“It’s a very good thing we got you away from those people when we did, Mr. Chance,” said the man in the front passenger seat.

“There was a child in there!” William exploded.

“Hostage situations can sometimes end very badly.”

William couldn’t take his eyes off the smoke. Had that been the SUV that the woman, Neve, had talked about? Could Quincy and Lily had gotten out safely in time?

“Give yourself a moment, Mr. Chance. You’ve been through a lot. You cannot blame yourself for this. We feared this would happen. They were not going to let you go. Obviously they had explosives in there. There’s strong reason to believe the park employee, who brought that girl to you, was linked to your captors. We believe it was all just an elaborate trap by some fanatical people. The girl and Mr. Martin were just unfortunate casualties.”

“You can save that bullshit.”

“But you are safe now, and you need some time to process all this. We’re going to take you to a place where you can rest and speak with a counselor—”

“Enough.” William held up his hand. The gesture caused the agent beside him to pull back his coat, displaying the gun holstered on his side.

“It’s not unusual for captives—even if they’ve been with their captors for a brief amount of time—to believe their lies. Maybe even sympathize with them. You just need time now to recover. But at least the world knows you’re safe. The family who witnessed your rescue was kind enough to tell the media that they saw you walk out and were rescued by our team. That will calm a lot of people after the explosion.”

“Why,” William’s teeth were clenched. “Why—”

“You were in danger, Mr. Chance. You were being held by clearly unstable people. When you surfaced, we feared they would find you. And we were right. That poor girl was simply dragged into all this.”

All this time, everything he did to try and keep his family safe, to keep himself from hurting innocent people … Look what had happened instead.

“I’ll make this clear right now: You can feed all that crap to the reporters at your press conference. But the one thing you can’t do is keep me from telling what really happened. And I will.”

“We’re going to give you all the time you need to recover. Process what happened. Really analyze what you think happened.”

“No amount of brainwashing will change what I saw, I promise you that.”

“OK, OK,” said the agent sitting on William’s right side. “Listen, kid. We just want to keep you safe and alive. Until we can figure out what’s happening.”

William turned to him. “And that’s why you blew up that motel?”