The Longest Day

Stella Briggs is six years old. She's been missing from her family's campsite since nine-thirty last night.

And she is not alone in those mountains.

Gemma Hartley-Reyes takes the call before dawn. Eight and a half months pregnant, she can't run into the trees and find this child herself, not this time, not with a baby three weeks away.

A missing child. An abandoned campsite. Boot prints in the dirt that don't belong to any six-year-old.

As Kate and Scout work the field, Tyler leads ground teams up the drainages, and Marco coordinates law enforcement, Gemma takes command from staging and fights every instinct she has.

Stella is alive. Scout confirms it.

She is moving through the backcountry with the terrified logic of a small child who has seen something she was never supposed to see, something that sent her running into the dark before anyone knew she was gone. And the man whose boot prints follow hers does not want her found.

Meanwhile, under Gemma's map table, an old gray-muzzled dog lies with her chin on her paws, reading the air the way she has for a decade. In her entire career, Kira has whined to alert her handler exactly four times. Today she whines again and Gemma understands, the way she has understood this dog for ten years, that something on the mountain has just changed.

The Longest Day is the emotional heart of the Search and Rescue Mysteries, the search that tests every handler, breaks every heart, and lets an old working dog give her team one last gift before she lays down her vest.

Perfect for fans of Nevada Barr, Margaret Mizushima, and Robert Crais. Have tissues ready.

Book 10 of 14. Start with Book 1: Trail Gone Dark.