Free Where Angels Fear to Tread by Thomas E. Sniegoski Page B

surprisingly thick file.
    He found page after page of test results, therapy evaluations, and dated doctor's notes, none of which proved helpful. But then in the back of the file, he found something familiar—childish drawings in crayon. Zoe certainly did like to draw.
    Remy flipped through the illustrations, searching for something, anything, he could consider a clue. And then he found it—a crude drawing of a brown-skinned man dressed in what seemed to be green scrubs. Above the figure, the name Frank was scrawled in a child's hand.
    Frank was in quite a few of the later drawings as well, and in one, he was even in the car with Zoe and her father.
    Remy went back to the beginning of the file and began to search for any mention of Frank. He found it. Frank Downes was an occupational therapy assistant who had frequently worked with Zoe.
    Remy closed the file and returned it to the cabinet.
    He'd found his first good lead; now it was time to find Frank.

    Carl Saylor's daughter was an angel.
    He glanced over at the little girl, sitting in the front passenger seat of his 2000 Chevy Cavalier as they drove south on I-95, on their way to . . .
    Where? Where were they going? He wasn't entirely sure.
    Carl knew he shouldn't have taken her, but it had felt right.
    He'd had to do it.
    Zoe stared straight ahead through the windshield. She was staring into the future; that was what Carl liked to believe.
    He reached across the seat and lovingly patted her bare leg.
    "How's my girl?" he asked cheerfully.
    She'd been so quiet—even more than usual—since leaving the hospital. He thought she might be missing her mother, but who could tell?
    Who knew what was going on inside her pretty little head? If she wasn't sitting and staring, she was drawing. He'd had to take away the paper and crayons or that would have been all she did. The doctors at Franciscan Children's had said they should try to force her to interact with them, with the world around her, and not let her escape into her head, which was where she went when she drew.
    Now her hands lay limply on the seat at her side, fingers twitching, as if eager to hold crayons again.
    Carl remembered how he'd felt when he and Deryn had first realized there was something wrong with their little girl. At first there was disbelief, then sadness, and then came the anger—lots and lots of anger.
    It had been murder on their marriage; like salt eating away at a piece of metal. They'd been so good together, but with the baby being sick . . .
    He honestly believed that they were being punished; that a higher power had struck at them for the sins of their past, even though that sinful past had been so long before. But the offended higher power obviously hadn't forgotten and had been waiting for the perfect time to illustrate its displeasure with their indiscretions.
    In the early days, Carl and Deryn had been strong. They'd thought nothing could hurt them, and that just showed how stupid they had really been.
    The forces they'd offended had found the one thing that could shake them to their core, striking at their pride and joy, their little girl, and marking her with this affliction.
    So Carl had made himself a promise. He would do anything to make his little girl well, even if it meant making amends with an angry higher power. He glanced at Zoe again; she hadn't even reacted to his touch.
    Thy will be done.

    Remy eventually found Frank in the hospital's cafeteria.
    He'd gone by the therapy department, this time posing as a friend of Frank's, and learned that he was on his break.
    He grabbed a cup of coffee, which tasted as though it had been made with the finest dishwater, and then caught sight of a man wearing green scrubs. Could he be Frank? He was sitting by himself, reading from a pamphlet and sipping from a bottle of water.
    "Excuse me," Remy said, leaning in to be heard over the clatter of the lunchroom. "Frank Downes?"
    Zoe had captured the man's likeness pretty well, especially his