Lena — Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 12:30–4:00 p.m.
The man at the track wanted to know where she meant to leave the car. Lena looked past him at the vehicles already there. He pointed out a place she could turn without blocking the next arrival, and waited while she did it.
She reversed twice and got out into a puddle. Her good shoes were good for sitting at a table. The left one admitted water at once.
Owen was beside a vehicle with its rear open, listening to an officer whose pants were wet nearly to the knee. He had a parcel image under a clear cover. The officer showed where he'd come down from the upper boundary, then waited while Owen marked the point. Someone called him over to change with another team. He went with the tired, stiff care of a person who would be cold when he stopped moving.
“How's she doing?” Owen asked.
“She wants to go home. With Tessa.”
“She's done some more on these.”
He handed her the images Nadia had marked. The stonework, a line higher up, two places she wasn't sure she could join. The officer who'd been with her had put her words beside each mark. Lena recognized the corrections from the hospital. She had told the officer not to make one continuous route out of them.
“Who's got this now?” she asked.
“Moss. Field lead. He's over there.”
Owen gave her the current account while they went to him. The issued warrant was in the record; entry had been at ten. The low utility window was open, June absent. The immediate approaches had been checked, people sent roadward and above. They had reached the occupied farm with the light, spoken to the people there and checked the obvious yards and sheds. Nobody had seen June. The upper preference Nadia reported was being used alongside the lower possibilities.
Lena asked which part of the marked line went to that farm. Owen showed her the approach the team had used. She looked at the image, turned it and found the cabin again.
“That's on the other side.”
“Across the hollow. You can't see the drop from this.”
“But the wall looks as though it carries on.”
“Moss can show you.”
Moss was speaking to two people who were going back out. He had gloves tucked beneath one arm and a pencil behind his ear. Lena waited while he checked where they were meeting the returning pair. Then she laid Nadia's marked photograph beside the parcel image.
“Could we test this connection?” she asked. “The one we keep drawing across here.”
She pointed from the upper line visible at the cabin toward the farm. “If those are separate walls, we can stop treating that approach as the end of this one.”
He took the pencil from behind his ear. “We've got people coming back from that approach. They can give us the view from their end.”
“And from ours?”
“You can get up the accessible side with them.” He indicated the pair waiting with their equipment. “They know where it turns down. Don't go off on your own to see it better.”
She hadn't proposed going alone. She said all right and asked whether she could use Nadia for a short comparison of the views. Moss wanted the officer's drawing sent to him with the original words as well as the photograph. Owen said he'd do it. For a moment the three of them were leaning over the same small part of the ground. She could put a question somewhere people could go and look.
Before she left the vehicles, Owen called her back. They had the identification from June's bag. June Farrell, twenty-six. The separate missing-person report had been compared through the officer handling it. Her aunt was Beth Farrell, the person she'd been traveling to see. Beth had been told June was alive at dawn, injured, and now missing from the cabin. There was a liaison officer in contact.
“What did she ask?” Lena said.
“Whether somebody was with her.”
He gave her the liaison's name. Beth wanted to come, had a friend who could drive. She'd asked whether to bring June's things. Lena told Owen they should arrange somewhere for her to wait, and he sent the request. She put the number in her phone. Then she went to see the room Nadia had described.
The officer working inside told her where she could stand. In the main room a chair sat at an angle to the table. There was bread on a plate, a kitchen clock. She had heard Nadia talk for so long that she recognized the room before she had looked properly at it.
Through the low window in the utility room she could see damp ground and a broken gray line on the rise. She bent, straightened, bent again. From one position the far light farm lay beyond the line; a step to the side changed which stretch seemed to lead toward it. She had brought up the photograph on her phone. It was almost right, which was making it harder to see what was wrong.
The officer watched her.
“Could you get the whole window view from here?” she asked.
He took the photograph from where Nadia might have stood, then one from a little farther over. Lena marked the position of each on the room sketch, without giving either one a route. She went outside to call the officer with Nadia.
Nadia answered herself. They were nearly ready to leave the hospital. Alma had taken Tessa to get food and would be back. She wanted to know whether there was news of June.
“Not yet,” Lena said. “I've got a particular thing I think you can help compare. Two views, from the room. I want to check which of the higher lines you could see. The teams have reached the other side.”
“I told you I didn't go up there.”
“I know. This is the view you had. Would you look?”
“Now?”
“We can send them now. Then I can call when I'm at the near end with the officer.”
Nadia went quiet. Lena heard her ask somebody how long. A voice answered too far from the phone to make out.
