There were sirens in the distance. Barbie Man heard them, too. He made a half-hearted swing for me, and at that exact moment a firework sounded.

Barbie Man looked down at himself. There was blood on his shirt.

“Oh my God, Thomas. You shot him.”

Barbie Man sank back down, bent over himself. Had Thomas killed him?

“I thought I shot into the trees,” Thomas said.

Then Barbie Man pulled a dart out of his T-shirt with his right hand. It was me: I had shot him again with the Marksman without even knowing it.

“Tell us where she is,” I said.

“Don’t know . . . what the fuck you’re talking . . .” He was groggy; his voice dragged, and he tried to lie down. His face was pasty white.

“No, don’t go to sleep,” I shouted. I went toward him, and for an awful, sickening moment I held his hair in my hands, trying to pull him up.

The sirens came closer, and a police car turned up the McVays’ driveway, the red and blue flashing through the trees, the headlights bringing us all into view: Thomas holding a gun, Wilson fetal on the ground, Barbie Man half conscious on his side, me above him, still holding the Marksman.

A voice shouted, “Put the gun down.” Officer Day.

“We can’t find her. He won’t tell us where he took Ellen.” I could hear the panic in my own voice. I started moving toward the police car.

“Hold on. Let’s drop the guns.”

I looked at the Marksman in my hand. “It’s just a dart gun. It’s not real,” I shouted, and dropped it. I put my hands in the air. “She’s not in his car. He won’t tell us where she is.”

“Something’s wrong with his breathing.” Thomas was leaning over Wilson.

I could hear them calling in the ambulances. Other cars arrived. A searchlight on top of one of them flooded us all in an unreal wash of white. We looked like ghosts. One of the cops wrapped Barbie Man’s hand and was pressing on it, and I could see his fingers with the long nails cupped with his own blood. There were officers looking inside the Camaro and in the trunk, maybe for traces that Ellen had been there. Thomas was still beside Wilson, and I sat down on the grass next to them. There was a police officer talking to Wilson and speaking into a radio. “Possible traumatic pneumothorax. Don’t let him move until the paramedics arrive,” said the voice on the radio. Wilson was pale, and his breathing was fast. I wanted them to make Barbie Man tell us what he had done with Ellen, make him talk, not fix him.

“Libby.” Wilson’s voice was lower than a whisper.

“Yeah?” I leaned in toward him.