Milo eyed the filth. “Ah.”

“Okay?” she said. “Now you can go?”

“Where are Ashley and Marissa?”

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“Ask them.”

“I would if I could reach them.”

“Why don’t you just cuh-all them?” said Laura.

“They don’t answer their phones.”

She giggled. “So what’s that te-ell you?”

Milo pulled out his handcuffs.

Laura said, “No, no way!” Her lips crimped and she held her arms close to her torso, an infant who’d woken up starving. “Imago Smith’s my father, he’s had twenty-three number ones.”

“Bully for him. Turn around and fold your hands behind your head.”

She hesitated. Milo took one wrist and cuffed it. Laura Smith said, “Okay! They’re using prepaids, okay! Ditched their regular ones, even I don’t know the numbers, okay?”

“Why’d they do that?”

“Ask ’em.”

“Laura—”

“I don’t know—stop, you’re hurting me, I’m gonna sue you, I don’t have it, I don’t know nothing!”

“You’re house-sitting but they didn’t tell you where—”

“I had a number, okay? Then it didn’t work anymore. Okay? They probably used that one up and got another. Okay?”

“Sounds like they’re scared, Laura.”

The girl looked down at her shackled wrist. Small bones; Milo hadn’t ratcheted tight, she could’ve slipped out. She began crying. “Are you really going to arrest me? I can’t stand jail!”

“Not if you cooperate.”

“They told me not to say! Okay? I’m doing what they asked. Okay? Okay!”

Milo removed the cuff. “I’m not here to hassle you, Laura. How about we start over?”

“But I don’t know nothing—”

“What are they scared of, Laura?”

The girl’s head swiveled from side to side, finally settled on a kitchenette as gross as the floor. She said, “I can’t, they made me promise.”

“C’mon,” said Milo, gently.

The shift in tone made her look at him.

“Laura—”

“Sydney and Jasper.”

“Their horses.”

As if knowledge of that fact lent Milo new status; Laura Smith smiled at him. “Yeah.”

“What about Sydney and Jasper?”

“They were gone. Okay?”

“From the house—”

“Ashley and Riss show up to exercise them and they’re gone, totally gone, everything’s gone, all the furniture inside, Sydney and Jasper’s tack and food, everything. They thought it was a robbery, because someone broke in just before, put weird food in the kitchen. So they called him and he laughed and said, ‘Funny thing ’bout that.’ And they’re like freaked out, totally freaked out, they tell him again and he says the same thing. ‘Funny about that.’ Then he says something really terrible.”

“We’re talking their dad.”

Sniff. Tears. Nod.

“What did he say that was terrible, Laura?”