“You responded to the nine-one-one.”

“No, I wasn’t on, but word traveled, and fast. The kids are like family to me.” Sitting, he rubbed hard at the tension in the back of his neck. “I went down to see what I could do, if I could help. They were bringing Zane out. And they had his wrist cuffed to the damn gurney, saying he was under arrest, three counts of assault.”

Dave drank the cop coffee without a wince. “And bigger bullshit I’ve never heard. I’d taken him, my son, their dates to the school dance. And what, ten minutes after I drop him back home, he’s attacking his mom? He wouldn’t hit his mother or Britt. He was happy when I dropped him off, Detective. They’d had a great time.”

“Any drinking?”

“Absolutely not. Kid’s an athlete. He’s serious about baseball, and damn good, too. He wouldn’t risk getting benched for a beer, especially not before States. Jesus, you read the notebook.”

“I’m getting details, Mr. Carter.”

Dave held up a hand, drank more coffee. “Sorry. I’m wound pretty tight right now. Zane was sober, happy. It was their first big date, double date, Zane and Micah, my boy. And his tox came back clean. I was there when Elsa read it—Dr. Marshall, the orthopedic surgeon who treated him. He might still need surgery on the elbow, and he shouldn’t have been taken out of the hospital, much less to Buncombe. Elsa didn’t want to clear him—he should have had overnight observation. But Graham’s not only his father, he’s chief surgical resident. She didn’t have a choice.”

“You stayed with him?”

“Rode in the ambulance with him,” Dave confirmed, “into the hospital, stayed. Neither of his parents came down. Emily came. I called her. They didn’t.”

“Tell me what Zane said to you.”

Fueling himself with coffee, Dave went over everything he could remember, backtracked, added more detail.

“All right. I might need to talk to you again, but you can go home.”

“I’ll wait with Emily and Britt. I just need to let my wife know.”

Lee angled his head. “Your wife? You and Ms. Walker aren’t involved?”

“What?” Dave’s face cleared for the first time with a quick laugh. “No. I’ve been married for seventeen years. Eighteen? One of those. I’ve got two kids. I used to work for the Walkers back when I was a teenager, and summers into my twenties. I’ve known Emily, and Eliza, forever. Emily and I—and Em and my wife—are pretty good friends.”

“Not friends with Eliza Bigelow?”

Humor cooled out of Dave’s eyes. “We don’t run in the same circles as Graham and Eliza. She let that happen to her kids. Maybe she’s a victim, too, but she let that happen to her kids. And her son is hurt, terrified, and in prison. She let that happen, too.”

He got to his feet. “I’ll wait with them.”

Lee gave him directions, then sat back a minute. He’d been on his way home after a sixteen-hour day. Thinking he might have a before-bed beer.

Now it looked like more coffee with another long day to come.

He turned to his computer, did a run on Zane Bigelow, his parents, his aunt, Dave Carter. He got the phone number for the resort, and got to work.

* * *

When Zane looked back on the worst night of his life, small details stuck. The smell of the van—metallic covered with the sweat of fear and desperation. The sound of the wheels on the road sang misery. The impossible loneliness.

Whatever Dr. Marshall had given him for pain kept it under the surface. He knew it was there, knew it would come back, but he was too numb—body, mind, spirit—to care.

The guard had eyes like marbles, hard and cold. The driver said nothing. He was the only prisoner. He’d learn later his father’s insistence and influence helped speed his transport, alone and at such a late hour.

“Looks like you got your ass kicked, didn’t you? That’s what you get for going at your mother, your baby sister.”

Zane didn’t respond—what was the point? He kept his head down.

And later, like so many things later, he’d learned the guard’s marble eyes and the disgust in his voice were due, at least in part, to the fact that Dr. Graham Bigelow had performed surgery on the guard’s son after a car accident.

He couldn’t find his fear, couldn’t even dig down through the numb for worry.

Until the misery music of the tires changed to a kind of threatening grumble. And he heard the sound of the gate clanging shut behind the van.

