Part 2: They threw me out at nineteen with almost nothing, but twelve years later they brought a moving truck to my estate expecting to move into bedrooms I never offered them.

"David, stay on the line," I commanded, grabbing my car keys and slipping into my work boots. "Call Deputy Miller at the Page County Sheriff's Department right now. Tell him there is an active missing children investigation. Give him the description of the kids, their full names, and tell him to dispatch units to every rest stop and convenience store between Blackwood Ridge and the Luray exit."

"Are you going out there?" David asked, his voice shaking.

"I know this valley better than anyone," I said. "And I know how my mother thinks. She wouldn't leave them at a police station or a hospital because they would take her name and run her ID. She would leave them somewhere she thought someone would find them quickly, so she wouldn't feel 'guilty'—somewhere visible from the highway."

I ran out to my garage, hitting the button for the heavy roll-up doors. My truck—a dark gray Dodge Ram 2500 outfitted with heavy off-road suspension and high-output LED trail lights—roared to life. I tore down the driveway, the iron gates swinging wide open automatically as my transponder approached.

The sun had completely dipped behind the Allegheny Mountains, leaving the valley cloaked in deep, indigo shadows. The temperature in the mountain passes drops rapidly once night falls, dropping from seventy degrees during the day down into the low forties. Two toddlers in light summer clothes wouldn't survive the night exposed to the elements.

I sped down Blackwood Road, my high beams cutting through the gathering fog.

Where would an arrogant, panicked woman from Richmond dump two children she couldn't afford to feed?

Not in town. Too many cameras.

Not on my property. She knew I had security.

Three miles south of my turnoff, there was an old abandoned fruit stand—a remnant of the old apple orchards that used to line Route 340 before the bypass was built. It had a gravel turnout, a broken wooden awning, and sat directly across from an overgrown picnic area maintained by the state forestry service.

It was the exact kind of place Evelyn would consider "safe enough" to tell herself she wasn't a monster.

I floored the accelerator, the big diesel engine howling as I took the curves at the limit of the tires' traction.

My phone rang through the truck’s Bluetooth system. It was Marcus.

"Avery, Miller just broadcasted an amber alert standby across county dispatch," Marcus said. "I’m in my truck heading south on 340. Where are you?"

"Approaching mile marker 14, near the old orchard stand," I shouted over the road noise. "Marcus, check the roadside pull-offs near the river. If they aren't at the fruit stand, they might be near the boat ramp!"

"Copy that. I'm five miles behind you."

I rounded the long, sweeping bend near the old orchard. In the distance, my heavy LED light bar illuminated the dilapidated wooden frame of the abandoned fruit stand.

Nothing on the gravel apron.

My stomach plummeted. "No, no, no..."

Then, my headlights caught a tiny flash of reflective material fifty yards past the stand, near the edge of the tree line.