At the side of the building, McIntyre made a sound like air escaping a balloon. Tim and I followed the wall around the corner, dividing our attention between the windows and the small grove of silver maples behind us. Was there movement out there? Transfixed, I assessed it, and wrote it off as the breeze.

Images of Bram’s face at every age I’d known him flashed through my mind. At six years old, his tongue dyed cotton candy blue. At eleven, when the tilt of his teeth went from droll to disfiguring. Bram next to my mother, the two of them bent over the bathroom sink as she tenderly scrubbed mounds of suds into his oily scalp. Bram staring down at me while I trembled on the basement floor.

There would be another memory made today. What would I see when I looked at him this time? The collection of faces he’d worn through the years were different, but the malice that simmered beneath his smile never changed.

Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, and beneath my coat my underarms felt slippery. Tim was so close I could hear his breath, and I used its rhythm to regulate my own. Mac stood next to the back door, which I assumed led to the kitchen, and when we reached her she gave us a meaningful look. These handles were chained from the outside, too, but the lock was different. It looked brand-new. If Bram had been here, he was gone now. That didn’t mean there was no one inside.

Tim reached for his flashlight once more, and together we circled the building, shining the light in every window. When we got back to the ones that flanked the entrance in front, he stopped.

“I think”—he said, then, more urgently—“there.”

Days ago, when I first realized Bram was responsible for abducting Trey, I had decided I’d sooner surrender myself to my cousin than let a kid die. If I gave myself up, I reasoned, he might stop hurting others, and this senseless game could come to an end. The guilt I’d been carrying over the lives that were already lost would never go away, but others might be spared. As sacrifices go, I reasoned while shivering in the snow, it’s an honorable one. There was just one thing standing in my way. Or more accurately, two.

In that moment, unarmed in the cold wind, my only concern was Tim and Mac. It wouldn’t be easy, convincing them to let a psychotic criminal take me away. If they fought me on it, I’d retaliate. I didn’t see any other option.

“Step back,” Tim said, and with an almighty jab he brought the butt end of the flashlight down against the window. Again and again he struck the glass until, with a bright crunch and residual tinkle, the window shattered. He used his elbow to kick the remaining glass from the frame, and he and Mac raised their weapons. We were in.

Inside, the air was nearly as raw as out. The restaurant was done up fifties-style, with red retro diner booths and a black-and-white checkerboard floor, sparkly black tabletops and plastic condiment caddies. There was no time to let our eyes adjust. We followed the beam of Tim’s flashlight to the items that had drawn his attention, empty soda cans and granola bar wrappers littering a table. We stole past the first few booths, and I scanned the darkness for movement, the floor for blood.