“One twenty,” Nadia said. “I can do it at one twenty. But not all afternoon.”
“How long would be all right?”
“Till one forty. Tessa hasn't eaten anything she calls food. I haven't either.”
“That should be enough.”
“Send the pictures first.”
Lena sent them through the contact already being used for the images, with the positions marked, and the officer confirmed they had arrived. Nadia asked which one she was meant to recognize.
“Whichever matches what you saw. You can say neither.”
“The first is near it. You need a bit more above, though. You've cut the top off.”
Lena looked at the image. She had cropped it so the window edge would be clear, cutting away part of what she wanted compared. She asked the officer inside for the wider frame. Nadia said she could work from that. They agreed on the call and ended this one. Lena sent the wider view before she put the phone away.
At ten past one Lena set out with the assigned pair. Moss had asked the crew returning from the farm to photograph the wall from their existing position. They wouldn't have to go back over it.
The usable approach climbed beside the cabin. Lena shortened her step, watching where the officers put their feet. Water brushed off the leaves onto her pants. At the first broken wall one of them showed her where she could stand, then took the view she asked for, leaving the foreground in.
From here the near stones and the wall across the hollow seemed to run together. A few steps along the accessible side separated them: this wall turned down, while the other stayed high on the opposite bank. Lena took a photograph from there. She wanted the far crew's image beside it before she called Nadia.
Her wet shoe made a small sucking sound when she lifted it. The officer asked whether she could walk back. She said yes. The woman spread a waterproof sheet over the flatter stones, and Lena put the covered parcel image on it. It would not lie still. They each held a corner while she waited for the farm view.
It arrived as she checked the time. One nineteen. The far approach met a different line of stone; the people there had put their position on the image and given the direction they were facing. The woman held the sheet while Lena opened Nadia's call.
“I've got you,” Nadia said.
“I've sent the higher view. Can you see it?”
“Yes. Wait. The officer's got the first one too.”
Lena waited. Somewhere across the hollow a voice called and stopped. The woman beside her listened, head turned, until the next radio message came. They went on with the images.
Nadia asked the officer with her to put the old sketch aside. It made her remember the drawing instead of the view. Lena heard Tessa moving something noisy close by.
“What are you doing?” the child asked.
“Helping someone see what I saw. Get the other thing, Tess. I'll be there in a minute.”
Lena sent the window photograph beside the view from the wall. Nadia marked the high stretch she meant, then put a question beside the first bend out of the cabin. She hadn't been able to join that part from inside. Lena left it blank.
“The close wall isn't it,” Nadia said. “June was looking farther up.”
“This one?”
“Yes. I thought it went behind. Like it came out again.”
“That end. No, you can't see where I'm pointing.” Nadia laughed sharply. “I'll put it on the picture. Give me a second.”
The marked image came back. Lena could match both ends to the stones before her; the apparent join lay across the drop. She sent the view from the occupied farm, facing back toward them.
“That's where the other crew stood.”
Nadia studied it. Tessa asked whether she could have something when they were finished. Nadia said yes, in a minute.
“The light was farther than I thought,” she said. “I knew it was over. But I thought you could get to it by that.”
The officer beside Lena checked the marks against the ground. The farm approach met the other wall. The line visible from the cabin didn't carry them through to it.
She gave Moss the separation and sent the three marked views. He asked which part the crew had actually walked. The officer answered, pointing out their position on the sheet, and Moss gave the next task.
“Keep it on our bank. Work into the folds from the line we've got. The farm approach team can come back as assigned.”
Lena wrote the view points on the images with both thumbs, her hands cold enough to make the phone slick. A person at the vehicles repeated the task back.
“That helped,” she told Nadia.
“Have you got it then?”
“Yes. You saw where the two parts overlapped. That's what we needed.”
Nadia laughed again, less sharply. “It's a lot easier with somebody up there.”
Lena had taken another frame while trying to free the other hand. She sent it with the view before checking it. Nadia said something, then laughed properly.
“That's not much use.”
“What have you got?”
“Your jacket. Very close.”
Lena looked. Dark fabric and the pale curve of the lanyard, the entire world she had sent. She deleted it from the set she was arranging and said she'd keep her coat out of it from now on. Nadia was still laughing when she answered. The woman beside Lena smiled too, having seen only her half of the mistake.
“It's a lot easier with you telling me which part you're looking at.”
