The table in the hallway is lying on its side. My favourite green vase lies in shattered pieces over the oak floor. The lilies that had been left anonymously on the doorstep that I thought were from a well-meaning neighbour are strewn down the hallway.

Funeral flowers.

‘Hello?’ My voice is thin and shaky.

The cream wall by the front door is smeared in blood. Connor’s phone is on the floor, lying in a puddle of water from the vase. His screen is smashed. My feet race up the stairs towards his bedroom. A man’s voice drifts towards me. Without considering the danger I am potentially putting myself in, putting Kieron in, I push open Connor’s door just as shots are fired.

Instinctively, I cover my head before I realize the sound is coming from the war game blaring out of Connor’s TV; whoever he was online with is still playing the game, unaware Connor has disappeared. His Xbox controller is tangled on the floor along with his headphones.

His bedroom is empty.

The Taken.

It’s impossible.

‘Connor?’ He was here. He was safe. The front door was locked.

But he isn’t here now.

Connor has gone.

Part Two

Chapter Forty-One

Ryan

When he was small, Ryan used to wake up screaming, ‘night terrors’ his mum called them as she scurried into his bedroom to comfort him. He’d be wrenched from sleep in the middle of a horrifying scenario where faceless figures and monsters were chasing him, immobilized by fright. That’s when his mum would enfold him in her arms. Stroke his hair until his heart rate slowed, breathing settled. He’d drift back to sleep and in the morning he was never wholly sure if he had actually been awake, if any of it was real.

Now, he is waking again. He tries to move but his wrists and ankles are bound.

Three days.

It’s been three long days since he was taken and although he’s been given food and water and been allowed to go to the toilet he is still pinned to a bed.

Still rigid with fear.

It’s like the worst hangover ever. Pain pulsing behind his temples, tongue swollen, mouth dry. He’s exhausted, sick, sorry.

He shouldn’t have accepted a lift that night, but why wouldn’t he? He didn’t give a second thought to climbing into the car.

Stranger danger had been drummed into him from a young age but this wasn’t a stranger.

His head is heavy, thick with memories he doesn’t want to recall. He can’t open his eyes. This isn’t a nightmare at all. It was real, all of it. What happened when he was snatched and what had happened this morning when they had returned.

He doesn’t want to remember but he can’t help it.

‘Ryan,’ a whisper. A shake of his shoulder. ‘I’m back.’