I thought. “No. There’s a street behind ours, where I parked Stefanie Knight’s Beetle. I’ll pick it up, drive it over to the police station, get them to give me a ride home later.”

“Sounds good.”

He turned around, headed back to our neighborhood, and pulled up alongside the Volkswagen. As I opened the door, I said, “Thanks, Earl. You didn’t have to do this.”

“S’okay. Just remember to do what I told you.”

I nodded, slammed the truck door shut, and, as Earl drove off into the night, reached into my jeans for the VW keys. I got into the car, fired it up, and decided to check that my cell phone was on.

I dug it out of my pocket and saw that Greenway had turned it off, not keen to have to take my messages, I guess. I watched the tiny screen as the phone became activated, searched for a signal. And then: “You have 4 new messages.”

I could guess who they were from. Before I went to the police station, I thought I’d better give Sarah a call at work. It was time to come clean. She was going to be pissed, I knew that, but there was going to be no way to keep all this from her once the police were involved.

Without bothering to check the messages, I called her extension at work.

A male voice answered. Not Dan. Thank God. “City.”

“Sarah Walker, please.”

“Not here. Can I take a message?”

“It’s her husband. She go home in the middle of her shift?”

“Some emergency. Had to go home.”

And I thought, What if that was her who phoned when I was hiding out in the construction site? And when a strange voice answered—Greenway’s—and said I was unavailable? What would she have thought? Especially when she was unable to raise me, or the kids, at home?

Shit.

“Thanks,” I said, and then, as soon as I’d ended the call, I realized the gravity of what Sarah’s colleague had just said to me. Sarah had gone home. To the one place where I’d felt, all night, it was unsafe to return.

I started to key in our home number when the phone rang shrilly. I nearly dropped it. I pressed the green button and put the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Zack?” Sarah.

“Yes, yes, it’s me!”

“Didn’t you get any of my messages? God, I’ve been trying to get you all night.”

“I just got my phone back and hadn’t had a second to check them yet. I’m so sorry, it’s been quite a night.”

“I phoned you, and this other man answered, and I tried to call back, and I called home, and you haven’t been here, I couldn’t get the kids. So I left work and—”

“Sarah.”

“—I’ve never been so worried in my entire life, especially when—”