This was something he was good at—starting fires. Ever since he was a little kid he had been fascinated with fire. Practically every time he could get his hands on some matches or a lighter he would set something on fire. Maybe just a piece of paper or a pile of leaves. He liked to steal cigarettes and light them and burn bugs and spiders alive with the hot tip.

Maybe Miss Navarre would give him something really special for burning the hospital to the ground, he thought, and had to try really hard not to laugh out loud.

Dennis flicked the lighter and stared at the flame as it licked the air. He took the wadded-up pages of his writing homework and set them ablaze, then tossed them onto the pile of crumpled paper and quickly exited the room.

He made his way back to his own room with two stops to start fires in the wastebaskets in the rooms of other patients who were sleeping. When he got back to his room, he grabbed his plastic bag of stuff and waited by the door.

It seemed to take a long time before the fire alarm went off. Dennis had begun to think all his fires had burned out, and he was going to be really disappointed. But then several things happened at once. The fire alarm went off. Someone started screaming. And the oxygen tanks in the room at the end of the hall exploded.

All of a sudden people came running down the hall past his room. Dennis opened the door and stepped out. Orange flames were coming out of the door at the end of the hall. Nurses were pulling patients out of the rooms nearby. Other patients were wandering into the hall on their own, drooling and confused.

Nasty black smoke came rolling down the hall, stinking with the smell of plastic burning. Right across the hall from Dennis, a man came through the door screaming, his flaming arms raised straight up in the air.

Dennis stared at him, transfixed, then bolted.

In the chaos of people running and screaming, alarms blaring and sprinklers going off, no one noticed a twelve-year-old boy go right out the front door and disappear into the night.

Chapter 71

71

Hiding.

The thought came to him in the hazy gray of predawn.

Hiding in plain sight.

Vince slipped out of bed, pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt, and went across the hall. Anne had gone to Haley in the middle of the night when Bad Daddy had paid a visit to the little girl’s dreams.

He looked in on them now and felt a tug at his heart. They were curled up together, sound asleep. They could have easily been mother and daughter with their dark hair and turned-up noses.