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girl’s trail was nearly as simple as reading a book for Fence: he found broken sticks, rumpled bushes, scattered leaves, and footprints that led him farther from the playground. He jumped over a four-foot tree trunk and then skirted a rusted mailbox, its official royal blue paint and USPS logo long since peeled away, and called for Tanya, figuring he’d already gone more than three miles. An eight-year-old girl ought to be getting tired by now, and wanting to sit down and rest.
    When he smelled damp in the air and heard the unmistakable sound of lapping waves, he began to get uneasy. Tanya’s trail had led around a battered strip mall, with every one of the ground-to-roof shop windows broken, allowing trees and bushes to grow inside a hair salon, a café, a video store, and maybe a drugstore. But behind the strip mall he could see a pretty good dip in the ground.
    “Tanya!” he shouted, the sound of water filling his consciousness so that it almost drowned out the small voice calling back. “Tanya!” he shouted again, listening intently as he started down.
    “It’s me!” He heard the little voice. “I’m here!” It didn’t sound distressed, and he felt a little bump of relief in the vicinity of his chest.
    But trees and a few old cars crowded the space around him, and he couldn’t get a good view as he hurried down into the small ravine. At the bottom, a large pool of water looked as if it might have been a quarry, and as Fence peered around the trees, he saw the flash of pink from the girl’s shirt. It seemed higher than it should have been, and then it was gone. Was she in a tree?
    “Tanya!” he called, “your mama and daddy are looking for you! They’ve been really worried.”
    “I’m here! I’m okay,” she shouted back, and then he came through the brush and saw her.
    Oh crap.
    She was walking on a tree trunk that had split and fallen into the pond—no, correction: she was dancing on a tree trunk above the water. His heart stopped, his body freezing. He slid the pack from his back and dropped it on the ground.
    “Tanya, sugarbear, you need to get down from there right now,” Fence said, fighting off the panic. If she falls, if she falls . . . oh God if she falls . . .
    “I’m not a bear. I’m a tree fairy,” she said, and did a little spin on her toes atop the broad trunk, and then a little jump as if to emphasize her words. His heart surged into his throat. The tree branch was about three feet above the water, and extended to the middle of an acre-sized pool.
    “You’re going to fall off there,” Fence said, his voice more strident as he made his way around the edge of the pool to the fallen tree. “Please come down before you fall.”
    “No I’m not!” she shouted back. “I never fall!”
    As she said that, her foot slipped on the bark and she did exactly what Fence had feared.
    A little scream left her lips and she slid right off the tree and splashed into the water below, quick as a blink. Until her entire body went under, Fence wasn’t certain how deep the pool was—but when she disappeared and didn’t immediately reappear, he knew it was deeper than he could handle.
    His heart in his throat, Fence ran to the tree trunk, cursing and swearing like a motherfucker. No, no, no, not this, not this, not me, not here, not now.
    A sturdy branch in hand, he was out on the tree limb with quick agility, forcing himself to ignore the fact that there was water below. He was still dry and out of it, he was good. She was going to come back up in a minute, and he would hand her the end of the branch and she would grab it and he’d pull her out of the water.
    Right? Right, God?
    A little splash caught his attention, and Fence saw her hand come up, then a shoulder and the top of her head, a little mouth, gasping for air . . . but she was too far away for him to reach even with the branch. She slid back under with hardly a sound.
    No, dammit, come back here .
    His stomach heaving and