Condor was born and bred in Barrens, and Barrens taught its boys how to play football, and how to aim a gun. One shot was all it took.

He’d told me the whole story in the hospital the day after it happened—how he’d grown worried after seeing my calls, especially when I didn’t answer his. How, after several hours, he’d become so agitated he decided to drive to my father’s house to make sure I was okay. He hadn’t wanted to leave Hannah by herself—but she was a fussy sleeper, prone to nightmares, and he was worried she might wake up and discover him gone. So he’d woken her and packed her in the back seat of the car.

“I was sure I was just being paranoid,” he told me. “I figured we’d find you tucked into bed, turn around, and go home.”

“Then why did you bring your shotgun?” I’d asked him.

He’d simply shrugged. “You ever gone camping without a flashlight?”

I shook my head.

He smiled. “Me neither.”

Later, I heard the story repeated by the news channels, on websites, blogs, and late-night segments. Everyone was captivated by my narrow escape on the reservoir—and more than a little enamored of Condor, the gruff good-looking single dad who played the role of the hero.

The story was embellished, edited, and exaggerated, but the basic facts remained the same: arriving at my father’s house, he’d found Brent’s car, and mine, but the door hanging open and tracks off the back porch, leading across the grass, suggesting something—or someone—had been dragged into the woods.

He had commanded Hannah to stay in the car. He hardly ever gave direct orders, and she never disobeyed them.

That night, she did.

When I got out of the hospital, I tried returning to my dad’s house, which had been cleared by then of the police tape that for days had encircled it. But already, curious tourists were arriving. I would wake in the middle of the night to a sudden flash, only to see a stranger at the window and be pulled into a well of panic, replaying the entire event over and over in my head.

When Condor suggested I stay with him, I agreed right away. I made coffee in the mornings. He made eggs. I slept in his bed. He took the foldout couch. Hannah and I drank warm milk at midnight when the nightmares had startled us awake. Condor and I sat on the couch, watching old episodes of sitcoms without paying any attention to them, after endless hours of giving evidence, interviews, help to a tidal wave of federal investigators and prosecutors, sexual assault survivors’ advocates, corporate watchdogs. It was as if exposing Optimal and its economy of teens used for entertainment, and nearly getting killed in the process, had all been part of some master plan to snag my fifteen minutes of fame. Barrens, and its dirty not-so-little secrets, was suddenly everywhere. The fall of a multimillion-dollar company, the exploitation, the corruption, the girls, the ten-year-old murder—it was a ratings jackpot.