ne after another, police vehicles from the site of Leigh's accident flew past them, light bars flashing and sirens blaring, en route to the cabin. Leigh leaned forward and angrily asked Harwell, "Did Detective Shrader tell you to go this slow, or are you doing it just to be unpleasant?"

"Detective Shrader's orders, ma'am," Harwell replied, but Leigh could see his smirking face in the rearview mirror, and she knew he was enjoying her frustration—probably because she'd forced him to take Michael Valente along.

"Why would he give you an order like that?"

"I really couldn't say."

"Take a guess!" O'Hara snapped.

"Okay. My guess is that Detective Shrader doesn't know what he's going to find, or if he's going to find anything, and he wants a little extra time to look around and assess the scene. Family members and civilians get in the way." As he spoke, he flipped on his turn indicators. "This is it."

A mile after the turnoff, he pulled to a stop in the middle of a narrow mountain road crowded with police cars, including some from surrounding communities. The cabin was nowhere in sight, but a steep, narrow lane led from the road, down through the trees, and then disappeared around a bend.

Harwell got out of the car. "You stay here!" he ordered her, shouting to be heard above the roar of a hovering helicopter and the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance. "I'll let you know what they've found."

Police officers wading through the chest-high snow had created a passage of sorts with their bodies, and Leigh stood between O'Hara and Valente, watching Harwell make his way down the deep, slippery channel. More police officers arrived and trooped through the snow, but no one reappeared from around the bend below.

Leigh counted each second, waiting for someone to come up and tell her something, and when no one did, she began to feel as if she were going to explode into a million pieces.

Beside her, Valente was scowling down the lane; then he swore under his breath and looked at her. "How badly are you hurt?"

"What?"

"Your ribs?" he clarified. "Can you handle the pain if I lift you up and carry you down there?"

"Yes!" Leigh said. "But I don't think you—"

Before she could finish, Valente put one arm beneath her knees, curved his other arm around her shoulders, and lifted her into his arms. He looked at O'Hara and nodded toward the steep path. "You go first, and I'll walk in your footsteps. If I start to slip, try to brace me."

The plan worked, and a few minutes later, Leigh finally had an unobstructed view of the entire scene. The picturesque stone cabin stood in a clearing at the end of the driveway, just as Logan had described it to Leigh. Fifty yards from the cabin, the land dropped off sharply, and a horde of policemen were working their way slowly downward through the trees.

Another officer was stationed on the cabin's porch, peering inside through the open doorway. He turned in surprise as Valente put Leigh down behind him.

"You can't go in there," he informed her. "Detective Shrader's orders."

"I'm Mrs. Manning," Leigh argued. "I want to know if my husband is inside! " She was prepared to try to push past him, but Detective Littleton appeared in the doorway and answered her question. "There's no one here, Mrs. Manning. I'm sorry," she added. "I was planning to go up to the road and tell you myself, as soon as we finished a preliminary search of the area."

Devastated, Leigh sagged against the doorframe. "This must be the wrong place…"

"I don't think so. There are some things inside that may belong to your husband. I'd like you to tell me if you can identify anything." As she stepped aside to allow Leigh past, she looked at Valente and politely said, "You'll have to wait out here, sir."

Inside, the empty little cabin was as bone-chillingly cold as the interior of a freezer, and almost as dark. Dampness had permeated the stone floors and walls, and the only available light came through a small, grimy window on her right. Leigh blinked, trying to adjust from the dazzling brightness outside to the gloom within.

To her left, two doorways off the main room opened into a kitchen and bathroom respectively, and opposite her, a third doorway, in the corner, opened into a room Leigh assumed was a bedroom. Adjoining that doorway, to the right, and occupying most of the wall directly in front of her, was a fireplace, its stones blackened with decades of accumulated soot. Lying on the floor in front of it, Leigh saw a dark green sleeping bag, still rolled up and neatly tied. She rushed over to it and bent down to see it better; then she looked over her shoulder at Littleton and Shrader, who were standing side by side. "This looks like one of ours!"

"Are you certain it's yours?" Shrader asked.

Sleeping bags all looked pretty much alike to Leigh and she hadn't actually seen this one for years. "I think so. I'm not positive."

"Do you and your husband own more than one sleeping bag?"

