If Chad said anything, Claudia didn’t hear it. She put the box cutter into a plastic bag she’d prepped in the duffle, left the room and walked out of the hotel toward the Port Authority.

Claudia moved through Midtown easily, weaving between groups of pedestrians, judging the speed of approaching vehicles as she came upon an intersection, navigating outdoor dining setups and orange construction cones and falafel carts as if she were the human character in some virtual chase game. How fast can you get the girl from the hotel to the bus station through the after-theater rush? She liked that Chad had seen her. She liked that she was moving forward, literally speeding away from him, and his nightmare was just beginning.

LARS

Before he got out of the car, Ridley Drake texted Lars the photo of Trevor Barber. Jeremy said he thought the kid was in his dorm, so Lars took off work and for the next two days he hung out on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Broadway, watching the three revolving entrance doors. Thank God for the bathroom in Starbucks. At first it felt like an impossible task: He had one photo of a brown-haired kid with no terribly distinguishing features. But after just a few minutes he realized that white males were few and far between. It was mostly Asians and women. He smirked when he realized it. Of course his brother and Trevor were the minorities at schools like NYU. He wondered what remarkable thing Trevor had done to get in. Or maybe his parents were alums. Finally, just as Lars was starting to think about getting a gyro from a corner cart for dinner on day two, Trevor emerged.

Lars followed him west, then north, ten blocks, twenty, thirty, and eventually up the walkway to a Holiday Inn on Fifty-Seventh Street. The lobby was crowded with guests but Trevor weaved straight through them to the elevators. Lars had to make a quick decision: Get on with him? He decided yes. They’d never met and the chances of Trevor seeing a resemblance with Jeremy, from a passing glance, were negligible. He got on, along with a white-haired woman who smelled strongly of lipstick and a couple in matching windbreakers, speaking a language he didn’t understand. Russian? French? Lars followed Trevor off at the eighth floor, his phone out, ready to claim he was lost if necessary. He stayed several steps behind, but Trevor didn’t look back once before knocking on a door at the end of the hall. Lars heard a girl’s voice: “What are you doing here?”

It had to be Claudia. But he wasn’t going to get her phone with this kid—and whoever else was in the room—protecting her. Eventually she’d leave. And when she did he’d be in the lobby. He took the elevator back down and found a spot to wait.