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It wasn’t until they were almost home, with dusk settling across the city, that the traffic lights went out and every intersection turned into a four-way stop.

The power was out in her home, as well.

Olivia didn’t hear the blast and assumed this was a run-of-the-mill outage. She lit candles, hoped it would get better soon. There was no need to call Con Ed. They would already be aware of the problem.

And it wasn’t all bad. Times like these, when she and her daughter were both free of distractions, were great for bonding. Tonight, that seemed like a particularly good idea. She made a fire in the fireplace and got some wire coat hangers from the closet.

“Let’s pretend we’re camping,” she said to Erin. “How about we make s’mores?”

Erin liked that. Olivia was glad her daughter would end the day on a high note. Funny how things that otherwise might seem inconvenient, like a power outage, could sometimes be exactly what you needed.

CHAPTER 44

Connor led Olin and Dylan left at the next block. They needed to start moving in the direction they were originally going, and this turn meant they were now heading down a street parallel to the one where they had left Olin’s car.

Here, more people seemed content to stay in their vehicles and wait. There was a mini-market and a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint, both with their windows smashed, but no major retailers to draw the sort of vandalism that was happening a block over.

“So your site—that’s just for fun?” Connor asked Dylan, circling back around to the conversation they’d been having in the car.

She was walking with her hands in her pockets, looking down at the sidewalk. Or maybe the red shoes she had picked out for tonight. Maybe thinking about Tom. “Yeah, you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“I’m going to be a writer someday. It’s just storytelling.”

“Why did you call it TruthSeekers, then?”

She shrugged. “I liked how it sounded. Kind of like that old show—what was it called? X-Files, right? I mean, nobody thinks that’s a documentary or anything, so why would they take my site any more seriously?”

“Some people do.”

“Yeah, right.”

Connor told her about the article that had linked back to her website.

She finally looked up. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

Dylan looked back down, thought about that for a while. “I guess that’s a compliment.” Then, to Olin, she said, “What happened to your parents?”

“Somebody . . . They were kidnapped.”

Connor might have said something else if he had managed to speak first. Dylan was young. She didn’t need to hear about the abduction. Then again, after what she had seen tonight, she could probably handle anything.

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Wow. That sucks.” She turned to Connor. “But what does that have to do with me or Matt? Why did you come looking for me? Unless . . . unless someone came and took your parents, too.”

Connor didn’t answer.

“Holy shit! Do you know what they want? Has there been a ransom demand or something?”

“I wish,” Olin said.

“You mean someone came and kidnapped both your parents.” She looked from Olin to Connor. “And they didn’t call demanding a ransom?”

“No.”

“Huh.” She frowned. “Well, this doesn’t sound random. You two know each other, so your parents must also. At least that’s something for the police to go on.”

Connor didn’t feel like prolonging this conversation, so he didn’t bother to tell her that while, yes, their parents knew each other, he and Olin had just met.

Olin, however, wasn’t ready to let it go just yet. Maybe he even saw this as an opportunity to circle back to his own question. “What did you mean when you said my parents weren’t coming back?” he asked Connor.

“We don’t know that they are.” Then, for emphasis, he added, “We don’t know yours are. We don’t know mine are. We don’t know anything.”

“That’s not what you said, though. You said they weren’t, like you knew something.”

Movement ahead of them drew Connor’s attention away from Olin. “Crap.” The man with the baseball bat and his friends were standing at the end of the street, staring straight at them. They must have circled around the block in the opposite direction. Perhaps drawn by something they saw or an idea of what they might find here. Whatever it was, Connor was sure they hadn’t come searching for the three of them.

But now the vandals were here, looking at them in a way Connor didn’t like.

“What you got for us?” Baseball Bat called. “What you got for us to let you pass?”

Connor glanced around, hoping against hope he would see someone else on the street, someone else Baseball Bat could have been talking to. But everyone else was too far away, moving in the wrong direction, or still in their cars.

If Connor thought Baseball Bat would simply accept their wallets and let them continue on their way, he would have handed his over immediately. But he knew Baseball Bat would take everything of value, including Connor’s cellphone, his father’s cellphone, and Olin’s cellphone. Even though the kidnapper hadn’t called yet, he might. Once the power was back up, who knew? And even if he didn’t, what if Roland had a change of heart, wanted to talk? Or what if Olivia found something out and needed to reach him?

He wasn’t giving up the phones.

The mini-market—cleverly called Minnie’s Mini—was directly to Connor’s left. The windows were smashed and the door stood slightly ajar. He had an idea. “Follow me,” he told Olin and Dylan, then sprinted toward the shop. They did as instructed.

The place was ransacked. Shelving had been toppled, racks emptied. To Connor’s surprise, even most of the frozen food had been taken. “Find a place to hide!”

He threw open the back door, then ducked behind an overturned shelving unit near the wall. An attached sign read “First Aid and Cold Medicine.” Olin crouched down beside him.

“Where’s Dylan?” Connor whispered.

“I don’t know.”

Connor peeked over the shelving and saw Dylan hiding behind a rack of magazines closer to the front. The magazines were one of the few things that hadn’t been stolen.