful not to expose any more of himself than he had to. He was certain that the rim dropped away into a sheer rock wall. On the other side of the cirque, the wall wasn’t as steep. There was a trail through scree on the other side of a pure blue mountain lake. And then he saw her.