“So what’s our next stop tomorrow? You got any more side trips planned, Abs?” Jordan asked. They were trying to keep the mood light, but they were all thoroughly spooked. The headlights on the Neon picked up little beyond the oncoming road, the occasional sign, and the flashes of trees running just beyond the curb. “Not sure how much more of Tennessee I can take.”

“Alabama,” Abby corrected.

“Tennebamatucky, whatever. They all look the same at this point.”

“We’re still just outside Montgomery, Jordan, use your GPS,” Abby snapped. Then she took a deep breath. “I guess the scenery was kind of similar all day, but that’s what I’m going for with my project,” she explained. “I bet when I line my photos up next to shots from thirty, forty, even a hundred years ago, there won’t be much of a difference. I think it’s fascinating. Time goes on but nothing really changes in some places. Kind of a nice thought, right? That some things are actually permanent. Reliable . . .”

She trailed off, her voice growing a little sad.

“Sure,” Jordan said. “I get that. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t put me to sleep, but I hear you.”

“You had better be awake now,” Dan said. “You’re helping set up the tent when we make it to the campground.”

“I can’t wait to get to Mobile tomorrow.” Abby pressed on, slowing the car as signs for the Woods Campground flashed by in the headlights. “The Magnolia Cemetery is supposed to be a gold mine—so many incredible mausoleums there. Mr. Blaise said I can’t miss it. I promise we won’t stop long. I know we’re all anxious to get to New Orleans after . . .” Abby shivered. “Ugh, I need a shower.”

Dan sat silently in the back, wishing he knew the right thing to say to make everything okay again. But all he could think about was Micah’s message.

While they unpacked the car, Dan could feel Jordan’s eyes boring holes into the back of his head. He owed them both an explanation, he knew, but where to start? He hated to scare them any more tonight, especially before they went to sleep in a tent.

He wasn’t even sure if his friends would believe what he had to say. He had never been completely up front with them about his ability to see things. There’d been a time last year when the stress had left them all seeing and hearing things that weren’t quite there, but that was nothing like what Dan had come to think of as his power. He hadn’t just seen echoes of the past as visions—Dan had lived them, even interacted with them.

And if Dan didn’t come clean to his friends during this trip, he might never get another chance.

Under the glow of floodlights from the parking lot, they set to work putting up their tent, a job that Abby delegated expertly. Dan hammered the stakes into the moist ground a little harder than was strictly necessary, but it felt good to hit something. In just over half an hour, the tent was as finished as it was ever going to be.

“Are you okay?” Abby asked, watching Dan unroll his sleeping bag. “You were hammering pretty hard there.”

“I’m fine,” he said, shrugging off the question.

“You’re obviously not.”

He didn’t know what to say, and he hesitated just a bit too long.

“Fine, you know what? Don’t tell me.”

Abby climbed into her sleeping bag, still in her clothes. Last night she’d used one of the campground port-a-potties to change into pajamas, but tonight Dan suspected her anger was at least partly to mask her fear.

“I know you’re ticked, Abby,” Dan said, lighting one of their Coleman lamps and sitting cross-legged on his bedding. A light gust of wind rattled the tent fabric, and distant campers laughed, one of them howling loudly at the moon.

“It’s not even a full moon,” Abby grumbled, turning onto her side and away from Dan. Jordan gave him an encouraging look, though of course he knew only a small piece of what he was encouraging.

“Just let me explain, okay?” Dan sighed and closed his eyes, trying to figure out the best way to put this. “You’re right. I’m not fine. There’s . . . Look, I want this trip to be fun, okay? I really do, and I wouldn’t spoil it for no reason. It’s been amazing so far. Being with you two is . . . Well, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had. I didn’t want to bring anything up that would ruin the mood.”

“So don’t,” she said woodenly.

“Hear him out,” Jordan said.

With a big, huffing sigh, Abby turned over, just her eyes and hair visible above the lip of the forest-green sleeping bag. “Fine. I’m hearing you out. Explain.”

Dan twisted and reached for his backpack, removing the thin, faded folder that held basically all he knew about his parents.

“Okay, well, part one is—I found something,” he said, pulling out the pile of papers with shaking fingers. He handed it across to Jordan, and Abby wriggled out of her sleeping bag enough to read over his shoulder. “That was all in Professor Reyes’s files. I went over everything in there with a fine-tooth comb, obviously, but there wasn’t much.”

Abby pushed her dark, feathery hair away from her face, squinting to read the police report on Dan’s dad. She froze.

“Is this . . . is this your father? God. I had no idea, Dan.”

“Neither did Jordan until I mentioned something at dinner,” Dan murmured. Abby had taken the papers from him and began reading everything carefully. Jordan didn’t try to stop her.

Abby picked up the postcard, the brief contents of which Dan had memorized months ago. The sepia-toned picture showed a looming brick building—one that wouldn’t have been out of place on New Hampshire College’s campus. The only parts of the address left were “HIGH STREET” and a city that looked like ingt n or lington, and there was a message written in pencil that had been mostly worn away, too.

love you very

risk, but there is always

Dan’s fingers clamped down hard on the postcard as he pulled it carefully out of Abby’s hands. He wanted to believe that this was his mother’s handwriting, and that maybe this postcard had been meant for him—that his parents had had to go. That he wasn’t an accident or an afterthought.

