The Leaving(87)

“Now, that even I don’t know,” she said.

“Why did you call me?” he asked.

“To make sure you knew that it wasn’t all awful. We were like a big family. Except he only ever took a few of us out at a time. He always said you were foster kids if anyone asked.”

“I’m going to find him.” Lucas felt his disgust like a foul taste in his mouth. “I’ll find you.”

She said, “I won’t remember you if you do.”

? ? ?

Back home, in the RV, Lucas sorted all the photos of himself Chambers had given him into piles according to groups or general age range.

Then, when nothing jarring stood out, he set about hanging all the large photos that had been brought from the faked location of their kidnapping on the walls of the RV’s main compartment. Chambers had agreed to lend them out to him.

He started to study every inch of them.

Not this again, Miranda had said when he’d taken her photo.

He understood now.

He had taken these photos, too.

There was a clue here.

That was what the tattoo meant.

He just had to find it.

Wouldn’t sleep until he did.

He went over every inch of each of them.

Then did it again.

And again.

He’d done it probably twenty times by the time Ryan came to check on him.

He started to do it again anyway.

He was missing something.

He had to be.

The hot air balloon turned up nothing.

Puppy, nothing.

Horse, nothing.

Roller coaster, useless.

He always left the carousel for last. It was the most complicated, the most dense.

So much to look at.

The scratches on the teeth.

The burst of sun off the water in the distance.

Reflections in mirrors on the carousel’s cylinder.

He’d already gone over this one maybe twice as often as the others.

Still, nothing.

He went back to the photos Chambers had given him and picked up the small stack he’d made of the photos from the same day.

One of him actually on that carousel horse, long arms holding on to the pole. So someone else had to have taken that.

One of the carousel from a distance.

Then a dozen more shots of the same horse as the one in the blown-up shot.

Why so many pictures of one horse?

He spread them out on the kitchenette table and started to compare.

And saw a blur of sorts in one that wasn’t in the others.

A reflection in the mirror behind the horse.

He picked up his camera and took a close-up shot of that section of the photo. Then zoomed in on it on the camera display screen.

A man’s face took shape.

Lucas said, “Gotcha.”

The skin on his hip pulsed.





AVERY



The funeral was fast, small, and private. Avery thought Max deserved more, bigger—some actual fanfare—after waiting so long for a proper good-bye.

She’d grabbed Woof-Woof when they’d left the house, shoved him in her purse, not even knowing why until they were in the church, the first five rows of pews filled with family and friends she hadn’t seen in ages. Now it was the part of the service where people were coming forward and taking a flower from a basket and placing it on top of the coffin. She couldn’t will herself to get up, had to let people past her in the pew, brushing against her knees.

It would look bad, her not putting a flower on.

Emma did it.

Sam, too.

All the returned kids did their part.

She didn’t want to be ornery or melodramatic.

She just didn’t want to do it.

Flowers? What was the point?

She slid Woof-Woof out of her bag and waited until the line was gone, most of the flowers resting in a scattered pile on top of the casket. Then she got up, walked over, and put Woof-Woof on top.

Feeling her insides crumble, she turned and walked down the long aisle—whispers, whimpers, wails from the people there—and past Lucas and Ryan, two dark suits in the back pew—and out the church doors. Lucas had found a clue last night; and Chambers had told him that with some luck, some digital finesse, and some facial recognition software, they might actually ID their captor. So that was something, at least.

Lucas had followed her out.

“I thought I’d feel better,” she said. “Closure and all. I thought my one greatest wish was to find Max.”

“And now?” He stood beside her on the church steps.

“Now I want what you want,” she said.

“To find him,” Lucas said. “To find me.”

“Those are different things,” she said. “They have to be. Anyway, I found you. You’re right here.” She started down the remaining steps. “Come on. There’s someplace I want to go to honor Max way better than what they’re doing in there.”


They were the only teenagers on the pirate tour boat, and they were overdressed. At first that felt kind of ridiculous but then it seemed no one else noticed or cared—maybe just assumed their younger siblings were there among the (mostly) boys and (handful of) girls, gathered around the pirate who was teaching them some basic pirate vocabulary. A few kids were lined up to get bandanas and scars painted onto their faces.