Occasionally lightning zigzagged, illuminating the stormy darkness as though it were a stage to be spotlighted for an eager audience. Huddled in a rain slicker that some kind soul at the airport had handed her, Lindsey, a player on that stage, walked toward the helicopter that stood waiting for flight. Already the copter blades whipped and whirled, while the lights, like the eyes of a keen-sighted bird, stared ahead. His hair soaking wet, Walker stood talking—shouting, really, to be heard over the wind—to a man by the side of the aircraft. Inside the helicopter, the charter pilot got a last-minute briefing on the weather. Her father was missing. Over the last hour, ever since they'd been notified that her father's helicopter was missing, Lindsey had thought of little else. And yet, for all of that, the four words, the simple four words, would not compute. It wasn't that she didn't understand the words. She did. She just couldn't understand them in terms of her father. There had never been a time in her life when she didn't know where her father was.