A tight, cold feeling settled over his chest. Nine months after finding all this, Dan still wanted to know more. He looked at the front of the postcard again, running his fingertips lightly over the image. Someone had scribbled across the picture, but it was gibberish.

Abby had moved on to the heavily creased and stained map—a foldout road map of the United States, printed in 1990. A thin black line had been drawn in pen from New Orleans to Alabama, then Missouri, then up to Chicago, and finally to Pittsburgh.

The site of that little dot where the line ended jarred him. His town. His city. The year, 1990, wasn’t so far off from when he was born in 1996. In the story he’d constructed based on the evidence, his parents had been criminals on the run. That’s why they’d left him. Dan tensed, closing his eyes and wishing he had never found the folder in the first place.

“Dan . . .”

The tone in her voice was one of discovery, but right at this moment, he didn’t care if Abby had noticed something he hadn’t, he just wanted to be quiet and forget—to find a way to let go of his frustration before it sabotaged the trip.

“What?” he forced out.

“There’s something on the back of this map,” she said.

“I know.”

Dan watched as they both looked at the message, handwritten in black marker and double-underlined.

FIND THEM

“So you think Professor Reyes wrote this? I still don’t understand what she wanted with your parents,” Jordan said, frowning and studying the map.

“She didn’t want them, necessarily. She just wanted a living member of the warden’s bloodline,” he said. “I guess I was easier to find. Hell, I practically fell into her lap last summer.”

He watched his friends share a look, and he answered before the questions started pouring out.

“So that’s part two. I know we’ve joked about it in the past—how the weird connection between me and the warden went a little beyond your usual great-uncle–great-nephew relationship. But what I never told you guys is that Professor Reyes was after me because she thought I could see things from the past. Like, things related to the warden.”

Silence.

Then, finally, Jordan asked, “And . . . can you?”

“Sometimes, yes.” There was really no sugarcoating it. “I don’t know what brings it on; it’s not something I can control. Last summer I would get these waking dreams, almost like I was seeing things from the past through the warden’s eyes. At the time I thought it was part of my disorder somehow. But then at Halloween, I saw things the warden couldn’t possibly have seen.”

Abby drummed her fingers on top of the family tree, looking as if she was thinking very carefully about how to respond. When she spoke, it was not the reaction Dan was expecting. “Is this why you applied to NHCP to begin with? To find out about your family? It’s not like I can throw stones—I was there looking for my aunt. But since we’re being honest, I have to say, ever since you told us about being related to the warden, I’ve wondered if you didn’t go looking for him last summer—if these visions you’re talking about weren’t part of some plan to bring him back.”

“What? No! I swear to both of you, I didn’t know anything about the warden or my parents when I first got to NHC,” Dan insisted. “I don’t know if it was coincidence or fate that brought me to Brookline last summer, but I was there, and I just . . . I don’t want to get to a place ever again where I’m keeping secrets from you guys because I’m scared, okay? So there’s something else I need to tell you. The third and final part.”

He pulled out his phone and quickly brought up the message, shuddering when he found it was still there in his inbox. A part of him had been convinced it would be gone the next time he went looking.

“Here,” he said. “Look at this.”

“Holy shit,” Jordan whispered, almost dropping Dan’s phone when he glimpsed the message. “That’s messed up.”

“I think I saw Micah, too, just before we left NHC. It was so quick; I hoped it was my mind playing tricks. I hoped it was over.”

Abby leaned across to make use of the lamp, taking the phone from Jordan and gasping. “But how is this possible? I thought they locked down accounts of . . . of those who have passed.”

Dan could tell she was about to say “of dead people” but felt it was too harsh. Harsh or not, it was the truth.

Abby hugged her knees to her chest. “Unless you’re saying you think this has something to do with your visions? But then how could we see it, too?”

“Exactly. It has to be a prank, right?” Dan asked, maybe emphasizing that desperate little right too much.

“It certainly could be,” Abby said sternly. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the phone. “Someone’s sick idea of a joke.”

“It’s like the cloud or whatever,” Jordan chimed in, nodding. “You can hack anything these days.”

“God, Dan, this is a lot to handle.” Abby pushed the phone away, finally looking up to meet his eyes. “Part of me can’t believe this is really happening.”

He gave them a wobbly smile. “Business as usual, I guess.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Jordan replied, clapping him on the back. “I think you should message that person back and tell them to knock it off. Or report it! There has to be a way to get it taken care of.”

He wasn’t even touching the rest of what Dan had said, and Dan knew that was Jordan’s way of saying it was fine. He’d moved on to solutions, always the problem solver.

“Jordan is right,” Abby said, matching Dan’s flimsy smile. “Report it. Then I bet the messages will stop.”

“Yeah, obviously,” Dan echoed. “I’ll just report it.” He picked up his phone, stowing it in his backpack before reaching to turn out the light. “Then the messages will stop.”