“So what are you going to give us?” Daryl asked. “To keep quiet?”

Teri raised her own eyebrow, trying not to show that she was a bit impressed. A heated negotiation followed. It was finally agreed that the Stone children wouldn’t tell their parents that Kat never showed. They’d pretend she came but had to leave before their parents returned home. Daryl even offered to Photoshop her into pictures for evidence. Teri was surprised by this but Chris, with evident pride, told Teri that her brother was great with Photoshop. And in return, they would get to stay up an hour past their bedtimes and Teri would take them all out for ice cream immediately.

The kids bundled up, and as they walked outside and Teri locked up the house, she reflected that it might not be the worst way to spend her night—eating ice cream and watching Pixar movies. It was going to be no sweat.

She’d taken only a few steps toward the car when she heard the noise.

It was coming from the trunk of the yellow rental car.

A banging, scratching sound.

The kids heard it too, and they all clustered around the car, looking to Teri for answers. “What is it?” Chris asked, her eyes wide.

Teri stared at the trunk. “Maybe an animal got trapped in there?”

The kids looked at her, and she knew she had to do something. She also knew that she couldn’t just take them for ice cream now without worrying that an animal was slowly suffocating. She squared her shoulders and reached for the trunk latch, bracing herself for the worst—an angry squirrel or bat flying out at her.

But what came out was not at all what she’d been expecting.

A man clambered out of the trunk. He whirled around. His eyes were wild. He wore a crumpled suit and looked like he was in his thirties. He had a bruise on his cheek and a gash on his forehead, and he was wielding a tire iron like a weapon.

His gaze fell on Teri and the kids, and his eyes narrowed. “Where the hell am I?”

CHAPTER 7

Do you see anything?” Stevie asked as I stood on my tiptoes, feeling around on top of the light fixtures and the moldings, trying to find a spare key. We’d spent a few minutes desperately trying the knob, like if we turned it hard enough, somehow it might just open. There was a blue-and-white-striped mat in front of the door, but the only things under it were a squashed spider and a desiccated leaf. Which really wasn’t that surprising—we didn’t even keep a spare key under our mat, and we lived in one of the safest towns in America. This was New York City; of course people weren’t going to leave their keys sitting out.