Magic Hour

“Well,” he said at last, shoving a hand through his steel gray hair.

Ellie eased away from the wall and went to him. When she looked up into Max’s blue eyes, she saw how tired he was. No wonder. She’d heard they’d found him on some rock face only a few hours ago. He’d come straight from the mountains, not even bothering to change into work clothes or put on his white coat. He wore an old, faded pair of Levi’s and a black tee shirt. His curly gray hair was slightly damp and messy, but—as always—it was his eyes that demanded attention. They were an electric blue, and when he looked at you, there seemed to be no one else in the room. Even now, looking tired and confused, he was the best-looking man she’d ever seen.

“What can you tell me, Max?”

“She’s seriously malnourished and dehydrated. The hydration we can take care of pretty quickly, but the malnourishment is serious.” He lifted the child’s unbound wrist; his fingers easily encircled it. Next to his tanned skin, her dirty flesh looked splotchy and gray.

Ellie flipped open her notepad. “Native American?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that under all this filth, she’s Caucasian.” He let go of the girl’s wrist and moved down the bed. He gently lifted her right leg at the knee. “You see those scars on her ankle?”

Ellie leaned closer. Beneath the grime she saw it: a thick, discolored band of scar tissue. “Ligature marks.”

“Almost certainly.”

Peanut made a gasping sound. “The poor thing was tied?”

“For a long time, I’d say. The scarring is not new tissue, although the cuts around it are fairly recent. Her X rays show a broken left forearm that healed badly, too.”

“So, we’re not looking at some ordinary kid who wandered off from her family in the park and got lost.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Any evidence of sexual trauma?”

“No. None.”

“Thank God,” Ellie whispered.

He shook his head, sighing quietly. “I saw a lot of bad shit in the inner city, El, but I never saw anything like this.”

“What can you do for her?”

“This isn’t my area of expertise.”

“Come on, Max . . .”

He looked down at the girl. Ellie saw something in his eyes—a sadness; or maybe fear. You could never tell with Max. “I could run some tests—brain waves, blood samples, that kind of thing. If she were conscious, I could observe her, but—”

“The old day care center is empty,” Peanut said. “You could watch her through the window.”

“Right. Put her there, Max. She might try to escape, so keep the door locked. By morning I’m sure we’ll know more. Mel and Earl are canvassing the town. They’ll find out who she is. Or when she wakes up, she’ll tell us.”

Max turned to her. “We’re in the deep end here, Ellie, and you know it. Maybe you should call in the big boys.”

Ellie looked at him. “It’s my pool, Max. I can handle one lost girl.”

THREE

JULIA STOOD IN FRONT OF THE FULL-LENGTH MIRROR IN HER BEDROOM, studying herself with a critical eye. She wore a charcoal gray pantsuit and a pale pink silk blouse. Her blond hair was coiled back in a French twist; the way she always wore it when seeing patients. Not that she had a lot of patients left. The tragedy in Silverwood had cost her at least seventy percent of them. Thankfully there had been those who still trusted her, and she would never let them down.

She grabbed her briefcase and went down to her garage, where her steel blue Toyota Prius Hybrid waited. The garage door opened, revealing the empty street outside.

On this warm, brown October morning there were no reporters out there waiting for her, clustered together and yet apart, smoking cigarettes and talking.

She was no longer part of the story.

Finally, after a year of nightmares, she had her life back. It took her more than an hour to reach the small, beautiful Beverly Hills office building that she’d leased for more than seven years.