"Yes, we have two of them. They're identical."

Looking for something more identifiable, she stood up and walked into the empty bedroom; then she glanced into the bathroom, which was also empty. Unaware of how closely she was being observed, Leigh went into the kitchen next. A big, old-fashioned porcelain sink on steel legs stood against the far wall, an open paper bag on the floor beneath it. Spread out on the drain board were items Logan had bought for the day. Leigh felt a lump in her throat as she looked at the boxes of Logan's favorite crackers, an open package of cheese, and a deli sandwich still wrapped in plastic wrap. In addition to the bottled water Leigh had asked for, he'd also brought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of chardonnay. Because he'd wanted to celebrate the occasion with her that night…

Lined up on the windowsill above the sink was a roll of paper towels, a bottle of liquid detergent, a box of wooden matches, and a can of insecticide. A new broom with the price tag still attached was propped against the wall near the back door.

Everything Leigh saw reminded her poignantly of Logan and their conversation the morning he left, but until she stepped closer and looked into the sink, she had clung to the frail hope that this was the wrong place, that Logan was still safe and snug in some other cabin. Two Baccarat crystal wineglasses in the sink robbed her of her last comforting fantasy.

She turned to Shrader and Littleton, her eyes filled with anguish. "The glasses are ours." Driven by a sudden, overpowering urge to search for Logan and rescue him herself, she brushed past the two detectives and returned to the bedroom. She was reaching for the closet door when Shrader barked, "Don't touch anything, Mrs. Manning!"

Leigh jerked her hand back. "Did you look in the closet? Maybe Logan is—"

"Your husband isn't in there," Detective Littleton assured her.

"No, of course not," Leigh said, but she was rambling now, talking to stop herself from thinking about the unthinkable. "Why would Logan hide in a closet? He was obviously here, though, and he—" She broke off as a sudden realization gave her momentary hope. "But his car isn't here. He must have gone somewhere else—"

Shrader ruthlessly demolished her logic and her hope. "Your husband was driving a white Jeep, wasn't he?" When Leigh nodded, he shrugged and said in a matter-of-fact voice, "Well, when I stand in the doorway over there and look out, all I see are a whole lot of white hills. A white Jeep, covered in a few inches of snow, could look just like one of those."

That was the last thing Leigh wanted to hear anyone say. She wrapped her arms around herself and concentrated on not losing her grip on her emotions. In the living room, she went over to the window and watched the police searching the wooded hillside. They weren't really looking for Logan down there, she realized. Logan had disappeared almost six days ago. They were looking for his body.

Her own body began to shake so hard she had to clutch the window frame to keep herself from sliding to the floor. "It was so cold the night of the blizzard," she whispered brokenly. "Did he have wood to build a fire? I haven't seen any wood. I hope he wasn't cold—"

"There is plenty of wood stacked outside the kitchen door," Detective Littleton tried to reassure her.

Leigh wasn't reassured. She'd just realized the implications behind Shrader's warning. "Why don't you want me to touch anything?" she whispered.

"Since we have no idea what happened to your husband," Shrader said, "we're following standard procedure—"

It was Michael Valente who lost control—his temper erupted against Shrader and he brushed past the startled officer on the porch. "You're either a sadist or a moron!" he said, stalking into the house and going to Leigh's side. "Listen to me," he told her. "That asshole doesn't know any more about what happened to Logan than you do! There's a chance he's snowbound somewhere else, waiting for someone to dig him out. Maybe he got hurt and can't walk out on his own. Whatever the case, the best thing you can do now is let me take you home. Let the police do whatever it is they think they need to do here."

Surprisingly, Detective Littleton seconded that idea. "He's right, Mrs. Manning. It would be best if you left now. We have a wide area to search, and we'll phone you in the city the instant we find any clue to what happened here."

Leigh stared at her, sick with fear that Valente had alienated both detectives so completely that they'd never tell her anything. "Do you promise you'll call, no matter what?"

"I promise."

"Even if it's just to tell me you don't know anything else?"

"Even then," Littleton agreed. "I'll call you tonight." She walked to the doorway and waited for Leigh and Valente to step outside on the porch; then she nodded at one of the police officers standing there. "Officer Tierney here will drive you back to your helicopter, just tell him where it is."

