“UNBELIEVABLE.” MADDOX WRIGHT watched as Seneca said this over and over, making wide circles around a very big floral display. “Unbelievable. Un-be-freaking-lieveable.”

They stood in a flower shop inside the Avignon Hospital, a bright, sand-colored building that had banners of smiling, healthy people all over the walls and a man playing a classical tune on a grand piano in the lobby. Thomas had been brought here by ambulance. When they’d checked in about Thomas at the front desk, the triage nurse said that he was being evaluated and they couldn’t see him yet. Because the waiting room was too crowded, they’d retreated into the chilly, plant-filled room that smelled a little too much like a funeral home. Now they were staring at one another, still trying to process what had just happened.

Thomas’s explosion kept playing over and over in Maddox’s mind like a Boomerang video on Instagram: his car pulling forward through the light, the smoke billowing out of the tailpipe, and then…fiery inferno.

But the conversation they’d had with Brett really had its claws in Maddox. This had gotten so personal. Well, it had always been personal—the Kellys had been family friends of his growing up, and it devastated him that the same monster that had murdered Aerin’s sister had taken Seneca’s mom away and manipulated all of them into being friends with him.

But now Brett had taken Aerin? Maddox had grown to adore her since they re-met this year. He tried to picture what she must be going through, but all he saw was scary, paralyzing emptiness. It was almost too painful to think about. He felt guilty, too—if he’d just done…something…maybe he could have prevented this. Why hadn’t someone gone outside and stood with her to make sure all was okay? The second they dropped their guard, disaster stuck. There was no way he would take his eyes off Madison or Seneca again.

In a letter he’d written to the group just days ago, Brett said he’d had drinks with Aerin’s sister, Helena, in New York, and her rejection of him might have inspired him to kill her. Was that why he’d taken Aerin, too? Any fool could see that Brett had fallen head over heels for Aerin back in Dexby. But Maddox had thought he was so harmless at the time! He’d actually felt sorry for the guy’s lack of game! And now, this past week in Avignon, Brett had probably watched her in secret—and seen Aerin and Thomas together. The same crazy alarm bells that had rung with Helena must have gone off again. Maybe he was punishing Aerin for not choosing him.

Was he going to kill her, too?

The flower shop was so chilly, and Maddox jogged in place to get his blood pumping. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago, he’d actually thought this whole mess was…well, not over, exactly, but at an impasse. For a few minutes, he’d figured he’d be returning home to Dexby to get ready for his freshman year at the University of Oregon, where he’d been recruited to run track and compete at the Olympic trials. He’d begun to mentally plan for buying new off-to-college boxers at Abercrombie and doing a fartlek workout around his neighborhood tomorrow. He’d thought that maybe they’d return to Avignon to revisit the search…but with Brett tying the mystery up so neatly and cleanly, would they really find any answers about him?

What an idiot he’d been. As long as Brett was out there, this was never going to be over. He had to stay here now with Aerin gone. All of them had postponed their trip home the moment they’d gotten off the phone with Brett, actually. Seneca, in her typical balls-to-the-wall way, had called her overprotective father and blurted, “Dad, I’m nineteen years old, and I can do what I want, and I’m not coming home quite yet. I’ll call soon.” Mic drop.

“Any luck?” Seneca asked, nodding at Aerin’s iPad, upon which Madison was furiously tapping and swiping.

“Still trying to log in,” Madison mumbled between shaky breaths as she leaned against a refrigerated case of roses. The woman behind the counter was staring at all of them blandly, disinterestedly, as though panicked individuals who had no interest in buying flowers hung out in the shop every day.

The group had strategized about how they might gather clues as to where Brett had taken Aerin. They doubted they could just call her and ask, or even send a secret text—surely Brett had already taken Aerin’s phone away. But maybe Aerin had composed an SOS in those first few moments of getting into the car. Was it possible?

Aerin had an iPhone, which meant her texts and photos might be linked to her left-behind iPad, which was in Madison’s lap. When Madison finally remembered Aerin’s password to unlock the screen—she’d used Aerin’s phone once or twice, and Aerin had recited it to her—she hadn’t found any photos that had loaded to the cloud from the last hour. As far as Aerin’s texts, she hadn’t yet authorized them to show up on the iPad. But if they could figure out her iTunes password, the texts would load onto the device.

“I’m going to try that Viola person, too. You know, Brett’s ‘sister’?” Seneca typed on her phone. “Maybe she knows something about where Brett went.” Maddox watched as she pulled up a new e-mail, using the address for Viola the Realtor had given her. “I wish we had a phone number,” she muttered. She searched Viola’s e-mail address in Google for personal details, but the inquiry yielded nothing.

“Maybe we could question people in Avignon about what they knew about the guy they knew as Gabriel, too,” Maddox suggested. “Maybe he had another beach house somewhere?”

“But everyone thinks Gabriel died in a car crash.” Madison didn’t look up from typing.

