He holstered his weapon and called Devereaux.

"I'm at Courtney's."

"You bringing her in?" Devereaux asked, and Will remembered the arrest warrant. Cernak had pressured the D.A. to have a judge issue it this evening. It was so absurd, Will could hardly get his mind around it.

"She's not here," Will said, surveying the mess with a pain in his chest. "But someone's been here. The place has been ransacked. Drawers, closets, everything. I'm talking empty cereal boxes."

The phone in his hand was silent as Devereaux absorbed this.

"Someone's looking for something."

"No shit," Will said.

"Something besides Courtney. Any idea what it is?"

"Hell if I know. But by the looks of this place, I don't think they found it. Whoever did this was frustrated." Will eyed the painting of a desert landscape that had been pulled down from the wall and slashed with a blade. "And pissed."

"Maybe we'll get some prints," Devereaux said hopefully.

But Will wasn't optimistic. He noticed the air vent that had been unscrewed, the filter that had been pulled out and taken apart. Whoever had been here knew what he was doing and would have worn gloves.

"Hodges? You there?"

"I'm here."

"Keep an eye on those crime-scene techs, when they show up. We need a lead."

"I hear you."

"We need IDs. And we need to catch up with these guys before they catch up to Courtney."

Alex pulled into a parking space in front of her office and tugged her cell phone free from her purse. She composed a brief text message to a client and pressed Send.

A tap on the window made her jump. A barrel-chested man stood beside the door. He flashed a gold detective's shield.

She cracked the door an inch. "Yes?"

"Will Hodges, APD. I need a word."

Goddamn it.

She got out of the car, leaned back against the door, and crossed her arms. "I'm running late." She glanced at her watch. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for a client of yours. Courtney Glass."

Alex kept her face neutral, but she was kicking herself mentally for opening up to Nathan Devereaux. What was it about that man? Half a drink and half an hour of that sexy drawl, and she'd spilled her guts to him.

"I'm afraid I can't discuss-"

"I have an arrest warrant for her." He eased closer, until he invaded her space with his huge chest. "She's wanted for murder," he added, as if this would scare her.

Although, actually, it did. Alex made a habit of avoiding dirty cases. If some woman showed up and claimed that her husband was after her, that she needed to disappear, Alex demanded police reports or hospital records. If a guy called up and asked her to track down some woman who'd made off with his bank account, Alex ran a background check to see what she was dealing with. She didn't take on criminals, and she sure as heck didn't take on murderers.

"Show me the warrant," she said.

"What?"

"You say you have a warrant? Produce it."

"I don't have it in hand-"

"Then I've got no information for you." She started to walk away, but he blocked her path and leaned his hand against the side of her car.

"Aiding and abetting is serious. You could lose your license, you know."

Alex bit her tongue, using all her restraint not to tell off the big man with the badge and the gun.

She gazed up at him. His eyes were dark and dangerous-looking. This cop wanted his man. Or his woman, in this case. There was a certain desperation in his eyes that made Alex look more closely.

Was it possible...? No, it couldn't be.... But was it even remotely possible this man was the "friend" Courtney had stayed with last night? Was this the guy whose apartment Alex had taken her to with a duffel and a bag of Chinese food?

No way.

Courtney Glass was ballsy, but not enough to sleep with a cop who was investigating her for murder.

Unless maybe- "Where is she?" His hand balled into a fist against the car, and Alex realized she wasn't imagining things. This man was desperate to find her, and it was personal.

But that didn't make it okay. Lots of guys were desperate to track down the women who'd walked out on them. Sometimes they did it with shotguns.

"I don't know," Alex said. "I have no way to reach her. But I might be able to pass a message along, if she happens to contact me."

He stepped back and raked his hands through his short hair. "Just tell her-damn it, just tell her to call me." He pulled a card from his pocket and thrust it at Alex. "Day or night. I have to talk to her. And same goes for you. If you hear anything, I need you to call me. That's my cell number."

Alex shrugged and slipped the card into her pocket. "I'll see what I can do."

"Tell me one thing."

She looked up at him, and there it was again-that urgency.

"Is she okay? Do you know? Someone trashed her house yesterday, and no one's seen her."

Alex's eyebrows tipped up, and the detective seemed to hold his breath.

"I spoke with her yesterday around midmorning. She sounded fine." Alex could tell from his face that she hadn't answered his question.

He blew out a sigh. Nodded. "Thanks. And I mean it about that number. Anytime, day or night."

Will's XO presented Fiona's drawings to an alert press corp. The meeting room was packed as reporters from news outlets across the state recorded every detail of the story. Will scanned the eager faces, not bothering to conceal his disgust. Their young John Doe had slipped through the cracks all his life, only to capture the attention of a sympathetic public now that his body had been destroyed beyond recognition.

Will cut a glance at Fiona, who stood just a few feet away, stiff and somber in her black pantsuit. She looked stressed. Tired. Probably a lot like Will looked after spending a sleepless night on his sofa with his phone in his lap.

Will straightened his spine and ignored the frustration burning in his belly. Once upon a time he'd stood for hours, not moving, in the biting winds of the Korengal Valley, his gaze fixed on a distant stretch of highway, usually some supply route that needed protection from terrorist insurgents.

