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slightly away as the tears rolled down her cheeks. “This doesn’t make sense, Brad. Why did somebody do this?”
    “I don’t know, Lane, but if we follow every lead—even something we think might not be important—we’ll catch him. Our best forensic team’s checking out your car—somebody had to drive it to the lake. Hopefully he left DNA somewhere inside. We dusted the hotel room for prints.” He paused, then continued softy. “If you were there, maybe we’ll get lucky and find one of your prints somewhere in the room.”
    She felt the blood drain from her face, and she searched his eyes.
    “ If , Brad? If I was there?”
    Tears of distress rolled down her checks again. She pulled tightly on his sleeve as she buried her face in his shirt.
    Brad’s arms wrapped around her and rubbed her head softly. “I believe you, Lane. We just have to find a way to prove it.”
    He held her and let her cry before he raised her head gently with his hands. “There’s so much to be thankful for, munchkin,” he said softly. “God took care of you, didn’t He? A lot worse could have happened.”
    Alana nodded and straightened her shoulders. Brad was right. There was still much to be thankful for. She wiped her eyes with the tissue he offered her from the bedside table and made an attempt at a grin through a sea of tears.
    “I guess if you can be thankful you have to put up with me a little longer, I can be thankful too.”
    Brad laughed and leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
    As he opened his mouth to change the subject, Alana suddenly sat up straight.
    “Oh no!”
    “What’s the matter, Lane? Did you think of something?”
    “My computer!”
    “It can be replaced, Lane.”
    “No! It had all the pictures I’ve been taking of the orphanage kids. I hadn’t backed up those files yet. Now I’ll have to start all over.”
    “Oh, that reminds me. I talked to Shirley. She said not to worry about missing this week’s photo shoot. She’ll be happy to dress the kids up again, maybe next week. She’s just glad you’re okay.”
    More tears filled her eyes. Going to the orphanage was the highlight of her week. Besides weekly trips to play with the kids and cook them a special meal, she’d been taking a small group aside each week and taking pictures of them. Then, as a special gift, she would edit each image into a caricature of the subject’s favorite book character. About half of the children had their own framed caricatures now, but she had been working on the next group with the pictures she’d taken the week before.
    Shirley and Darrell Hamlin, the “parents” of all the kids at the orphanage, had such a challenging responsibility—keeping the bills paid on time and providing each child with clothes that fit. Sometimes fun activities were placed on the bottom of the list. Alana’s gift to the children—a framed picture of their own face in the funny body of a book character—was something Shirley and Darrell both appreciated.
    Brad leaned over to give her a hug, and there was another knock on the door. Her doctor came into the room, followed by one of the nurses.
    Alana rested back on the bed, listening while her brother and the doctor discussed the importance of her resting for the next few days and concentrating on the future—not the past.
    As the doctor’s words blurred into one long speech, a nagging wariness filled the back of her thoughts. The future was hers for the making, but the past was full of black, sinister eyes that appeared before her now. Her blood chilled with the anger she saw in them. No matter how hard she tried to forget the past, she had a feeling it would somehow influence her future. And there might be nothing she could do about it.

TEN
     
    JAYDN STOOD AT HIS OFFICE window, watching the skyline of the city as the sun rose over the peaks of the distant mountains and cast a pink glow on the rooftops of downtown. It was early, and the city was just waking up to truck horns and