Dark Moon. Lindsay Longford

magic stuff, a slick kitchen, and one room he sleeps in. We looked. Top to bottom. Everywhere.”

      “Everywhere?” she whispered, stunned. “What if you’d looked last night?” She should have insisted that they initiate a search earlier. Why hadn’t she?

      Because she’d been disoriented by the strange experience in those last moments with him. So bewildered that she’d felt as if her whole world had flipped crazily upside down.

      “If we’d looked last night, we might have found indications that animals had been there, that a kid had been on the premises. We might have found something. But we didn’t go out there last night.” He turned his head from side to side and Josie heard a pop of vertebrae. “Wished to God we had. We didn’t, though. One more dead end.” The thick hair on his wrist sparkled in the sunlight as he reached toward her and she jerked away.

      The heavy glass ashtray was too near her elbow. Spraying ashes and matches, it fell to the linoleum floor. “Sorry,” she muttered and made no move to clean up the mess.

      Neither did Stoner. “Look, I know you’re distraught—”

      “No, Detective, I’m not distraught. I’m angry. You can’t even begin to believe how angry,” Josie said, clipping her words out. She wasn’t about to allow him to label her and dismiss her. She knew how the bureaucratic mind worked. If Stoner could stick a label on her, he would be able to get rid of her more easily. She wanted him to take the memory of her face home with him every night. She wanted him to think about Mellie’s small face in the dark of the night. “I want my daughter found. I don’t know anything about Ryder Hayes. But I saw the dogs. They were going to attack me. Maybe he had nothing to do with them, as he says. I don’t know. But I’m not so distraught—” she made the word into a blasphemy “—that I’m losing my grip on reality. I’m the last person in the world who would do that, believe me.” She spoke fiercely, willing him to understand. “I’m not going off the deep end. I want my daughter back. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. So I want to know what happened to her, that’s all!”

      “We’re doing the best we can.” Stoner’s face was obdurate.

      “Right,” she said and stood up so abruptly that the chair skidded away. “Fine. Ryder Hayes is as innocent as a newborn babe. He doesn’t have a pack of killer dogs hanging out at his house. Splendid. I’ll sleep much better tonight, Detective. Thanks.” When he grimaced, she knew her irony had been too heavy-handed, but she didn’t give a damn. She only wanted out of the stifling atmosphere created by Stoner and his bureaucratic mentality.

      She was glad Stoner didn’t follow her to the door. She might have said something she would have regretted. She was ready to pick a fight, ready to vent the rage and frustration and grief that pooled in her and grew deeper and stronger by the day.

      Outside the station, she blinked in the brilliant sunlight. Everything was glazed with white-hot light and Sunday-morning still. In half an hour, the churches would empty and the streets would be filled.

      Head down, she walked to the parking lot. She’d lied to Stoner. She was losing her grip. Exhaustion and the constant drain of not knowing about Mellie were taking a bigger toll than she wanted to admit. That, and her refusal to go anywhere, see anyone except the detectives on the case.

      She had to organize her life. If she didn’t, she’d never make it through whatever was going to happen. She had to keep strong for Mellie’s sake.

      The car was idling next to hers, a low purring that she didn’t even register until she reached into her purse for her car keys, and then she looked over.

      The silvery car was backed in so that its driver’s side faced forward. Her car faced the chain links at the edge of the parking lot.

      Breaking the glittery silver expanse, a darkened window slid down.

      Blinded by the blaze of sunlight in front of her, Josie couldn’t see the face inside the shadowed interior. But she recognized the voice and the lazy grace of his movements as he leaned forward, dipping his head.

      “May I have a word with you, Josie Conrad? A moment of your time?” Ryder Hayes said politely, the cool smoothness of his words spreading over her suddenly flushed skin like melting ice cream.