Up ahead, on the right, an apartment building. And cars parked, nose in, on an angle, out front. But the street out front was empty. No SUV. No guys. No Angie.

Wait. Someone was stumbling out beyond the back of the parked cars.

Trevor.

I slammed on the brakes, right behind our Virtue. Trevor was using the back of the car to support himself. I don’t even remember putting the car in park or taking off my seat belt. But I was out, running around the front, headed for Trevor.

“Where is she?” I screamed. “Where’s Angie? What have you done with her?”

I lost it.

I grabbed Trevor by the lapels of his long black coat and swung him around, slamming him into the side of the Camry, shaking him violently, putting my face into his. I was consumed by rage and fear, and at that moment, I had only one thing in mind, which was to beat this kid to a pulp. Even the mild-mannered among us can, given the right set of circumstances, be overtaken by pure fury.

Why hadn’t I stopped him earlier? I shouldn’t have worried about Angie’s feelings, about embarrassing her. I should have come down on this kid like a ton of bricks at the first hint of trouble. You trust what your gut tells you, Lawrence had advised me. And my gut had told me from the beginning that Trevor Wylie was trouble.

I felt a force traveling through me, into my arms, headed for my fists. I knew what I was about to do. I was going to destroy the face of this kid who’d somehow arranged for this terrible thing to happen to Angie.

I let go of his lapel with my right hand, still leaning up against him and holding him against the car, and brought my arm back, squeezed my fist, got ready for the first strike.

“No!” Trevor screamed. “I didn’t do this!”

There was something about his expression, the fear in his eyes that appeared to have already been there before I’d started throwing him around. There was no fight in him.

My fist was suspended in the air, still ready. “Where is she?” I shouted. “Where’s Angie?”

If I have ever, in my entire life, seen anyone who looked more frightened, I don’t remember when it was. For a moment, I thought he was in shock, his mouth open, his eyes frozen wide.

“Where is she?” I said again, not shouting this time. I brought my right arm down to my side.

“She’s gone,” he whispered. “They took her.”