Panic bloomed in his belly, spread its tendrils into his chest. And rocks tumbled over it, sharp and heavy. He felt tears stinging the back of his eyes, and some instinct, some atavistic animal inside him warned that if they fell, if even one escaped, it would doom him.

“Welcome home, asshole.”

The guard had to help him out of the van. If he felt any pity for the trembling boy with a splinted arm and ankle boot, he didn’t show it.

He went through a steel door, a metal detector. He had to stand against a wall, bright lights in his eyes, his weight on his uninjured foot. He gave his name, his birth date, his address.

They took him to a room, took his clothes. He couldn’t undress himself with his arm splinted, so suffered the humiliation of being stripped down, the unspeakable humiliation of the strip search.

They gave him clothes. Orange shirt, orange pants, orange clogs—or one clog because of the boot. They had to dress him.

They took him to a room—they called it a pod. It wasn’t a cell like he’d imagined; it didn’t have bars. It had a cot, a toilet, a sink. No window.

“You get up when we tell you. You make your bed, and wait till we take you in for breakfast. You eat what we give you. Since you got your ass kicked, you’ll get a check at the infirmary before you talk to the head shrink, who’s going to ask you about your fucking feelings. You do what you’re told when you’re told. Give me any shit, you’ll pay for it.”

Marble Eyes stepped to the door. “Your father’s a great man. You’re nothing.”

He went out. The door locked with a click that boomed in Zane’s ears.

And the lights went out.

He took one limping step, feeling for a wall, ramming his shin against the side of the cot. He crawled onto it as the trembles turned to shudders, as his breathing devolved into a kind of mewling.

He tried to curl up, just to hold on to himself, but he couldn’t manage it. He wanted to sleep, just sleep, just sleep, but the pain broke through the surface.

He let the tears come now. No one to see, no one to care. The sobs racked him, hurt his chest, his belly, his throat. But when he’d exhausted them, the panic went with them.

He lay, body throbbing, spirit dead.

Hours before, just hours before, he’d kissed the girl. He’d looked at the stars and danced under colored lights.

Now, his life was over.

The dark, the solitude became comfort. He clung to them because he began to fear what his life would become once that door unlocked again.

CHAPTER SIX

Lee ran on two hours’ sleep and black coffee. He’d made his case to his lieutenant, to the DA, to child services, and to the judge who’d signed Zane Bigelow’s arrest warrant.

Now in Lakeview, he sat in Chief Tom Bost’s office, a man he knew, and up until now had respected.

“This isn’t your case, it’s not Asheville’s case, it’s not CID’s case. It’s my case.”

“It was.” Lee spoke mildly, for now. “Now it’s not. You shoved that boy through the system, Tom. You cut corners and bent the rules and shoved him through when he was hurt. You called in favors, pulled strings to get him slapped into Buncombe.”

Red flags flew on Bost’s cheeks.

“That boy put his mother, his sister, his father in the damn hospital. I did my job, and don’t you come into my town and say different.”

“I’m saying different.”

“It’s going to cost you, Lee. Graham and Eliza are half out of their minds about Britt. I don’t know what the hell got into Emily Walker—I thought she had more sense. But she’s going to face child abduction charges. And when Graham gets done, you’ll lose your badge for being part of it.”

Lee set a copy of the first entry of Zane’s notebook on Tom’s desk. “Read that. Zane wrote that—you can see the date. Read it.”

“Every minute you hold that girl from her parents makes it worse.”

But he snatched up the copy. “This is bullshit, Lee. That boy’s sick.”

“His parents are. I contacted the resort where they went on December twenty-sixth of that year. I talked to their butler, the housekeeper, the manager. You know what they all said, Tom, every one of them? They said Zane had a tumble off his bike, broke his nose, hurt himself. He came in that way. He had to stay in his room—they were ordered by Graham Bigelow not to disturb him.

“What did he tell you back then, Tom?”

“It’s a mistake. Zane had a fall on the slopes.”