“Uh, well, obviously that’s a lie.” Seneca pushed her phone back into her pocket, having finished the e-mail to Viola. “Unless Brett was calling us from beyond the grave.”

When she sighed, Maddox saw pain flashing across her face. What had it felt like to hear Brett’s voice just now? It was her mother’s murderer….He couldn’t even imagine. He opened his mouth, desperate to say something to console her, to make it better, but he had no words.

Suddenly, Madison let out a yes. “Got it. Aerin’s password is CapnCrunch.”

“How did you figure that out?” Seneca asked.

“She used the same password for this fashion-consignment app we downloaded a couple days ago.” The iPad made a bong; Aerin’s texts loaded.

“Well?” Seneca asked impatiently. “Anything?”

Madison filled her cheeks with air, then blew out. “Nope. No text drafts.”

“Ugh.” Maddox grabbed his foot and started to stretch his left quad, then his right. Moving felt good, so he leaned over to touch his toes, feeling the muscles in his back release.

“What are you doing?” Seneca snapped, staring at him.

“I haven’t run in a couple of days,” Maddox admitted, still upside down. “I’m starting to get stir-crazy.”

“But she did send something to her mom about forty-five minutes ago,” Madison interrupted. She had moved to the part of the store that featured a whole bunch of Get Well Soon helium balloons. “And we noticed she was missing, what, an hour ago?”

Maddox stood from his stretch, feeling overwhelmed. It was hard to believe so much had happened in sixty minutes.

Madison tapped the screen. “Her text said Me too, see you soon. And then her mom goes, Have a great time in LA!” Madison wrinkled her nose. “Wasn’t Aerin going back to Dexby?”

Seneca wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, that makes no sense.”

“Aerin doesn’t write back to her mom saying one thing or another,” Madison went on. She scrolled back through previous texts. “Nor do they talk about LA before this.” She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. “Is this some future trip we don’t know about?”

But then Seneca shook her head. “Maybe Aerin wasn’t going to LA. Maybe Brett hacked Aerin’s e-mail and wrote about the trip. He planted that idea in Aerin’s mom’s mind.”

Madison’s eyes widened. “Brett didn’t want Aerin’s mom instantly freaking out about where she was, so he made up a story that she was leaving town for a while. So her kidnapping was premeditated?”

“Definitely premeditated.” Seneca absently touched one of the balloons in the shape of Mickey Mouse and then gasped. “Could that be why Brett told us we have until Monday to solve that other case? Maybe that’s when Brett-as-Aerin told her mom she was coming back.”

“So if we solve it by Monday, he returns Aerin to us, and all is well.” Madison tried to talk this out. “But if she doesn’t, her mom starts to get worried and calls the cops. Though by then Brett and Aerin will be long gone, and we’ll have to confess that we knew Aerin was missing all along and didn’t do anything about it, and…”

Maddox stared miserably into the hospital atrium. Nurses wheeled a woman and a newborn to the exit. The pianist was playing the theme to Star Wars. Doctors in scrubs strolled past with coffees. Life was moving on while Aerin was trapped. It was incalculably cruel.

He felt in over his head. Brett was crazy. And last time, when they didn’t tell the police right away, Brett twisted the story to suit his needs, and he got to escape. If they could just call the cops, they’d have real evidence on him this time—a surveillance photo from the hotel. And the cops had actual forensic techniques, way more than Maddox and the others had access to—especially with Thomas out of commission. The cops might be able to find a fingerprint or element of DNA that they missed. And they could investigate “Gabriel’s” car crash, too. It wasn’t that Maddox didn’t love sleuthing—it was a huge adrenaline high, and he was thrilled when pieces of a case came together. But this all felt so precarious—lawless, even. They were kids. They weren’t equipped to handle this.

There was another reason Maddox wanted to call in the police, and she was shivering among the floral arrangements, dressed in a breezy, floaty dress and beat-up Vans and wearing that cute, I’m-thinking-really-really-hard expression. Seneca Frazier was the girl of Maddox’s dreams. Literally: Every time he dropped into sleep, Seneca floated into his fantasies; each dream was sexier than the last. He felt she knew every version of him—the investigative side, the nerdy side, the insecure side. His friends from school only knew the jock side—everything else, he’d worked hard to cover up. He thought he knew her well, too—and he wanted to know her even better.

A little over an hour ago, he’d gotten up the guts to kiss her. It had felt beyond amazing, but it hadn’t been enough. To him, a measly eleven-second kiss (yep, he’d mentally timed it) was the equivalent of downing a Gu energy packet after a long road race. And now that it had finally happened, he was reluctant to dive back into more danger. If Brett took Aerin and hurt Thomas, couldn’t one of them be next? What if that was Seneca? Or his sister? Or him? No, he’d rather call the cops, hide away somewhere, let someone else handle it.

Except they couldn’t. Here they were, again, handling it on their own.

“So I guess we jump on this other case, right?” Madison broke the silence. “This Damien kid?”

Seneca pinched the space between her eyes. “I feel for him, I really do, but I don’t know if we have time.”

