Shock paralyzed Louisa. Had her ears been affected by the electricity?

“Now.” The gun shook with erratic motions.

Louisa wiggled to the edge of the seat and sat up. A fiery pins-and-needles sensation burned through her feet as she flexed her ankles. Her bound hands behind her back impeded her movements. With an awkward heave, she lurched to her feet. Dizziness swirled in her head. She had to be wrong. She squinted into the darkness.

“Move.” The figure motioned forward with the muzzle of the gun. Louisa looked up at a crumbling old row home. In the darkness, all she could see was the outline of the building against the sky. The roofline appeared to have significant gaps. A dog barked in the distance.

With a prod from the gun, Louisa stumbled into a narrow alley that ran between buildings. With the muzzle pressing hard into her back, she climbed three cement steps and pushed open a door. Her mind reeled. The stench of garbage and human waste assaulted her nostrils as she crossed an unstable floor, the wood creaking and shifting under her feet. She walked toward a faint glow. A doorway led to a wooden stairwell.

“Downstairs.”

The shove sent her tumbling. She flipped once. Her head struck a tread, and the faint light faded to blackness.

Camden, New Jersey, jockeyed with Detroit and Flint, Michigan, for the highest per capita murder rate in the nation. With boarded-up factories, plenty of vacant row homes, and crack houses, Camden was a model of urban blight. After Conor passed the demolished Sears building, he exited Admiral Wilson Boulevard onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. Once he drove through the public facade of Camden, the refaced buildings and inset brick crosswalks that marked the new city center, he emerged into the heart of the city, a heart that could use a thousand-way coronary bypass.

Conor pulled over and turned on the dome light. He counted the streets past Broadway, drove through three more intersections, and turned right. Before he navigated the next two turns, he turned off his headlights and crawled forward in the dark. The Porsche bumped along. The paved-over backstreet was worn down in spots to its original cobblestones.

Boarded-up row houses lined the street. An occasional chain-link fence corralled God-knew-what. Buildings slated for eventual demolition were tagged with red-and-white signs. A house with fresh paint on the door and flowers in urns on the step was the saddest sight of all, a sign that someone cared. The streetlights were dark. Half the lots were vacant and knee-high with weeds. On the left, a six-foot rusted privacy fence ran the length of the street. Dogs barked behind it.

Several wrong turns wasted precious time. The star on the map was just up the block. Conor pulled over behind a Dumpster.