For a moment Lena could hear her smiling. She liked it, the small return of the quick woman who could deal with a thing that wouldn't work. She had spent the morning listening to what had been done to Nadia, what she hadn't seen, what she couldn't name. Here she was changing a piece of work. Lena wanted to keep her on the line while they put it right.
The woman beside Lena began folding the waterproof sheet. She had a word with her partner, and he went to speak to the next crew meeting them at the break. They were carrying on. Lena looked at the time. It was one thirty-eight. They had the result. She could let Nadia go, follow them back and write it properly.
“Could you look at the second window view once more?” she asked. “Just to check whether from that side the two ends still seem to meet.”
“The one where you were farther over?”
“Yes.”
Nadia was quiet. Tessa said something about the food, and Alma answered. Lena looked at the woman waiting beside her. She held up a finger. It would take a minute.
“That one's not where I stood,” Nadia said.
“I know. I'm asking whether the overlap changes from the other angle.”
“I don't know. I'm not there.”
Lena opened it on her own phone, making the small comparison she could have made herself. From which position, Owen would ask. Nadia had given them the first, yes. If she would just look at the other while Lena had it in front of her, the account could go back complete. The two ends separated more clearly. It was enough to see. She began to describe it and realized Nadia was speaking to somebody else.
“They're putting it out now,” Nadia said when she came back. “We're going to eat.”
“One more thing—”
“I've got to go.”
The call ended. Lena looked at the time again. Four minutes past the end they'd agreed. She had barely asked for anything, and the woman beside her had already put the sheet away.
“What did she make of the second view?” the officer asked.
“She didn't stand there. We have the first.”
Lena saved the second view with the officer's position, then followed them back. She had to take longer steps to keep up and regretted them at the first slippery patch.
Farther down the woman stopped, holding up a hand. Someone had called from below. They listened. Lena could hear the two nearer people breathing, one of them trying to do it through a blocked nose. The next call came, a name passing above the noise of water. June. The answering sound Lena wanted did not come. She listened long enough for her own breathing to become something she resented hearing.
The woman lowered her hand and repeated their position to the other crew. They went on. Lena had her phone in her hand, with the blank space Nadia had left on the image. She put it away before stepping down. There was work in front of her feet that required looking at the ground instead.
They met the next crew at the break. The officer showed the ground on this bank that Moss had assigned, while Lena gave the recorder the images and Nadia's words. By the time she reached the vehicles it was a little after two.
Owen had a call from the older-case work. She told him the comparison was in the record and Nadia's help noted. He lifted a thumb without breaking off the call. Lena stood at the open rear door, looking at the blank Nadia had left beside the near bend. She had another photograph ready for the next time the woman agreed to speak.
Lena worked at the table beside them, making the current cabin account usable to the people who would relieve the morning staff. She could give which room June had been left in, the clothes Ray had actually seen at dawn and the mobility described by both accounts. She put Sutton's urgent answers beside the dawn account.
Beth's liaison sent a message. They had a room at the fire hall for her to wait. Her friend was bringing her; she still wanted to know about the bag. Lena called briefly, answered the question and heard Beth ask whether she could put her on to the friend so the place would be right. They settled the arrival contact. Lena heard the friend say to bring the warmer coat, then Beth reply that it was in the bag already.
Later a team reported from one of the folds on this bank. Nobody found. The recorder marked their completed ground for relief. Lena looked from the new limit to the two near-cabin bends Nadia couldn't join from the images. Those remained uncertain; the crews were taking the available ways into the next ground tasks.
At three thirty-five Nadia called. Lena answered before the second ring. There was no plate or child close to the microphone now.
“Could you come here?” Nadia asked. “To Alma's.”
“Is there something for the search?”
“About last night. I need to tell you.”
“You can tell me now.”
Nadia was quiet. Lena heard her draw breath and then not speak.
“I want to see you,” she said.
Lena checked the work in front of her and the drive. “Four forty. I can be there at four forty.”
“All right.”
She asked once more whether Nadia had anything that could help the people looking now. Nadia said she had told them where June wanted to go. This was something she needed to tell Lena herself. They agreed the time.
When Lena told Owen she was leaving at four, he asked whether the new information needed to go to command. She gave him what Nadia had said. He told her to call as soon as she'd heard it. Then he asked her to make sure the afternoon comparison was in the handoff before she left; the night crew must not start by joining the two walls again.
She put the usable result at the front, attached the images and left the uncertain near bends marked. Moss read the short account and said he could use it. She wanted to show Nadia that sentence, the actual next work growing out of what she'd helped make clear. She left the phone in her pocket. It was nearly time to drive to Alma's.