The first step creaked as he placed his foot on it, a good reminder that he should hit the gym after all this was over. He’d spent a little too much time doing Xandria’s dirty work behind a desk, and the baby fat was beginning to show. When he’d accepted her invitation to join the Orphans, he’d been promised a life of danger. But until today, the most danger he’d ever seen was accidentally slicing his finger with a pair of scissors while clipping newspaper articles about the Gutenberg Bible.

The next few steps groaned as Joe climbed. He wished the ascent were quieter, but it probably didn’t matter. The kid was trapped, probably huddled behind a box, scared out of his mind. He wondered if it was even necessary to have his gun out. Joe thought about the expression the kid would have when he pointed the weapon in his face. Yeah, he’d keep the gun out.

Joe’s eyes broke the plane of the attic floor. He stared at a sea of dilapidated boxes. What a mess. It was odd, because the rest of the house was spotless, without even so much as a picture frame off-kilter. Even the boy’s room, which he’d passed through to get to the attic ladder, was neat and tidy. Poor kid. His mother must be a nightmare.

The darkness was penetrated by a few pencil-sized streams of dusky light from some tiny cracks in the opposite wall. In the dimness, he could see dust stirring in the air, which could only mean that the boy had recently been crawling around. He was close.

“Why don’t you just come on out?” Joe asked, wondering if the kid would be dumb enough to stick his head up out of the box he was in. “Your grandma is really worried about you, and she wants to see you right away.” He listened and heard some movement from the left rear corner. He raised his gun and began to trudge through the assembly of boxes toward the sound.

“No fooling around, okay? Just come on out and everything will be all right. Understand?” He squinted and spied a large box quivering about ten feet away. “Do you understand?” he asked, raising his voice, trying to panic the kid out of his cardboard cave.

Joe raised his gun, pointed it at the box, and squeezed the trigger. A mouse scurried out from the torn paper. Joe fired again, and the mouse was instantly splattered among the old baby toys stuffed inside the box. The death of the tiny creature did nothing to absolve the frustration building inside him like a tsunami. Where was the boy? It would take serious self-control not to wring the life from his body when Joe finally found him.