Maddox felt alarmed. “But…don’t we have to?”

“This is Brett’s master plan. He’s going to make us run around like chickens with our heads cut off while he plots something awful we don’t see coming.” Seneca looked hard from Maddox to Madison. “Think about it, guys. Aerin’s kidnapping was premeditated—we already figured that out. So when did Brett plan for it, and how did he carry it out without tipping us off? It all happened while we were searching for Chelsea. While we were focused on her, Brett was securing the place where he’d take Aerin, and grabbing a getaway car that looks just like Thomas’s, and figuring out how to fake his death, and watching Aerin’s every move. If we look into Damien, we might fall into that trap again…and who knows what he has planned next.”

Maddox shifted from foot to foot, still thinking about Brett picking them off one by one. Maybe Seneca had a point…but it seemed foolish to just ignore Brett. “He said that if we don’t solve the Damien case, he’ll hurt Aerin. Can’t we try to solve it and find them?”

Seneca made a face. “I don’t like dividing our efforts.”

“But Brett gave us a way to get Aerin back. Shouldn’t we at least try to find Damien?”

Seneca scoffed. “Since when has Brett been a man of his word?”

Maddox stared at his phone. The CNC message thread about the case was on the screen. Damien Dover, a quiet, introspective nine-year-old who loved Harry Potter, hadn’t come home from school on a Thursday afternoon two months before. After searching and interviewing, the townspeople noticed that Damien’s piano teacher, Ms. Sadie Sage, had vanished, too. Then the police found a surveillance camera image that was dug up from a Trailways bus station of Sadie and Damien standing together the night he was taken. They were together…going somewhere.

An Amber Alert went out, but not a single soul called in a tip. After only a month, the police held a press conference saying they’d failed. “So weird,” Maddox said out loud. Why had the cops given up so easily?

He peered through the interior double doors marked ER, across the atrium. What were the doctors doing to Thomas in there? Would he be okay? Then he turned back to Seneca. “I think we have to do both things. Remember how Brett said that he wanted updates? What if he gets pissed when we don’t have any information for him? Sure, maybe he’s bluffing, but do we really want to toy with Aerin’s life?”

Seneca pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and stared blankly at a huge spray of pink and purple flowers. After a moment, she let out a huge sigh. “You’re right. I just hate that Brett’s in the driver’s seat again.”

“I do, too.” Maddox was glad she’d come to her senses. Sometimes, with Brett, she could get irrational, laser-focused, forgetting everyone and everything around her. He understood when she got that way, he really did—he’d go crazy, too, if he were battling the maniac who’d murdered one of his parents. It was his job, he figured, to bring her down to earth, show her the big picture.

“Excuse me?”

Maddox turned. A tall, sandy-haired male doctor in blue scrubs had crossed the atrium to find them. “You’re here for Thomas Grove, right?”

“Yes.” Seneca stood straighter. “Is he okay?”

The doctor pressed his lips together. “He has multiple fractures, a broken arm, facial contusions. He’s also suffered a few second-degree burns, some smoke inhalation, and a possible concussion. But if his MRI is clear, he’ll be on his feet in a few days.”

Maddox swallowed hard. A few days? Then again, it could have been much, much worse. “Can we see him?” he asked in a wobbly voice.

“We have him sedated. It’s best if he sleeps.” The doctor gave them a kind smile. “Call the hospital tomorrow morning. He’ll probably be more lucid then.”

“Thanks,” Seneca said gratefully. Everyone shook his hand. The doctor nodded and pivoted back toward the ER doors. Maddox felt relieved…but also unsettled. Where did they go from here? How would they start looking for Damien? Then he thought about Brett and Aerin together. Where were they going? What was churning in Brett’s brain? If only they could talk to someone who knew the real Brett, not his aliases. He stared at the lettering on the hospital sign until his eyes blurred. Suddenly, an idea came to him like a bolt, and he straightened up.

“Wait a minute.” He pointed at a large hotel directory that hung behind the piano guy, who was now playing, appropriately, “Piano Man.” “Chelsea Dawson was brought here. We should talk to her. She spent hours locked up with Brett. Maybe he gave a hint about who he is, and where he might be going, or…something.”

There was a spark in Seneca’s eyes, too. “God, you’re so right.” She reached over and squeezed Maddox’s hand. “Good thinking.”

“Thanks.” His stomach felt like it was swinging from one of those rope vines on American Ninja Warrior. He wanted to pull Seneca close. Just for a couple of minutes. Just to further define what they’d become. And to tell her, in no uncertain terms, how protective he felt, and how much her safety meant to him.

But it was time to go back into the hospital and ask some questions. Maddox’s stomach twisted at the thought of coming face-to-face with Chelsea again. Just this morning, she’d been stuck in a house with Brett, forcibly obeying his every whim, probably scared out of her mind. It was the same situation, he realized with a shudder, that Aerin was in right now.

Even more reason to find out how Chelsea was doing, coming through it alive.