She found a rubber band in her backpack and tied her long brunette hair into a ponytail. Sweat trickled down her neck and she felt a fierce aching of thirst. She was breathless from the stifling heat in the closed rooms and thought about taking off her thick denim shirt—worried about snakes and spiders, she always wore long sleeves when she was on a dig around brush or tall grass. But despite the heat now she decided to leave the shirt on. She didn’t know when her captor would return; she wore only a lacy pink bra underneath the shirt and Garrett Hanlon sure didn’t need any encouragement in that department.

With a last glance at the nest Mary Beth stepped away from the window. Then walked around the three–room shack once more, searching futilely for a breach in the place. It was a solid building, very old. Thick walls—a combination of hand–hewn logs and heavy boards nailed together. Outside the front window was a large field of tall grass that ended in a line of trees a hundred yards away. The cabin itself was in another stand of thick trees. Looking out the back window—the hornets’ nest window—she could just see through the trunks to the glistening surface of the pond they’d skirted yesterday to get here.

The rooms themselves were small but surprisingly clean. In the living room was a long brown-and-gold couch, several old chairs around a cheap dining room table, a second table on which were a dozen quart juice jars covered with mesh and filled with insects he’d collected. A second room contained a mattress and a dresser. The third room was empty, except for several half-full cans of brown paint sitting in the corner; it seemed that Garrett had painted the exterior of the cabin recently. The color was dark and depressing and she couldn’t understand why he’d picked it—until she realized it was the same shade as the bark of the trees that surrounded the cabin. Camouflage. And it occurred to her again what she’d thought yesterday—that the boy was much cagier, and more dangerous, than she’d thought.

In the living room were stacks of food—junk food and rows of canned fruits and vegetables—Farmer John brand. From the label a stolid farmer smiled at her, the image as outdated as the 1950s Betty Crocker. She searched the cabin desperately for water or soda—anything to drink—but couldn’t find a thing. The canned fruits and vegetables would be packed in juice but there was no opener or any sort of tool or utensil to open them. She had her backpack with her but had left her archaeological tools at Blackwater Landing. She tried banging a can on the side of the table to split it open but the metal didn’t give.