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would turn out okay. He could picture her, green eyes too big for her face, long hair in pigtails, wearing the determined look that seemed to be her default expression. There was no way she would’ve tolerated being left behind.
    And he knew there was no way she’d leave Rose Bay now until she uncovered the truth. No matter how horrible it was, no matter what it cost her.
    The image of Evelyn faded as the smell of something rotting wafted up.
Please, God, don’t let it be Brittany Douglas.
    He tried not to inhale too deeply as Frank splashed into the low marsh waters, startling three turkey vultures. They gave deep, guttural hisses, then took off into the sky, revealing a carcass along the edge of the marsh.
    The breath stalled in his lungs. It was the remains left by some hunter, but it wasn’t human. Just a deer. He shut his eyes and allowed himself a moment of relief.
    Beside him, Gabe sighed. “Thank God.”
    Frank stared down at the carcass, then off into the distance, where the marsh wound through tall grasses and eventually disappeared from sight. “Let’s keep looking.”
    Far behind them, the search was continuing.
    * * *
    Each time Evelyn read the note that had been taped to Brittany Douglas’s bike, goose bumps rose on her skin.

    It wasn’t so hard,
    I went to the yard,
    Where you’d left the poor child alone.
    When I got there,
    It felt like a dare.
    I thought to myself, Take her and run.

    It matched the notes from eighteen years ago...and yet, it didn’t. Back then, just like now, the nursery rhymes focused on two ideas. First, that the child was being neglected in some way by the parents. And second, that the abductor was rescuing her from that.
    But eighteen years ago, the abductor hadn’t displayed such obvious joy at the abduction. That idea dominated the new note, a macabre revision of “Old Mother Hubbard.”
    Unlike the notes eighteen years ago, which had talked to the victim, this one was directed at the parents. In context, the change made sense, given the increased focus on the abduction stage.
    But was it because the abductor had developed a taste for the actual abduction? Or because it was a new predator entirely? She’d pored over the case details from the three old abductions and the new one for more than an hour, but still wasn’t positive.
    And that was the most important part of the profile she’d promised to deliver to the cops in less than two hours.
    So far, what she knew were the statistics. She knew the chances of a child abductor going dormant for eighteen years and then starting up again were slim. She knew Brittany Douglas, at eleven years old, was the average age of child abduction and murder victims. Statistics said Brittany had first met her abductor within a quarter mile of her home. Statistics also said she’d been dead before Evelyn had even arrived in town.
    But it didn’t matter how slim Brittany’s chances were; if there was any hope at all, Evelyn had to try.
    A rush of cold swept over her in the too-warm hotel room, leaving behind an intense fear. The fear that she might fail.
    Evelyn tried to ignore it as she picked up the photograph of Brittany Douglas. With her long, dark brown hair, hazel eyes and shy smile, Brittany looked nothing like Cassie. In fact, none of the victims looked alike. The only similarity was age and gender. And the fact that the killer either believed—or wanted police to think he believed—that their parents were neglecting them.
    “Damn it!” Evelyn sprang to her feet, raking her hands through her bun so violently she’d have to fix it before she went back to the station. The most important case of her life and she was blowing it.
    Was Dan right? Was she too inexperienced in child abduction cases to spot the important details? Too personally invested to see the case clearly?
    Evelyn blew out a heavy breath. No, she could do this. She’d been training all her life for this case. She was going to put everything she had into it.