When they left, Sam Littleton motioned to another NYPD officer standing nearby, brushing packed snow off his legs and jacket. "Get some rolls of crime-scene tape and start blocking off the area from that point there—" She pointed to the end of the driveway visible from the house.

"Don't you want it up at the road, too?"

"No, it would only arouse curiosity and invite attention, but I want an officer stationed up there around the clock until CSU has been here and gone. No one gets down here without permission from Detective Shrader or me."

"Got it," he replied, turning to leave.

"One more thing—Ask one of the local departments if we can borrow a generator. We're going to need lights and heat down here."

"Anything else?"

Sam gave him a beguiling smile. "Since you asked, two cups of hot coffee would be very nice."

"I'll see what I can do."

SHRADER was on the phone with Holland, making arrangements for a crime scene unit to be sent to the cabin ASAP. When he finished his call, he gave Sam a ferocious scowl, which, on Shrader, looked so much like his happy face that Sam wasn't certain whether he was amused or angry. "Valente called me an asshole!" he exclaimed, and Sam realized he was actually delighted.

"He did," she agreed, "—and you were."

"Yeah, but you know what I found out?"

Sam shoved her hands in her pockets and grinned. "That he also thinks you're a sadistic moron?"

"Besides that."

Sam tipped her head to the side. "I give up. What else did you discover? "

"The Feds call Valente the Ice Man—but I found out he has a warm, soft, sensitive spot. It's Mrs. Logan Manning. Our people are going to find that very interesting." He crouched down in front of the fireplace and took a pen out of his pocket. "I don't know how she's made it as an actress onstage."

"You don't think she can act?" Sam uttered in surprise.

Shrader gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Hell, yes, she can act! She gave us an Academy Award performance in the hospital and again right here. The problem is she doesn't seem to remember her lines. In the hospital Wednesday morning, she got all righteous and indignant when I asked her about Valente's phone message. Today, two days later, she shows up in his private helicopter and he carries her down here in his arms."

Since they'd already covered this topic on the way here from the accident site, Sam said nothing.

"In order to be a good liar, you've got to have a good memory," Shrader declared as he poked around in the ashes. "This looks like ordinary wood ash to me, probably oak. The problem with Mrs. Manning," he continued, "is that she not only has a bad memory, she also has a real bad sense of direction. She was twelve miles south of here when her car went over the embankment, and she was heading south, not north. That means… what?" He looked over his shoulder and lifted his brows, waiting for Sam to fill in his verbal blank.

"Is this a quiz?" she said with amusement. "It means it looks as if she was on her way back home, not on her way here, when she went off the road."

"Right. Now, what bothers you about this place? Anything stand out?"

It dawned on Sam that this was the first case they'd started on together, and that Shrader was truly trying to get a sense of how observant she was. "There are several things that stand out. First, someone swept this floor very clean, very recently, which is why you didn't bother to keep everyone out of here. You already knew CSU wouldn't be able to get any footprints off this stone, not only because it's been swept, but because it's too uneven."

"Good. What else?"

"You let Valente walk in here, in the impossible hope that CSU could somehow lift a partial print of his shoes and that they'd match up with a print somewhere else on the stone floor in here."

"So I'm a dreamer."

"By the way, in case you didn't notice, Mrs. Manning left at least a partial print on that window."

He pushed himself to his feet, dusted off his hands, and tucked the pen in his pocket. "She put her hand on the frame, not the glass. I was watching."

"I think her hand slid over onto the glass when she turned around."

Shrader's eyes narrowed. "If you're certain, make a note of it."

"I will." Turning, she walked into the kitchen. "Are you going to say anything to Tierney? He let Valente get past him and walk in here."

"You bet your sweet ass I am! Sorry—no personal, inappropriate, or offensive sexual connotation was intended."

"None taken," Sam assured him gravely, but her mind was on the glasses in the kitchen sink. Those glasses seemed as odd to her as the single sleeping bag seemed to Shrader, and she said that aloud.

"What bothers you about the glasses?" he asked.

"Why are they in the sink? The bottles of water weren't opened, neither was the bottle of champagne or the bottle of chardonnay. So if the glasses were unused, why did he put them in the sink?"

"He probably figured they'd be safer there, less likely to get broken."

Sam didn't argue.