That was the moment even Alan looked afraid. Because injuries tell one kind of story. Objects tell another. And phones tell the stories people thought they had hidden.

By sunrise, they had Daniel.

He was picked up walking behind a closed strip of stores two miles from the gas station, soaked from rain, scratches on his hands, no good answer for why his SUV was abandoned.

He asked for a lawyer before he asked whether Emily was alive.

The deputy told me that later. I wish I could say I was surprised. I was not.

The third phone mattered more than Daniel did at first. It belonged to a woman named Claire — someone from Daniel’s office, whose number appeared in Emily’s cracked phone seventeen times over the previous month.