He left the baseball field first and drove home. He’d left the garage open so he could scoot quickly into it without Mrs. Hultz realizing he and Kiara had left in separate cars last night. She arrived in her car two minutes after he’d left the garage. As they walked up the path toward Mrs. Hultz’s front door, the old woman opened it. She held the child wrapped in a blanket and was smiling with sleepy eyes.

“He slept great,” she said. “But I stayed up all night just watching him. It’s been so long since my own were that new.”

Kiara wove a smooth tale around their having been out all night and their trials and tribulations. By the time he left to go next door, Mrs. Hultz had acquiesced to watch William for two more nights. Kiara added a stack of cash to sweeten the deal. Owen walked her and William to her car. She told him, “I have to kill this fuckin’ thing now, or it’s ultimately going to take my kid.”

“What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“I’m going to hunt him down wherever he is and burn him to a cinder.”

“I’ll be here later, after work; come and get me.”

In the hour he had left to sleep, he had an OBE and traveled to the shade of the oaks on the corner across from the menacing old house. There, he watched the sun rise in the window glass. His ethereal form had never yet known blue sky. It was beautiful, vibrant, with an eerie sense of expectation. The sun was almost fully risen when he heard, from deeper in the shadow of the oaks, a voice say, “I see you.” Owen leaped out of sleep. The voice sounded like it was only two inches behind him. He’d felt the breath of the words against the back of his neck. He knew it wasn’t a dream.

It was a brown suit, white shirt, no tie day. He was exhausted. Luckily, it was quiet at the library. There were whole half-hour patches through the morning when he could lean back in his office chair and nod off. Most who came in knew what they wanted and were gone in minutes. Though there was a young woman who scoured the children’s section. Rubbing his eyes, a little annoyed by her presence, Owen got up and went to see if he could help her find what she was looking for. When he drew closer to the woman, he realized he knew her. It took him a second to place her as she stood and greeted him, and he reciprocated. The final clue was her red hair—it was Shiela Tobac.

“I’m looking for a certain reference book for the project I’m working on,” she said.

Owen said, “Interesting,” but left it at that.