He could take a few minutes in front of a crew of reporters.

The key was to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand, in this case an unidentified boy and the people who'd killed him.

But every time he thought of that, his mind went to Courtney. And Walter Greene. And the inch-thick file he'd had copied and overnighted from Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. It wasn't Greene's case file-which took up two entire boxes, according to the LAPD clerk he'd managed to get on the phone. No, this file was all about Courtney and her probable-but not provable-involvement in Greene's murder.

The sea of reporters rose up and surged toward the exits. It was over. Will spotted Fiona trying to make a break for it, and caught up to her in a few strides.

"Wait." He clamped a hand on her shoulder and watched her eyes flare with annoyance. She didn't want to talk to him. Well, too bad. He steered her through the door and down the corridor until they were alone in the relative privacy of the vending machine alcove.

She turned to face him. "I haven't seen her."

"Have you talked to her?"

"No."

Will watched her, gauging her honesty. "Have you had an e-mail? Anything?"

"No." Fiona's eyes brightened with tears, and he knew she was telling the truth. She hadn't heard from her sister. She was just as scared as he was.

"Do you have anything I can go on? Maybe some friends or relatives I can look up?"

Fiona looked down, and he could sense the conflict inside her. She looked up again. "Tell me why I should help you arrest her."

"That wasn't my idea."

She scoffed. "Whose was it?"

"It came from higher up," Will said, wishing he could be more candid.

"Cernak has his head up his butt." She clenched her hands into fists. "Did he even talk to that jogger from the park? Who does he think those two men were? And does he know about what happened to my sister's house?"

"I don't know-"

"Does he think she did that herself? It's like he's got blinders on!"

"I know, I know." Will stepped closer and lowered his voice. "And I agree with you. I'm working an entirely different theory of this case. But I need to find Courtney. Skipping out on an arrest warrant isn't doing her story any good."

"Her story? You act like she made it up! You act like she's guilty!"

"She looks guilty if she runs, and you know it. I need to find her. You need to help me."

Fiona looked down and chewed her lip.

"Is there a friend somewhere? An ex-boyfriend, maybe? She doesn't have much money, so she couldn't have gone far without help."

Fiona shook her head.

"You didn't lend her money, did you?"

"No." She looked at him again, and she seemed to have decided something. "I didn't give her a dime. But my passport's missing."

"Your passport." His stomach sank.

"I'm not sure she has it, but-" She shook her head. "I don't know. She sort of looks like me. I think maybe she plans to leave the country."

Will stared at the television, too tired to move and too tired to sleep. The Yankees were up against the Red Sox, but if someone held a gun to Will's head, he couldn't have told them the score.

He reached over and pecked at the laptop sitting beside him on the couch. No new mail. He checked the battery on his phone.

He swigged his beer.

He'd come home from work and decided to get tanked. He was doing a damn fine job of it, judging by the six empty bottles lined up on his coffee table.

Walter Fucking Greene.

Ordained minister. Youth director. Spiritual leader with a fondness for single moms and troubled kids. Will had spent the past three hours imagining how he'd kill the guy if he weren't already dead.

According to the file from California, Greene had spent four years married to a Denise McCowen Glass, a part-time waitress and mother of two. Police had been called out to the couple's house several times, including once for an altercation involving a broken whiskey bottle. Denise had claimed her husband tried to hit her with it, but the husband said it had shattered against the wall when his wife tried to wrestle it from his hand. Then she'd gone after him with a pistol, getting a shot off and prompting a 911 call.

The police report favored the minister's side of things. Greene said his wife was a recovering alcoholic, and he intended to get her back into a treatment program as soon as possible. According to the report, he'd asked the cops not to arrest his wife but to pray for her instead.

The 911 call had been placed by Fiona Glass, age fourteen. Courtney Glass, eleven, had been present at the scene.

Also in the file was the write-up from a later incident in which a twenty-two-year-old Courtney "accidentally" rear-ended Greene's car. Three times. In a movie theater parking lot. A witness said the driver seemed "crazy" and "drunk," but a Breathalyzer came up clean. Greene declined to press charges, saying it was a family matter, although he and Courtney's mom would have been divorced for years by then.

Two weeks later, Greene burned to a crisp in his house with a couple of .22-caliber slugs embedded in his skull, and police hauled Courtney in for questioning.

Will glanced at his watch. It was after eleven. Tomorrow was a new day, and provided he didn't get his ass called out to some crime scene at three in the morning, Will planned to spend it at the posh offices of Wilkers & Riley. He'd interview everyone. Again. Especially the lawyers he'd missed, the ones Webb had talked to when they'd first made the rounds. And then Will would go talk to the plaintiff, a millionaire widower. He'd take another crack at everyone until he found someone who looked good for rigging a jury and then hiring a pair of hitmen to tie up loose ends.

Another day of interviews. Another day of lies and half-truths and separating the important ones out from the crap. People lied about everything, and only some of it mattered.

The phone rang, and Will sloshed beer on his shirt as he lunged to answer it.

"Hello?"

Silence.

"Hello?" He flipped the TV off and listened. He could have sworn he heard breathing.

"Courtney...talk to me."

The line went dead.