Chubs appeared first, booking it down one aisle of RVs, and Liam a second later, a few rows over. When they saw that it was still just us, they both slowed down. An annoyed look crossed Chubs’s face.

I leaned out of the open driver’s side window and shouted, “We have to go—now!”

Liam said something to Chubs that I didn’t hear, but they did as they were told. I stayed crouched between the two front seats as they boys jumped inside.

“What?” Liam was almost out of breath. “What’s wrong?”

I pointed to the nearest trailer. “They have cameras installed,” my voice rasped. “In every one of them.”

Chubs sucked in a sharp breath.

“You’re sure?” Liam’s voice was calm—too calm. I could tell he was forcing it, even as his fingers fumbled to put the keys in the ignition.

The van’s back tires spun against the mud as he threw it into reverse. I went tumbling on to my backside with the force of his acceleration.

“Oh my God,” Chubs was saying, “I can’t believe it. We got Hansel and Greteled. Oh my God—do you think it was her?”

“No,” Liam said. “No. She’s sneaky for a skip tracer, but this—this is something else.”

“They could have been there for a while,” I said, just as we found the highway again. It was empty and open in front of us, a gaping mouth ready to swallow us whole. “They could have been spying on the people that lived there. Maybe that really was East River.…”

Or it was just a trap, for kids looking for the real East River.

Liam propped his elbow against the door panel and his chin against his palm. When he spoke, the hundreds of snaking cracks in the windshield cut up his reflection. He pushed the minivan up into a faster speed, causing the wind to whistle through the bullet hole. “Just keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anyone or anything acting suspect.”

Define suspect. The rows of shuttered houses? A shot-up minivan?

“I knew we should have waited until it was dark,” Chubs said, tapping his fingers against the passenger seat window. “I knew it. If those cameras were on, they probably got the license plate number and everything.”

“I’ll take care of the plates,” Liam promised.

Chubs’s lips parted, but he said nothing, only resting his head against the window.

“Should I be looking for PSFs?” I asked, as we drove over another railroad track.

“Worse.” Chubs sighed. “Skip tracers. Bounty hunters.”

“The PSFs are stretched pretty thin, by all accounts,” Liam explained. “Same with the National Guard and what’s left of the local police. I don’t know that they’d send a unit all the way out here on a tip. And unless they just so happen to have a resident bounty hunter in this neck of the woods, we’re going to be fine.”

Those were famous last words if I had ever heard them.

“The reward for turning in a kid is ten thousand dollars.” Chubs twisted around to look at me. “And the whole country is broke as a joke. We are not going to be fine.”