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were much more likely to be harmed by a family member than by a stranger.
    Wayne took a shuddering breath. “There must have been more than one of them. Maybe they had a van. And probably a gun.”
    “What about her dog?” Nic asked. “Wouldn’t he have bitten anyone who tried to attack her?”
    “Jalapeño?” Valerie snapped. “That dog is stupid. He’d be as likely to lick a kidnapper’s face as bite him.”
    The local cops had put out a bulletin to the pound and all the shelters within a twenty-mile radius, but so far, nothing. The dog was chipped, which made the search easier. It would be hell if the family had to keep driving from shelter to shelter, looking at dogs that weren’t theirs. Of course, it would be far worse to hear that a body had been found—only to learn that it wasn’t your sister, your daughter, your wife.
    “He’s really Whitney’s dog.” Wayne pushed himself off the couch and started pacing. “Now he’s gone, and Whitney has to endure not knowing where her sister or her dog is. I just hope they’re together. Then Katie wouldn’t be too lonely.”
    Nic turned a page in her notebook. “Can you walk me through what she did that day up until the time she left with the dog?”
    “You’re wasting time asking all this again,” Valerie snapped.
    Wayne shot her an anxious glance.
    “Precious minutes, precious hours. Why aren’t you out there finding the person who did it?” She covered her face with her hands.
    “Please,” Nic said. “It could be useful.”
    “She was still sleeping when I left,” Wayne said. For a second, he stopped pacing. A shudder ran through his body. “I didn’t even get to say good-bye to her. I never got to tell her I loved her one last time.”
    “Don’t say that,” Valerie ordered, uncovering her face. “We don’t know that.” She turned to Nic and took over the story. “Katie didn’t get up until after her sister went to school. I would have thought she would have been wide awake, given the three-hour time difference between Portland and New York, but she had the pillow over her head and she didn’t want to get up.”
    Nic remembered those days, when she was fifteen or sixteen and could have slept half the day and then not gone to bed until two in the morning. She had a feeling Valerie wouldn’t stand for either of those things.
    “She had Life cereal for breakfast and read the newspaper,” Valerie continued. “She’s not like most kids, who don’t read the paper at all, or only read the comics and the celebrity gossip. Katie is interested in national news, international news.” She pressed her lips together until they turned white. “Then she took a shower and got dressed. Around eleven, I left for my volunteer work—I run the clothes closet at a local outreach center. We help women getting off the street who don’t have a working wardrobe. We give them the clothes they need to look presentable again. When I got back around four, I found a note from Katie saying she had taken Jalapeño for a walk. I started calling her cell phone about a half hour later. It was already getting dark. But she never answered.”
    “What route does she normally take?” Nic was careful to use the present tense. She would never promise that Katie was alive, but she wouldn’t rest until the girl was found. What would it be like to lose Makayla? It was a thought she kept coming back to, like a tongue probing a sore tooth.
    Valerie tipped her head to one side, thinking. “She likes to window-shop. I’m guessing she went up Twenty-third and came back on Twenty-first.”
    It was the same good news–bad news answer Katie’s parents had earlier told the locals. The two streets were probably the busiest in Portland, with plenty of foot traffic. Cops had already walked the same route, done a neighborhood canvass, talked to every person along the way. Nada. But it wasn’t surprising. Would one girl, bundled up against the cold, walking a nondescript dog,