There’s an occasional chink of light pressing through a gap in the curtains but most of the houses are in darkness.

It’s late but his father’s truck is missing from the driveway. Connor hurries towards his house, wanting to slip the crowbar back in the shed before Dad gets home.

He’s a few feet away from his house when he notices them. The figure standing under the orangey glow of the streetlight. Connor hesitates. It’s impossible to tell where the person is looking but Connor knows.

They are looking at him.

He is convinced of this from the scratch of fear at the back of his neck, the coldness in his stomach.

No one else has gone missing.

Yet.

Connor tries to tell himself he is paranoid. Edgy from Tyler’s disappearance and Kieron’s health scare, but he carries a constant sense that something terrible is going to happen. His mum had thought someone was watching the house but what if they weren’t watching the house, but him?

He raises the crowbar and smacks it against his palm. It’s reassuringly solid but Connor knows that his bravado is nothing but an empty threat. Somebody had been hurt before because of him and he couldn’t bear for it to happen again.

He hurries forward. Sensing eyes burning into his back.

The keys slip through his fingers. His heart racing as he bends to retrieve them. As his fingers fumble to jab the key into the lock, he throws a glance over his shoulder.

The figure is still there.

Waiting.

For what?

For who?

Shivers snake down Connor’s spine as he pushes into his hallway then locks the door behind him.

Home.

But even here he doesn’t feel safe.

Since Tyler vanished nowhere feels safe.

Chapter Thirty

Lucy

Four days until Connor is taken

The ward is too loud: the chatter of visitors; the clatter of trolleys. Too hot.

I hear him before I see him, polished shoes squeaking across the lino. I raise my eyes to his troubled face. See his uncertainty, his worry.

‘Fergus?’ I’m surprised he’s here. He hasn’t replied to any of my texts since he left Melissa and I can’t unpick whether I’m angry he has stayed away for so long or pleased to see a friendly face. Mel’s popped in when she can but her visits have been fleeting, short.

He can’t quite look at me, instead turning his attention to Kieron. ‘How are you, mate?’ he asks.

‘Bored.’

‘Funny you should say that.’ Fergus hands Kieron a bag of Skittles, a bottle of Tango and a book with a cover that frankly looks like erotica – a woman with sharp fangs protruding from red glossy lips, wearing a low-cut dress, draped over a smouldering man in a cape.

‘Cool!’ Kieron snatches up the book and immediately begins to read.