Annabelle pulled her phone out of her pocket, too, and sure enough, there was a group text from Kayla to her and Jeremy.

Are you guys OK?? So sorry we lost you!! Where are you??

But nothing from Connor. And no group reply from Jeremy, either.

“Wait, who are you texting?” Annabelle asked, but Jeremy didn’t answer. He bent down in front of her a little so she could climb on his back, and she got a flash of her dad, years ago, crouching down the same way and carrying her around piggyback or up on his shoulders whenever they were in a crowd and she got tired.

“I think I can walk by myself,” she said, because the pain in her ankle was shrinking now. But her wrist was only getting worse.

When they made it back to the edge of town, Jeremy stopped next to a bench in front of the first bed-and-breakfast and pulled out his phone again.

“Seriously, who are you texting?” Annabelle asked. Jeremy frowned. “Your wrist is swollen already.”

It had puffed up pretty badly, and the tender skin on the side of her thumb was turning blue.

“Is Kayla coming back for us?” she asked, pointing at Jeremy’s phone. “Or . . . um. The rest of them?”

Jeremy shook his head. “My mom is. She’ll meet us right here, and we can pick up our bikes on the way back.”

Annabelle’s throat went dry. “What did you tell your mom?”

“I told her where we are, so she can get us.”

Annabelle let out a long, shaky breath. “Were you texting your mom this whole time?”

“Uh-huh.” Jeremy’s fingertips brushed against his forehead, pushing aside the hair that wasn’t there anymore. Once he remembered, he ran his hand over the top of his head instead.

“Where did you say we were? Back when you first texted?”

“On Ashton, heading toward town. She said to text as soon as we were someplace safe to stop, and she’d come.”

Jeremy looked at Annabelle, brown eyes wide and a little desperate. Her face must have told him he’d done something wrong, but despite all of those A-pluses, he didn’t seem to understand what.

“How are we going to explain why we were on Ashton Street?” she asked.

Even if there really wasn’t any surveillance footage, if their parents knew they’d been on a street they were supposed to stay away from and then word got out that someone had attempted to break into Dennis Martin’s property, it wouldn’t be hard to connect the dots.

What if, thanks to her and Jeremy, the entire group got in trouble? Kayla and Connor and everyone?

“You were hurt!” Jeremy protested. “You needed help, and I didn’t know what to do!”

“So you texted your mom?” Annabelle was nearly shouting. She didn’t mean to shout, but her wrist was still throbbing, and when she checked her phone again, the text from Kayla was the only one there. Nothing from Connor, still.