As we leave, something flickers in the corner of my eye. I turn quickly to catch it, but nothing’s there. The feeling stays even as we run down the steps to the car. The sky’s darkening and the girls on the lawn are gone, but something creeps up the back of my neck. I gaze back at the house, trying to determine which room is Katie’s, and see a wisp of auburn hair in the third window of the second floor. In spite of myself, I calculate the distance from the frame to the ground. I think of Katie’s migraine, her gasps for breath, the panic attack—was that real? Or was she trying to get rid of us?

“I don’t suppose we have time for lunch,” Teddy says when we reach the car.

“Not unless you want Truman to feed it to us.”

He grunts as he starts the engine.

Teddy hates when I drive, says I’m too distracted. I prefer observant, but he has a point. He’s better at following traffic rules; I’m better at choosing the music and watching the coeds on the sidewalk. When I was in training, a guy boasted he could spot everything from your run-of-the-mill tweaker to your wife beater and psychopath with less than a glance out the passenger window. “It’s the way a guy walks,” he said. “Just one look tells you he’s up to no good.” I’d only been there two weeks, but I already knew his type—the way his breath quickened when he talked about patrol, keeping his neighborhood safe. He was itching to put handcuffs on the first guy who looked at him sideways. “Really?” I asked, all curious. “I heard you were supposed to measure the bumps on his skull.” He avoided me from then on. But that’s the problem. Too many cops drive around looking for people to arrest, acting on biases, and false assumptions like a limp means someone’s holding and a hoodie means they’re hiding something. But it’s the clean-cut boys with bruises on their knuckles and drugs in their pockets that worry me. The men who know no one’s looking for them and think they won’t get caught.

Teddy sighs.

“What?” I ask.

“I just keep thinking—Katie’s room felt so different than Jay’s.”

I nod. I felt it, too, all the cutsey decorations, the pillows, blankets, soft lamplight—everything designed to mimic the comforts of home.

“It felt … permanent somehow. Where Jay’s felt—”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “Temporary.” But I can’t imagine Jay, or any of the guys for that matter, trotting out fancy pillows and alpaca wool throws.