“Good.” Or was it?

“Look, Mrs. Santini, this incident at the Mini Mart, well, it doesn’t amount to much more than a couple of kids getting into a difference of opinion and taking a swing or two on a hot afternoon. However, the way things are today, we tend to worry. If either of the boys had pulled a weapon—a gun or a knife—this could have turned out bad.”

Her thoughts exactly. A chill slid through her despite the heat. Guns. Knives. Weapons. She had moved to the small town of Bittersweet to get away from the gangs and violence of the city, but it seemed that no community was immune. Not even a little burg in southern Oregon. In this part of rural America, boys were given hunting knives and rifles routinely about the time they hit the age of ten or twelve, as if the owning of a weapon was a rite of passage from childhood to becoming a man. “I’ll talk to Stephen.”

“Do that,” Pearson advised. “I think a ride in the squad car and having to come down to the station probably gave him a scare.”

“Let’s hope so.”

She was ready to hang up, to wait for Stephen and see that he was okay, then read him the riot act if necessary, but Sergeant Pearson wasn’t finished.

“There is something more, Mrs. Santini,” he said, and there was a solemnity in his voice she hadn’t heard before. She was instantly wary, her fingers tightening around the receiver.

“Yes?”

“As I said, the boys were fighting about something—who knows what, maybe even a girl. At least that’s what the clerk at the Mini Mart thought she heard, but there was some discussion about Isaac Wells.”

Tiffany froze. “Pardon me?”

“The man who disappeared. Owned a place on the county road just out of town.”

“I know who he is,” she said, trying to keep the irritation and, well, the fear, from her voice. Deep inside she began to tremble. “I just don’t see what he has to do with Stephen.”

“Probably nothing. But when we emptied your son’s pockets—just part of procedure, you know—he had a set of keys on him.”

“Keys?” she repeated, having trouble finding her voice. “To my house,” she said, but knew she was only hoping against hope. Stephen had one key. Only one. No set.

The sergeant hesitated. “Maybe. But the chain is unique and engraved.” She closed her eyes because she knew what was coming. “Initials I.X.W. I’m thinkin’ it could be for Isaac Xavier Wells.”

“I see.”

“Talk to your boy.”