The woods started to grow less dense. The officers behind me were in the thick of it now. I was nearly out. Once I barreled through, I came into a clearing behind the Kasselton Mall.

Perfect.

There were still plenty of cars in the lot. That was a bonus too. I hurried over to Target because it was the largest store in the mall. I found a corner kiosk in the appliance department where I could see both entrances. If the police entered one, I could hurry out the other or even hide in the vast space of the store.

But the cops didn’t come inside.

At the end of the day, I was just a kid who maybe broke into a big tool shed. It might be interesting, but it wasn’t as though a SWAT team was going to be called out.

Half an hour after entering the Target, I went through the mall and exited out the Sears on the other side. There were no police. I started down Hobart Gap Road toward Uncle Myron’s house.

So what do I do now?

Should I text Troy? That seemed iffy. If he’d been caught and I texted him, the police might see that we were communicating. I should wait and let him contact me. But then again, would he? Wouldn’t he logically think the same thing about contacting me and also wait?

I wasn’t sure it mattered.

I tried to put together what I had learned in Mr. Schultz’s shed. Start from the beginning: One, Troy had seen Buck and his brother, Randy, both of whom he claimed used steroids, go into that shed with test tubes. Now that I’d been inside the shed, it was clearly some kind of laboratory. It could have something to do with making the PEDs—performance-enhancing drugs. Maybe Randy or Buck was tinkering with, I don’t know, their formula.

I frowned. I’m not sure Buck could spell the word chemistry, nonetheless start fiddling with complex compounds.

Then I remembered the urine samples.

I don’t know how many were stored in that cabinet—and, ew, I hoped none fell on the floor as we ran out—but what could Buck and Randy be doing with them?

Hmm.

I had read somewhere that steroid cheaters would often use someone else’s urine to beat the system. Here was how it worked: You hid a urine sample on you when you went to the test. When you entered the bathroom stall to urinate, you switched your sample with one you knew was clean.

Could that be it?

Possible, except for one thing. There were probably a hundred urine samples in storage. We only get tested once or maybe twice a year. Why so many?

I was missing something.