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the internal agony Miranda endured going back to the shack, searching the woods, finding the bones of a body they strongly suspected was the Butcher’s first victim, they couldn’t catch the killer. They didn’t have any clues to direct them. Little evidence, fewer leads, no suspects.
    Two months later Quinn was called back to the Seattle field office. She thought she’d never see him again, and it hurt because she really liked him.
    She was wrong. Quinn returned a month later, just to see her.
    That was when she really began to heal.
     
    CHAPTER
    4
    When Miranda was eight, her mother died of ovarian cancer. Devastated by the sudden diagnosis, short illness, and death, Bill Moore quit his high-level marketing job in Spokane and relocated with Miranda to
Montana
’s
Gallatin
Valley
. He purchased a run-down lodge thirty minutes outside Bozeman on the road to West Yellowstone, near Big Sky, and lovingly, painstakingly renovated it. By the time Miranda was ten, she knew everything about stripping, sanding, and varnishing. Almost single-handedly, she had refinished the floors on the main level of the inn.
    The deep canyons, breathtaking vistas, and endless sky eased the pain of a grieving family twenty-five years ago. The same environment saved Miranda after the Butcher, and again after Quantico. And now, with Rebecca’s recent murder and Sharon’s ghost weighing heavily on her mind, taking a quick detour to the Gallatin Lodge seemed necessary. She told herself she needed to stock up on provisions, but the truth was she just wanted to see her dad.
    Bill Moore sat behind the registration desk filling out the ubiquitous paperwork he loathed. The enormous moose head—which Miranda named Bruce when she first saw it twenty-five years ago—was the Lodge’s mascot. It stood sentry over the desk and her father, the sight of which rarely failed to bring a smile to her lips.
    Except on days like this.
    Glancing up when Miranda walked in, Bill’s face fell. He looked every one of his fifty-seven years. His hair, though still abundant, was now salt-and-pepper. Wrinkles lined his ruddy complexion, and his once strong body was almost imperceptibly sunken. Miranda’s gut twisted. She was the cause of the pain she saw every day in his pale eyes. His love for her was killing him, day by day. Knowing that—and not being able to stop the direction her life took her—heaped even more guilt onto her heart.
    “Daddy.” She didn’t need to say anything else.
    “Randy,” he said, his voice gruff, “come here.”
    He left the desk and she walked into his arms, welcoming the embrace. Her father had never been stingy with hugs. “It was him,” she whispered.
    Her father’s arms held her close. She breathed in the unique combination of spicy aftershave, rich coffee beans, and pipe tobacco. He smelled like home and love and everything good in her life.
    “You’re going out again.”
    “I have to.” She stepped back, took a deep breath, and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
    “I’ll pack some sandwiches. How many will be searching?”
    “Maybe twenty, twenty-five. Nick’s calling in volunteers to pair off with his people. Training them now. I don’t have much time.”
    “Go get your things. I’ll put together something for you all to eat.”
    “I love you, Daddy.”
    He touched her cheek, then turned toward the kitchen.
    She would have given anything to turn back the clock and protect her father from what he’d endured since she came home twelve years ago broken and hollow. Sometimes, she thought her father still saw her half-drowned and naked on the riverbank. Beaten, damaged, past exhausted.
    But alive.
    Which was more than she could say for Rebecca. Or Sharon. Or Penny, Susan, Karen, Ellen, and Elaine. Or the nine other girls who’d disappeared without a trace during spring over the last fifteen years.
    Under normal circumstances, Miranda enjoyed the peaceful walk down the winding gravel path to her