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a half second later with a slow-to-focus image.
    He was standing on a beach, staring at his love. Instantly, a flood of tears surged forth as he whispered, “Oh my God.”
    His hand reached out to touch the memory, but couldn’t. His body was frozen.
    He stared at her. Christ, she is like a painting.
    Emerald eyes, dark auburn hair, lips that curled ever so slightly into a wry smile that was as familiar as it was heart-melting.
    “Hope,” he called out in the duality of now and then.
    She moved closer, whispered in his ear, “Promise, you’ll remember this day always?”
    “Always,” he said as he glanced around, soaking in the image. The setting sun, the cool ocean breeze whipping through her hair. The soft feel of her hands in his. He wanted to die right there in that moment just so he could experience it for an eternity.
    She looked at him with that familiar smile, those eyes that knew him like no other, and spoke again.
    “Don’t say it unless you mean it, John.”
    John!
    The man’s eyes shot open and the bright sun over the horizon blinked away. Heaven was replaced by the darkened reality of the claustrophobic motel room. He stared at Abigail, who stood before him, her hands now dangling at her side. She seemed unharmed by the exchange.
    “Did you see?” she asked, now crying openly.
    “Yes,” John cried too. “Thank you.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 6 — Caleb Baldwin
    7:14 p.m.

    Caleb slipped back in the seat aboard his team’s mobile command unit, a 40-foot vehicle stationed two blocks from the crime scene. His right leg was needles and nerves, his left, the beneficiary of a bouncing pencil.
    He sat stone-faced, staring at the bank of monitors flickering with more than a dozen local and national reporters updating viewers with wafers of information on the murders and the missing child for whom they had no name.
    For all the news coverage, there had been precious little news since that morning. The case was already cold, and well on its way to ice.
    After darting his eyes around the cabin to make sure no one was watching, Caleb slipped his hand into his jacket, retrieved a bottle of Oxycontin, popped three in his mouth, and peered inside the bottle.
    Five left. Fuck.
    Caleb perked his ears toward the back of the truck, trying to untangle the sounds, separating the various agents, each on the phone with their sources, trying to mine nuggets of information from a barren shaft. He’d already spent five hours on the phone blistering the ears of every local agency in a vain attempt to light fires under their asses.
    The murderer’s face shot across the network feeds on the monitors like some kind of A merica’s Most Wanted version of dominos. Caleb squeezed his eyes and fished in his other pocket for his personal cell phone. Eyes still closed, his fingers danced across the keys in a well-rehearsed routine they’d performed several times a day for the past three years.
    He held the phone at his ear, waited for the mechanized direction, then hit ’one,’ then ’one’ again and waited.
    Same as always, the first note of her voice sent an ice slick sliding down his spine.
    “Hi, honey, I’m running late. Carol and I stopped for coffee. Let me know if you want me to bring you anything. Oh, who am I kidding, you’re probably still at work. I love you. See you around eight ― if you’re home. Bye.”
    His heart shattered at the tiny laugh right before she added, “If you’re home,” same as always.
    Such a routine message, one of hundreds over the movement of their marriage which were routinely listened to, sometimes fast forwarded through, then deleted. As hard as it was for Caleb to believe, this message was the sole survivor — the only recording he had of a voice that would never vibrate again.
    He’d never thought to shoot video of Julia, or even the two of them together, despite having two video cameras and a drawer of unwrapped cassettes. This, and the copies he’d since made, were all that he