Cameryn nodded. She’d already taken her first sweep of pictures. Propping the camera on her hip, she said, “At least it was quick.”

“He never knew what hit him.” Her father sighed as he surveyed the body, jotting notes in his red plastic binder. “We’d better get a sheet.”

“I’ll do it. I packed one in the car.”

She turned to go but found she suddenly couldn’t move. Patrick had drawn her into a tight embrace, so close she could smell the wood smoke embedded in his black regulation parka. The edge of the binder bit into her back.

She felt swallowed up, suffocated by her father’s sheer physical size. A tall man with a barrel chest and heavy brows, he had both a build and coloring so different from her own. The once-red hair was still dense as grass, but age was turning it a snowy white. His ruddy complexion made his blue eyes seem glacial. She, on the other hand, had inherited her mother’s dark curly hair, warm, golden skin, and brown eyes, as well as her mother’s diminutive height.

“Dad,” she said into his parka, “I can’t breathe. And we need to start looking.”

“Sorry.” He released her with a rough kiss to the top of her head. “You’re right, there’s still a job to do. I need to find the rest of this guy.” Squinting, he scanned the army of trees. “It is not going to be easy.”

“I know.”

The car had crashed on the Million Dollar Highway, a narrow, twisting two-lane road that folded back on itself like tossed-away ribbon. To the west, Colorado ’s San Juan Mountains loomed above them, while to the east, the ground cut away into a deep valley riddled with spruce. “The problem is,” her father murmured, “that head could be anywhere. I’ve seen them sail a quarter mile or more, which means it could have gone down the mountainside. If it did, we’re screwed.”

“We can at least figure out the trajectory.”

“How’s that?”

She told him the amount of blood contained in a skull and how, once it became airborne, blood trailed from the base of the neck like paint until the head landed back on the ground. Find the blood and track it to the end, following the splatter like a trail of crumbs. Her father seemed impressed, asking if she’d learned that from her forensic books. Unlike her grandmother, he approved of her dream of becoming a medical examiner.