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ignored the implicit question. It wasn’t anybody’s business that the chief had been getting in and out of this car, despite having a perfectly good truck at home. He didn’t approve, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to gossip about it.
    “So, you want me to walk you to the door? Check out what’s going on?”
    It took him a moment to decipher the expression on her face as reluctance. Getting a ride from her off-duty brother-in-law was one thing, but she didn’t want to appear at her employer’s door escorted by a police officer asking questions. “Um… ,” she said.
    He grinned, letting her off the hook. “Okay, I get the picture. Give me a call later if you need a ride home.”
    “Randy’ll come and get me.”
    Yeah. ’Cause he’s just so reliable
. He watched her whisk around the corner of the house, presumably headed for the kitchen door. He had done what he could. Some people… you just couldn’t get through to them. His eye fell on the red Shelby Cobra, its chrome winking in the early sun. Some people… were going to shoot themselves in the foot no matter what you did.
     
     
    6:45 A.M.
     
    She opened her eyes and saw it was light. It must have been growing brighter for some time now, but after her first thrashing panic attack, she had drifted into a stupor of defeat. She didn’t want to—she couldn’t—think about what was happening to her, what might happen to her. So she went away, inside her head, tuning out her body and her surroundings.
    But now it was light. Suddenly, she was aware of everything. Her arms were numb. Her hip felt bruised, her neck muscles bunched and painful. Her stomach growled. She had to pee.
    She rolled across the wooden floor, out of the blankets that had enclosed her. She was wearing one of her flannel shirts and sweatpants, but whether she had dressed herself or someone else had was a mystery. She had on socks and hiking boots, and her ankles had been wound about with duct tape in a wide figure-eight. Probably the same stuff that covered her mouth and held her wrists pinned behind her back. Somehow, she had expected something more exotic. Not the old handyman’s standby.
    She twisted fully onto her back and contracted her stomach. She slowly jackknifed into a seated position. The effort left her trembling and breathing heavily through her nose. If she could just get to her feet… she tried rolling forward, but her knees wouldn’t spread far enough. She wiggled from side to side until she flopped over again, but she couldn’t get her feet beneath her. Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She rolled, contracted, got herself seated again.
    She was in a small room.
Cell
. Unfurnished, except for the tumble of blankets that had kept her warm and a five-gallon bucket. She could guess what that was for. One wall, to her left, was post-and-beam timber, with a small and solid door set well into a massive lintel. The other wall curved around her in a perfect half circle, its dressed stone pierced with three…
arrow slits
. A tower. A stone tower. She was being held prisoner by the sheriff of Nottingham. Beneath her duct-tape gag, she started to laugh. She laughed and laughed until her breath caught in short hitches and she was gasping, flaring her nostrils, sucking down oxygen.
    She finally settled herself down. She was sweaty from her contortions and her panic attack. She wrenched her wrists up and down, hoping her skin was slick enough to slip beneath the duct tape. Nothing. She snorted in disgust. At least she was warm now.
    Then she looked around again. The stone walls, the arrow slits. She realized where she was. And suddenly she was very, very cold.
     
     
    6:45 A.M.
     
    Left. Right. Left. Right.
    Clare forced herself to keep her steps even, her head moving methodically as she climbed up the increasingly steep slope. Tramping through the woods on a fine and frosty November morning was great. It was the actual searching part of it that was, well, boring. After an