Anne felt all her blood drain to her feet. Willa Norwood, her CASA supervisor, stood in her hallway just inside the front door looking ridiculously festive in her colorful African dashiki and kufi hat.

“They think he set fire to the mental health center.”

“Oh my God,” Anne said. “I have to sit down.”

“It happened last night around midnight,” Willa said as they walked through the house, through the family room where Haley was curled up on the couch watching cartoons, and on to the kitchen.

“He set fire to his own wastebasket six months ago,” Anne said. “How could they let him get hold of matches again?”

“I don’t know. Apparently, the fire started in a room they use for storage,” Willa said. “Why it wasn’t locked, I don’t know. But Dennis has been caught messing around in there before.”

“Did someone see him?” Anne motioned to her supervisor to take a seat at the breakfast table, and dropped onto a chair herself.

“Another patient says Dennis came into his room and set fire to his wastebasket. This is really bad, Anne.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to think of somewhere to move him—”

“No,” Willa said.

The expression in the woman’s eyes made Anne’s heart thump in her chest.

“I mean it’s really bad. One of the other patients suffered third-degree burns when he tried to move the wastebasket.” She took a deep breath to deliver the worst of the news. “And an oxygen tank went through a wall and killed the woman in the next room.”

“Oh.”

The word came out on a breath that seemed to empty Anne’s lungs entirely, and she sat there, unable to move or speak or think, until her head swam.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Dennis had killed someone. Intentional or not, he was now the thing he claimed to admire most—a killer. “Where is he? I’ll have to—Maybe Franny can watch Haley—”

“We don’t know where he is, Anne,” Willa said. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where? He’s a twelve-year-old boy with no money and no home.”

“In all the confusion with the fire and the explosion and dealing with the wounded, nobody saw him leave. He’s missing.”

The hospital had an open campus. Anybody could come or go anytime they wanted. Even patients—unless they were on a locked ward—could walk out of the building and off the property, and occasionally did. Staff usually kept everything under control, but the scene would have been chaotic. Everyone would have been concerned with the fire and the casualties.

Dennis had killed a woman. He would be able to read about himself in the newspaper.

“This is my fault,” Anne said.

Willa reached across the table and put a hand on Anne’s arm. “No, it isn’t. You’ve done more for that child than anyone in his life.”