“IT’S THE NEXT left up here.” Seneca gestured to the turnoff that was approaching. Maddox wrenched the Jeep’s steering wheel, its tires careening over pitted road. Up ahead, a squat brown building sat alone in a parking lot. The only thing that indicated they were in the right place was the several police cars parked in the back with faded lettering reading Catskill Police Department printed on the side.

Maddox turned off the ignition, but no one moved to get out of the car. They were huddled around Maddox’s cell phone, talking to Thomas at the hospital. “Don’t check yourself out early,” Seneca said into the speaker. “You haven’t had your MRI yet.”

“But I have to.” Thomas’s voice sounded thick and sleepy. “I have to help you find Aerin. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“We’re on it, bro,” Madison assured him. “We’re going to find her. Right now, we just need for you to get better.”

They hung up and sat in silence. It had been rough to call Thomas and break the news about all this, but Thomas deserved to know. Seneca still felt a little guilty, though. What kind of panicked, helpless thoughts were rushing through Thomas’s mind? Did he feel afraid? If Brett had tried to hurt him once, he could do it again, especially now that Thomas was vulnerable and weak.

Which meant they needed to find Brett, and fast. And that meant finding Damien, too. Maddox was right—they had no other choice but to follow Brett’s orders. And after talking to Freya, Seneca felt all in. The story about Damien’s disappearance struck a chord, and she now felt for the kid, for his family, and angry at the useless police force who’d dropped the ball. And also, could Sadie be Viola? It was an interesting idea. On the other hand, would Brett point them toward a crime his sister committed? What was his endgame? What sort of bread crumbs was he dropping for them to follow?

Seneca rolled her shoulders back and pushed open the door to the Jeep. Silently, the three of them strode across the gravel to the front door of the police station. The lobby smelled like woodsmoke and looked like the inside of a hunting cabin, with its wood-paneled walls and exposed beams. There was a very old soda machine in the corner, buzzing away. A small table fan blew at an empty chair at the front desk.

“Hello?” Seneca called out.

A door to the back creaked open. A large woman in a T-shirt printed with two vicious-looking wolves ambled out, intently studying something on her phone. She held a two-liter bottle of Coke tucked under her other armpit and was humming what sounded like Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” When she looked up and saw them, she jumped, then frowned. “Yes?”

Maddox stepped forward nervously. “Yes, hi. My name’s Thomas Grove, and I’m from the Dexby, Connecticut, police department and have some family in the area. I was wondering if I could talk to the officer on duty?”

“I’m the officer on duty.” The woman turned around a placard on the desk Seneca hadn’t noticed and tapped it with a long fingernail. It read Officer Lorna Gregg.

“Oh, great,” Maddox said, not missing a beat. “Any way I can access the records on the Damien Dover case? Interviews, any forensics, things like that?”

Officer Gregg twisted off the cap to the Coke bottle. It made a creepy hiss. “Can I see some credentials? You don’t look like a cop. You look like a kid.”

Maddox blushed. He made a show of riffling in his pockets for a badge. “If you call the station in Dexby, they can vouch for me, I swear….”

“Just stop,” Officer Gregg snapped icily. All signs of friendliness were gone. “You know it’s a crime to impersonate an officer, right?”

Maddox stopped riffling through his pockets. Seneca swallowed hard. “We’re really just trying to help,” she jumped in. “Can you at least tell us where Sadie Sage lived?” The only thing they’d been able to find online was that Sadie Sage rented a property in Catskill. They’d called every rental agent in the area, but no one copped to being Sadie Sage’s landlord. Only a fellow music teacher, Dahlia Quinn, gave them a hint: Sadie was always talking about how wherever she lived was “all her own”—she was the first person who’d ever rented it. Meaning she could put her mark on the place, the teacher surmised. But was it a brand-new place? Or undesirable, somehow?

The officer shook her head. “I can’t give out those kind of details to the public. It’s still an open investigation.”

Seneca felt annoyance rising inside her. “Open investigation? We heard you let the case drop. I would think you’d want all the help you can get.”

Officer Gregg shot her an annoyed look, then started busily flipping through some papers on her desk. “I’d advise you kids get out of town. And you”—she glowered at Maddox—“don’t ever pretend you’re an officer again. You’re lucky I didn’t put you in cuffs.”

Maddox mumbled something under his breath and turned to leave, but Seneca stayed put. She wasn’t done with this lady yet. “Why aren’t you working harder to find Damien? Why are you in your office, swigging Coke, too lazy to even put on a uniform?”

Officer Gregg’s eyes flashed. “Seneca,” Maddox whispered warningly.

But now that Seneca had gotten started, she couldn’t stop. Damien deserved a better investigation. The whole family did. And yes, okay, maybe she was conflating this situation with her own family’s experience—how the police didn’t do much to find her mother’s killer, either—but justice was justice. “What other crimes do you have to worry about up here?” She gestured to the mountains out the window. “Why didn’t you call in reinforcements from other towns? Why didn’t you have fund-raisers and bump this up to a national story? It was barely a blip on a website—and it’s a missing boy. Someone’s child. A family’s life is ruined.”

