J.D. maneuvered his Jeep through town, past the park and shopping mall to a residential district. The Prescotts resided in a log cabin that had been in the family for generations. The house was dark, the porch light burning when Tiffany hurried up the front path to the door. She rapped firmly on the old oak panels, then jabbed at the doorbell, but though the buzzer went off inside, no one answered.

“Something’s really wrong,” she said, spying Sam’s ten-speed chained to a post supporting the roof of the porch and his skateboard left near the steps. “If Sam were with Stephen he’d be on his bike or skateboard.”

“You think.”

“I know.” Though the evening was warm, she felt a chill deep in her soul and rubbed her arms where goose bumps had taken hold. Where was Stephen? Thoughts of injury, kidnapping or worse skated through her mind. She noticed the uneaten bowl of cat food and two rolled newspapers left on the front porch, as if no one had been home for a couple of days. “It’s possible the Prescotts are out of town,” she admitted.

J.D.’s expression hardened as he, too, noticed the signs of inactivity at the house. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“So Stephen lied,” she said, disheartened. Ever since Philip’s death, her son had become more secretive, and he’d started lying about the time of Isaac Wells’s disappearance. “I think we should go over to the Deans’ house. They live in a mobile home about two miles up the road.”

J.D. didn’t waste any time. He drove unerringly to the Dean property and pulled into a weed-choked drive. Two disabled cars sat rusting by a vegetable garden surrounded by a high chicken-wire fence to keep out the deer. Besides the mobile home, there were a shed and a lean-to barn by which a skinny horse stood. flicking flies with his tail and trying to find any blade of grass in the small paddock.

Tiffany was out of the Jeep before it stopped. She hurried up a couple of weathered steps, nearly banged her head on a hanging pot overflowing with dying geraniums and pounded on the door. Vera Dean, Miles and Laddy’s mother, opened it a second later. She was tall and thin, with a fading beauty that matched her worn-off lipstick, short, shaggy blond hair and tanned skin stretched taut over high cheekbones. She looked as tired as a plow horse after a day in the fields, and her smile, friendly at first, fell as she recognized Tiffany.

“Hi, Vera. I’m sorry to stop by unannounced, but I’m looking for Stephen,” Tiffany said. “He’s missing and I thought he might have come here.”

“After the fight he had with Miles?” Vera shook her head and reached into the pocket of her jeans for a leather case that held a pack of cigarettes. “No way.”