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the witnesses yet. The driver had some chest complaints at the scene.”
    Sara turned her attention to the X-ray of the torso. Either something was wrong or she was more exhausted than she’d realized. She counted the ribs, not quite trusting what she was seeing.
    Will seemed to sense her confusion. “What is it?”
    “Her eleventh rib,” Sara told him. “It’s been removed.”
    Will asked, “Removed how?”
    “Not surgically.”
    Phil barked, “Don’t be ridiculous.” He strode over, leaning close to the film. “It’s probably …” He put up the second film of the chest, the anterior-posterior, then the lateral. He leaned closer, narrowing his eyes as if that would help. “The damn thing can’t just drop out of the body. Where is it?”
    “Look.” Sara traced her finger along the jagged shadow where cartilage had once held bone. “It’s not missing,” she said. “It was taken.”

CHAPTER TWO
    —
    Will drove to the scene of the car accident in Faith Mitchell’s Mini, his shoulders slumped, the top of his head pressed tightly against the roof of the car. He hadn’t wanted to waste any time trying to get the seat adjusted—not when he had taken Faith to the hospital and especially not now that he was driving to the scene of one of the most horrific crimes he’d ever seen. The car was holding its own on the back roads as he traveled down Route 316 at well over the posted speed limit. The Mini’s wide wheelbase hugged every curve, but Will backed off the gas as he got farther away from the city. The trees thickened, the road narrowed, and he was suddenly in an area where it was not uncommon for a deer or possum to wander onto the road.
    He was thinking about the woman—the torn skin, the blood, the wounds on her body. From the moment he’d seen the medics wheeling her down the hospital corridor, Will had known that the injuries had been wrought by someone with a very sick mind. The woman had been tortured. Someone had spent time with her—someone well practiced in the art of pain.
    The woman hadn’t just appeared on the road out of thin air. The bottoms of her feet were freshly cut, still bleeding from a walk through the woods. A pine needle was embedded in the meaty flesh of her arch, dirt darkening her soles. She had been kept somewhere, then somehow managed to walk to her escape. She must have been held in a location close to the road, and Will was going to find the location if it took him the rest of his life.
    Will realized that he had been using “she,” when the victim had aname. Anna, close to Angie, the name of Will’s wife. Like Angie, the woman had dark hair, dark eyes. Her skin tone was olive and she had a mole on the back of her calf just down from her knee, the same as Angie. Will wondered if this was something olive-skinned women tended to have, a mole on the back of their leg. Maybe this was some kind of marker that came in the genetic kit along with dark hair and eyes. He bet that doctor would know.
    He remembered Sara Linton’s words as she examined the torn skin, the fingernail scratches around the gaping hole in the victim’s side. “She must have been awake when the rib was removed.”
    Will shuddered at the thought. He had seen the work of many sadists over his law enforcement career, but nothing as sick as this.
    His cell phone rang, and Will struggled to get his hand into his pocket without knocking the steering wheel and sending the Mini into the ditch by the road. Carefully, he opened the phone. The plastic clamshell had been cracked apart months ago, but he’d managed to put the pieces back together with superglue, duct tape and five strips of twine that acted as a hinge. Still, he had to be careful or the whole thing would fall apart in his hand.
    “Will Trent.”
    “It’s Lola, baby.”
    He felt his brow furrow. Her voice had the phlegmy rasp of a two-pack-a-day smoker. “Who?”
    “You’re Angie’s brother, right?”
    “Husband,” he corrected. “Who