He was right.

“So then what happened?”

“Whilst I was preoccupied with said thugs, Patrick fled. The last time I saw him, he was heading into King’s Cross station. Not long after that, I called you for help.”

Myron sat back. They were approaching Westminster Bridge and the river Thames. The London Eye, basically a gigantic Ferris wheel that moved at what could generously be dubbed a glacial pace, shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. Myron had gone on it once years ago. It had bored him silly.

“You understand,” Win said, “how pressing this is.”

Myron nodded. “They’ll make the boys disappear.”

“Precisely. Move them out of the country, or if they feel threatened with exposure . . .”

Win didn’t have to finish the thought.

“Have you told the parents?”

“No.”

“Not even Brooke?”

“No,” Win said. “I saw no reason to give her false hope.”

They were driving north. Myron looked out the window. “They’ve been gone since they were six years old, Win.”

He said nothing.

“Everyone thought that they were long dead.”

“I know.”

“Except you.”

“Oh, I thought they were dead.”

“But you kept looking.”

Win steepled his fingers. It was a familiar gesture, one that brought Myron back to younger days. “Last time I saw Brooke, we opened some very expensive wine. We sat out on a deck and looked out over the ocean. For a while, she was the Brooke I grew up with. Some people are conduits for misery. Brooke is the opposite. She brings joy. Always has. You know the cliché that some people light up a room?”

“Sure.”

“Brooke could do that from a distance. You could just think about her and be happier. You want to shield a person like that. And when you see someone like that in such pain, you want—nay, need—to relieve it.”

Win bounced his fingertips together. “So there we were, drinking wine and staring out at the ocean. Most people use alcohol to anesthetize the kind of pain Brooke faced. But with Brooke, the opposite was happening. The alcohol made the facade fall away. The smile she still forced up was gone. She confessed something to me that night.”

He stopped. Myron waited.

“For a long time, Brooke fantasized about Rhys’s homecoming. Every time the phone rang, she felt the jangle in her blood. She hoped it would be Rhys telling her he was okay. She would see him in crowded streets. She would dream about rescuing him, about seeing him, about their tearful reunion. She would constantly replay that day in her head, staying home instead of going out, taking Rhys and Patrick with her instead of leaving them with that au pair—altering something, anything, to make it not have happened. It stays with you, Brooke told me. A permanent companion. You may run a few steps ahead, but that day is always there, tapping you on the shoulder, pulling at your sleeve.”

Myron sat very still.

“I knew all this, of course. It isn’t revelatory that parents suffer. Brooke still looks wonderful. She’s a strong woman. But things have changed.”