I called Gabe, but there was no answer from him either. Breaking my own rule, I tried his personal phone. He didn’t answer, and when I tried calling again he’d turned his phone off.

I paced the living room, Charlie watching with large, inquisitive eyes from the couch. Finally, desperate and plagued by a fear of something I couldn’t quite name, I went upstairs, wrapped a sleeping Josh in a big blanket, then bundled him into the car. I’d have to find Ben myself.

Josh woke as I pulled up next to the chain-link fence by the warehouse. “Where are we, Mommy?”

“I just need to check the tire. Stay here, okay? Don’t get out or let anybody in no matter what, you hear me?”

Josh nodded and snuggled down under the blanket, seeming to go back to sleep. I hovered between my instinct to not leave my child in a dark car in the middle of the night and my fear that something horrible had happened to my brother.

I locked the car doors, slipped through the fence, and jogged quickly over the cracked cement. The moon cast silver streaks across the ground, lighting my way. Frost shimmered on the trees, the chill of darkness and a freezing wind pressing a heavy bleakness on me. My hands were stiff with cold. In the distance, the sound of the waterfall was a menacing roar, plumes of mist coating the air.

I passed a battered old motorcycle pushed into a large bush at the side of the warehouse. Ben’s?

“Ben?” I stepped inside, instantly hit by the smell of damp.

The building was warmer than the last time I’d been here, but I shivered anyway. Water dripped insistently from the ceiling, a mournful, haunting sound that gave me the creeps.

“Ben?”

No reply.

I swept my flashlight over the cavernous space. The light cut through the murky darkness, revealing an open door next to the one leading to the room where Ben had been making the pills.

I crept toward it. “Ben?” I hissed.

I peered inside. A lantern flickered warily from the floor. The room was small, maybe an old storage closet, and stank of sweat and dirty clothes. I saw a backpack and a pair of old tennis shoes sitting atop a camper bed. I felt a wash of relief—Ben had gotten my warning text in time; he’d obviously packed up his stuff and come here.

Then I saw a figure on the floor.

“Ben!”

I rushed to him, dropping to my knees. I tugged on his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. His arm flopped limply against his chest. Something fluttered out of his hand onto the floor. A slash of crimson, like blood.

Damp, covered in mud, it was still unmistakably the silk scarf that Violeta had been wearing the night she died.