By then, her father had picked her up like he did when she was a little girl, and carried her off. Despite her struggles, he carried her all the way around to the side of the motel, where she couldn’t see a damn thing. A squad car was parked there, lights flashing.

He placed her in the back.

“Dad, what’s happening?” she demanded. “Tell me!”

“Stay here,” he said, and slammed the door shut so she didn’t have a choice. It locked automatically, and there was no handle on the inside.

That’s when it hit her. She felt like an idiot.

It wasn’t chocolate on the walls.

Blood just looks like that when it dries.

This case didn’t wrap up as neatly or as cleanly as her others usually did.

Her father, bleary-eyed at the table the next morning, would only give her the barest details. They’d found Goodson’s body in his motel room. Apparently someone got to him before Carrie and the police arrived. Maybe his accomplices fought with him. Thing One and Thing Two turned out to be a couple of local thugs who’d been arrested before. They were currently exercising their right to remain silent. Maybe they had a last-second attack of conscience. More likely they argued over money — there was no sign of any of the cash Goodson had been flashing around town.

But this meant that if Goodson was a part of a larger network of human trafficking — people who literally stole children and sold them — then there was no way to find it. They would probably never learn what happened to those kids from Stoneybrook. Or from any of the other towns Goodson visited. He was literally a dead end now.

“What did they do to him?” Carrie asked.

Her father grimaced, as if seeing it again. Carrie thought of the smears and stains on the walls.

“It wasn’t pretty.”

That’s all he would say.

She cornered Brianna in the hallway at school. She clearly wanted to get away, but Carrie wouldn’t let her pass. “What did they do to you?” she asked.

Brianna looked around desperately, as if she needed rescuing, as if Carrie hadn’t saved her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whispered.

“Tough shit,” Carrie said. She wanted to know how three men managed to keep all of those kids so docile and frightened. Surely there was a moment when the students realized what was happening — when they went from willing members of the group to victims. So why didn’t they fight? Why didn’t they run? “I need to know. What did they do to you?”

“They showed us things,” Brianna said. Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about it. “Terrible things.”

She shoved her way past Carrie and ran down the hall, crying.