She thought of the advice she’d learned from Pat, advice on staying safe in dangerous neighborhoods: If you ever encounter someone intent on doing you harm, never get in a car with them. Never let them take you to another location.

Too late.

It’s too—

But as worried as she might be about herself, she was even more distressed about her missing daughter.

The assistant director put on his siren and pulled out of the garage, leaving Agent Greer’s body behind.

++++

I called DeYoung’s office number and reached his receptionist, Annalise. She told me that he was at his desk.

“Check. Make sure.”

A moment later she said quizzically, “No. Actually, he’s not here after all. And he left his cell phone by his computer.”

++++

Christie watched as Assistant Director DeYoung, if the man really was who he claimed to be, called a number using a flip phone and said, “The place by the riverfront where you met with Julianne. Be there by two.”

Hoping that whoever was on the other end of the line would hear her, Christie shouted for help, but DeYoung quickly hung up.

++++

Timothy couldn’t be certain, but it sounded like someone had been yelling in the background, terrified cries before the line went dead.

++++

“Who was that?” Tessa asked Timothy from the backseat.

“My dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“The waterfront. It’ll be okay. I just need to take care of things with him, then you’ll be safe and I’ll drive you home.”

Here she was, alone in this car with this guy she barely knew, and despite his assurances that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her, she didn’t feel exactly reassured.

This was, basically, a perfect storm of not-goodness.

You have a gun.

Seriously? What are you going to do with that? It’s not like you’re actually gonna shoot someone!

Patrick might. Her mom might. They went target shooting sometimes at the range, but she’d never even shot a gun in her life.

Why doesn’t Sabian just drop you off somewhere?

“You wrote that the truth tastes like tears,” he said to her, drawing her out of her thoughts.

“What?”

“On that church bulletin you gave me. You wrote that the truth tastes like tears.”

“Oh.” Her stupid poem was the last thing on her mind. “Yeah.”

“And that you wished you could touch the light that threads its way through the ever-present rays of darkness all around you.”

“You have a good memory.”

“Is that really how you feel? Lost in the darkness, reaching for the light?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Yeah. It is.”

“Me too.”

“What do you do when you feel like that?”

“I try to cut the darkness out of me.”

“Does it work?”

“No. I don’t think I’ve ever quite gone deep enough yet.”

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