"I'm telling you it's no goddamned use." Lieutenant Pete Edgerton had an unusually smooth and gentle voice for a violent-crimes detective, but it was harsh now. And filled with reluctant certainty. "She's gone."

"Show me a body."

"Luke-"

"Until you can show me a body, I am not giving up on that girl." Lucas Jordan's voice was quiet, as it always was, but the intensity lurked, as it always did. And when he turned and left the conference room, it was with the quick, springy step of a man in excellent physical shape who possessed enough energy for at least two other men.

Maybe three.

With a sigh, Edgerton turned to the other detectives scattered about the room and shrugged. "The family hired him, and they have the mayor's backing, so we don't have the authority to call him off."

"I doubt anybody could call him off," Judy Blake said, her tone half admiring and half wondering. "He won't stop looking until he finds Meredith Gilbert. Dead or alive."

Another detective, surveying the stack of files in front of him, shook his head wearily. "Well, whether he's as gifted as they say or not, he's independent and he can concentrate on one case at a time for as long as it takes. We don't have that luxury."

Edgerton nodded. "We've already spent more time than we can afford-and a hell of a lot more manpower-on a single missing-persons case with squat for leads and absolutely no evidence that she was abducted against her will."

"Her family's sure she was," Judy reminded him. "And Luke is sure."

"I know. I'm sure myself, or at least as sure as I can be with a gut feeling." Edgerton shrugged again. "But we've got cases backed up and I've got my orders. The Meredith Gilbert investigation is officially a cold-case file."

"Is that the federal conclusion as well?" Judy asked, brows lifting as she turned her gaze to a tall, dark man who leaned negligently against a filing cabinet in a position that enabled him to watch everyone in the room.