Maddox’s nails dug into her arm. Okay, maybe she was becoming overwrought—but this cop needed to understand.

Officer Gregg rose to her feet. Her hand drifted to her waist; under her T-shirt was a holster holding a black handgun. “Threatening an officer is a crime, too, you know.”

Seneca flinched but didn’t back down. “Just let us check out her house. Give us ten minutes.”

The officer pointed to the door. “Get out. Now.”

“But—”

“Get out, or I’ll slap you with a fine. You want that? And if I hear you’re nosing around that place, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”

Seneca stared her down. The phone on the desk started to ring. Officer Gregg let it go, still watching them, her hand still on her belt. A lump formed in Seneca’s throat. There was no winning with this woman. “Fine,” she muttered, swiveling on her heel.

“Now what do we do?” Maddox muttered as he unlocked the Jeep.

Seneca peered through the smeared glass window of the station. Gregg had answered that phone call, and now she was propping her feet up on her desk, laughing like she didn’t have a care in the world. As the woman switched the receiver to the other ear, Seneca thought of her own phone, tucked into her pocket. She pulled it out and checked it for the fiftieth time this morning. “Still no Viola,” she muttered bitterly. “Maybe she is Sadie.”

“And still no RedBird?” Maddox asked.

“I even sent her a second message through CNC, and nothing.” No leads, anywhere.

They got in the Jeep and just sat there for a while. Maddox started to do arm stretches, and then waist twists, huffing through his nose as he pulled deeper into the stretch. “Will you stop that?” Seneca snapped finally.

“Sorry.” Maddox let his arms fall to his side. “I have a lot of nervous energy.”

“We could drive around, ask people if they know anything,” Madison suggested from the back. “And also, the house has to got to be around here somewhere. Maybe we’ll just run into it. Wouldn’t it be the one covered in police tape?”

“It’s not like we have any other plans,” Maddox said, starting the engine.

They drove down the highway and into the little town. As Sadie Sage theoretically had to get supplies from somewhere, they stopped in at a small grocery store called Wink’s and waved her picture to everyone from the cashiers to the guy running the deli counter to a derelict-looking preteen hanging out outside the shop. Everyone was sympathetic but standoffish—“Oh yes, that poor boy,” an older woman bagging groceries said. “I think I saw that Sadie woman once, but I don’t know much about her.”

“You know, I don’t have a clue where she lived,” answered a man at the pharmacy—apparently Sadie stopped in to buy over-the-counter medications and sudoku puzzle books, but she never received any prescriptions that would have required her to give an address or phone number. “She didn’t talk much. Really kept to herself.”

They found the building where Sadie taught piano, an office complex that also housed several dentist’s offices, a dry cleaner’s, and a large outdoor fountain whose tiled bottom was littered with pennies. But the door to the music classrooms was locked tight, and there was no one around to let them in. Seneca wished she could look through the classroom Freya had described—it seemed full of her personality and maybe rich with a clue. Then they heard a “Psst,” behind them. A lithe, hippie-ish woman was hanging out the door to a yoga studio, staring them up and down as though she knew exactly what they were doing.

“We already went in there after-hours,” the woman whispered, looking shadily back and forth to make sure no one was listening. “There’s nothing left in that woman’s office. Nothing.” Her eyes widened. “And for three years, I said namaste to her in the parking lot. I had no idea….”

Everyone trudged back to the Jeep, feeling aimless. Seneca checked her phone again. Surprise surprise, no RedBird, no Viola.

“I’m really sorry, guys, but I’m starving,” Madison admitted later, as they passed a hot dog shack on the side of the road. “Can we stop?”

Seneca wanted to keep going, but her stomach was growling, too. Maddox did a three-point turn and headed back. After they parked, Madison got in line for hot dogs, and Seneca sat on a bench and stared fixedly at the mountains. Maddox tentatively touched her shoulder, and she jumped.

“That stuff you said to Freya about the police screwing up your mom’s case. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

Seneca felt flushed. “Oh. Yeah.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Across the gravel lot, a kid was flying a dragon-shaped kite. Or trying to, anyway—there was little wind, so he was just running with the thing and most of it was dragging on the ground. Part of Seneca wanted to tell Maddox everything she’d gone through. Like how it was almost criminal that the cops came up with absolutely nothing from the crime scene, and how that made her feel so powerless and lost.

