I finally dragged my gaze away from it and glanced at my cell phone, hoping I’d missed a text from Adrian in response to one I’d sent earlier with our status. There’d been little communication from him throughout the day, which seemed odd after yesterday, when he’d sent almost constant updates. I knew it was unreasonable to expect him to do nothing except sit by the phone to talk to me, but I couldn’t shake the difference. After the troubling way things had been between us this last month, I found myself getting caught up in weird fits of paranoia, thinking that maybe once the shock of having me gone was over, Adrian found he kind of liked the freedom.

The waitress arrived with our food just then, and I tucked the phone back into my purse. As she set down our plates, her breath caught at the sight of the sandstone brick.

“Did you guys steal that from Ha Ha Tonka?”

We stared her as though she were speaking another language.

“I mean, that’s cool if you did,” she added hastily, unnerved by our silence. “It’s a sweet place. I see lots of people going to and from there. Wouldn’t mind a souvenir myself.”

Ms. Terwilliger recovered herself first. “Can you say that name again? Ha Ha Wonka?”

“Ha Ha Tonka,” the girl corrected. She glanced between our faces. “You really haven’t been there? That brick looks just like the one the ruins are made of. You should check it out if you’re going into the Ozarks.”

The instant she was gone, I looked up Ha Ha Tonka on my phone. “No way,” I said. “There’s a castle in Missouri!”

“Do you think Jill’s being held there?” Eddie asked, eyes aglow. I could already tell he was envisioning himself rescuing her from some tall tower, possibly battling a dragon or a robot dinosaur in the process.

“Not likely. She was right about the ‘ruins’ part.” I showed them a picture of Ha Ha Tonka, which was an impressive structure, despite having seen better days. It had no roof, and some sections of the walls were gone, making it all open-air and easy to walk through. The building was technically a mansion, not a castle, and the whole area had been turned into a state park full of trails and other natural attractions. If Jill was there, it wasn’t obvious where she could be held captive . . . but at least we had a destination now, because the waitress was right about one thing: Our brick looked exactly like those from the ruins.