“It was Jezz and Patrick,” he says at last.

Of course. The fragments fall into place.

All of them at once.

Everything he loves.

“Come on.” I reach down and grab his hand.

Anders

I haven’t ridden on the back of someone else’s bike like this since I was ten. My feet are balanced on the little pegs that stick out on either side of each rear wheel, and I’m stuck in a half squat, with my arms wrapped tight around the shoulders of Thea Malcolm.

That would be messed up enough. But we’re also moving so fast, faster than any car I’ve ever been in, and we’re weaving through thick, pitch-dark woods, and I have to keep closing my eyes so I won’t completely freak out, and it all seems like one huge, horrible, ridiculous dream.

With my eyes closed, I feel everything even more clearly. Branches whish over my head. Damp leaves scrape my skin. Clearest of all is the feeling of the girl in my arms. Not that she’s in my arms, not in any normal way. But I can feel her, soft and solid at the same time. I have to hold on tight. I’ve got no choice.

“We could have taken my car,” I say again, over the roar of the air.

“Not through the woods,” Thea answers. “And I can’t drive a car this fast, anyway.”

“Oh,” I say. “Is—is this bike magical or something? Or is it just . . . you?”

She doesn’t answer.

Her hair whips around my face. It brushes my cheek, slides into my collar.

It doesn’t have a scent. Not like Frankie’s. Not flowers or spice. It just smells clean.

“Where are we going?” I ask her.

“To the gap.”

At least that’s what I think she says. For a second I picture a store at the mall, racks of sweaters and slacks. Then I realize this isn’t what she means. It almost makes me want to laugh. But the question of what could be happening to Frankie and Jezz and Patrick—the question I’m trying so hard not to ask, not even to myself—rears up in my brain, and I have to swallow a wave of bile instead.

We roll up and down a ridge of earth. I close my eyes tight again.

“You think this is where Jezz and Patrick have taken Frankie?” I ask her, when I can talk again.

“No.”

“No?”

She doesn’t go on. I open my eyes to see that we’re starting down a steep, wooded hill. Thea leans lower over the handlebars, and I lean with her, my arms still clenched around her shoulders. My face presses against her back. Her shirt is soft and warm.

She veers right, then left, zigzagging sharply around trunks and rocks and roots. When the ground finally levels again, I pull myself backward. My knees ache from holding this pose. My hands and arms are freezing.

“You said no?” I push. “This isn’t where Jezz and Patrick took her?”