But it also felt…well, hard. She’d built a wall in her brain between those soft, squishy, terrible feelings surrounding her mother and her semi-normal, semi-functioning self. Delving too deeply into the details would break down that wall, and what lay behind was pretty dark. Like how she’d ripped her mom’s necklace off her body in the morgue. Like how she’d lie in bed some nights, holding her breath for as long as she could, trying to feel what her mom must have felt before she died. And then there were all the complicated emotions she had when Helena Kelly’s story hit the news and took up all the available air space, pushing her mom’s death to the bottom of the pile. And what about her feelings of satisfaction—or maybe relief—when Helena’s case wasn’t solved? It wasn’t that she wanted Helena to have an unhappy ending. She’d just selfishly wanted someone else out there to feel as miserable as she was. Did other people who had tragedies in their lives think this way…or was it just her?

The crunch of gravel interrupted her thoughts. Madison walked back balancing three hot dogs and sodas in a cardboard carrier. “I have news,” she singsonged. “Sadie’s house is at 101 Frontage Road. Only two miles away, but it’s through this road in the forest that isn’t marked.”

Seneca blinked. “How’d you figure out that?”

“I flirted with the guy who works the hot dog stand, and when I asked him about Sadie Sage, he said he knew her address. And get this—the guy heard that when the cops went into the place, there was absolutely no furniture. She must have cleaned it out before she left.”

“Huh.” Seneca frowned.

“Why would she do that?” Maddox asked, reaching for his hot dog.

“Probably so the cops would have no leads on who she was,” Seneca murmured. “No fingerprints, either, and no DNA.”

“Where did all the stuff go? Did she get a dumpster? A moving van? No one’s fessing up that they helped her?”

“Maybe she paid someone off.” Madison plopped down on the bench next to them. “You never know.”

“And no one saw her moving her stuff onto the lawn or into a van?” Seneca asked. “Not a single witness?”

“We’d know that if we had the police records.” The bite Maddox took of his hot dog was so big that half the thing was already gone. “Maybe Thomas could pull some strings?”

Seneca considered this, but then shook her head. “We shouldn’t bother Thomas unless we get really desperate.” Of course, Thomas would be pissed off if he knew she’d said that, but she would rather he focus on getting better.

On the road, as if on cue, a huge moving truck rumbled past. Seneca stared at it for a while, its motor growling, its pure hulking size creating its own windstorm. Something shifted in her mind. “I bet Sadie dumped her stuff somewhere. It seems crazy that she’d carry her whole house on her back while on a kidnapping rampage.”

“True,” Madison said, wiping mustard off her face.

“Should we check out the house?” Maddox asked, standing.

“Definitely,” Seneca said.

Madison tossed her napkin in the trash, then waved flirtatiously at a pudgy man in a ball cap who was handling the next customer. “Thanks again!” she trilled. “Bye-ee!”

The drive to Sadie’s old place took no more than five minutes before they spotted a black mailbox at the side of the road marked 101. A small, square, tidy brown house was nestled into the hillside. There wasn’t a car in the driveway, there weren’t any lights on inside, but shreds of yellow police tape were evident all over the property—snagged on tree branches, lying across the grass, even wound around a lightpost. This had to be it.

They parked on the road and walked slowly to the property. Maddox peered through the front window. “Hot Dog Guy wasn’t lying. There’s just a bunch of spiderwebs inside.”

Seneca tried the doorknob, but it was locked. She checked the porch’s floorboards for a hidden key, but there wasn’t one. She spun around and stared out at the view, a 360-degree vista of trees, mountains, and clouds. They hadn’t seen a single car as they’d driven up this road—so maybe there hadn’t been any witnesses seeing Sadie pack up her things. But who would live here in the first place? Someone who wanted no contact with other humans. Someone who was starting over. Though starting over from what, Seneca still didn’t know.

She stepped off the porch and padded around the side of the house, shining the flashlight into each window. An ancient clothesline drooped between two poles. A sectioned-off area that might have once been a garden was now overrun with weeds. Suddenly, Seneca’s foot caught on something in the ground a few inches from the side of the house. She stumbled forward. After getting her balance, she turned around and looked at what she’d tripped over. At first glance, there was nothing special about the ground—no roots poking up, no piles of rocks. The spot did slope a little, though, almost as though the grass made a small shelf. And when she cautiously pressed the grass with her toe, the ground felt hollow and unsupported. Seneca dropped to her knees and pulled up hanks of grass. Just an inch down was…wood. She scraped away at more grass until she revealed part of what had to be a storm cellar door.

“Whoa.” Maddox knelt down beside her.

Seneca brushed dirt of her hands. “I think this is some sort of storm shed. It probably leads to a basement. My grandma had a trapdoor like this.”

After more digging, she found a partially rotted handle. The door creaked a little, huge roots ripping as they were torn from the earth, but finally the door budged open a few feet, revealing a set of small, dark steps.

“Hold this open for me,” she told Maddox, then angled her body to squeeze through the crack and head down the stairs.

“Are you sure?” Maddox held the door obligingly, but he looked horrified. “You don’t know what’s down there….”

Seneca stared into the abyss again. She had a feeling the cops didn’t know this was here. This could be her answer.

“Whatever’s down there had better watch out,” she said. “I’m going in.”