Amos waited until he could no longer hear Pastor’s footsteps and made his way to where the man had been standing. There were some large boulders on the ground that Pastor had been sitting on—and it appeared that one of them had rocked a little when he stood up.

Crouching low, Amos looked around to make sure he was alone before tentatively pushing at the boulder. Which really did move. Way too easily.

He pushed a little more and the boulder rolled back, revealing that it was hollow. And that it was hiding a small satellite dish. Amos had seen these back in the 1980s, before he’d come to Eden. His neighbor had been the first on their block to get a satellite dish for cable TV. But here?

He stared for a long moment, trying to make sense of it all. Then remembered where he was supposed to be. He returned the boulder to where it had been, then backed carefully away, into the forest. Retracing his steps, he caught up to the search party, still looking for signs of Brother Ephraim.

“Brother Amos,” one of the others called. “We were worried. We thought we’d have to send a search party for you, too.”

Amos made himself smile apologetically, hoping that no one could hear the nervous pounding of his heart. “Sorry. I thought I saw a movement in the woods, but it was only a fox.”

The group of men, most of whom Amos would have called friends, gave him a good-natured ribbing about getting lost in the woods and the difference in size between Ephraim Burton and a fox.

Should have said that I saw a snake, Amos thought. Would have been closer to the truth.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 6:55 P.M.

Jeff Bunker ignored the ringing of his phone, focusing instead on his laptop screen. He still had five minutes to make this deadline, dammit, and he wasn’t going to let his editor rush him into making a mistake. He’d been working this Mercy Callahan story for the past six weeks, ever since a brutal serial killer had been brought down practically in his own backyard.

He frowned at the words on the screen, his fingers slowing to a random tap-tap-tap on the keyboard. Stop. Just stop. Admit the truth.

Which was that he wasn’t proud of this story. It wasn’t his best work and he wasn’t finished with it. He couldn’t help the feeling that he’d only exposed the tip of the iceberg. With just a little more time . . .

No, that wasn’t the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. Yes, he wanted more time. But he’d had time today. He’d had nearly seven hours to finish the story, between airports and the flight from New Orleans. But he hadn’t even started until he’d gotten home from the airport, his heart still racing to beat all hell.

He knew he’d worried his mom, ignoring her demands to know where he’d been for the past three days. You may be in college, Jeffrey Bunker, but you’re still only sixteen years old. You can’t just disappear for three days!