And the day was almost upon them.

That same afternoon, Daniel traveled north with the investigators, driving hard toward the foothills.

They reached Auburn during a violent storm, rain sheeting across the windshield, the light failing early.

The marked pickup truck was there, abandoned outside an old warehouse at the edge of town.

And inside the warehouse, when they moved in, two men were questioning a third — a construction worker, bearded, much thinner than the photographs Daniel carried in his memory, his face carrying the particular exhaustion of a man who has spent years looking over his shoulder and has finally been caught.

It was Andrew.