I waited and watched, unable to believe my own eyes and fearing the worst for Agent Faraday. Had he been at the back of the house when it exploded? If he had, he was probably dead. Without taking my eyes off the scene, I felt around for the photo of Faraday and Wallace. That’d let me know if both men were still alive, but it wasn’t next to me or under me. It must’ve gotten tossed on the floor when I dove for cover.
And then, as if a prayer had been answered, Faraday appeared with singed shirt, carrying Wallace with two other agents. I saw a lot of red on Wallace’s chest, and I grabbed the photo, which had, in fact, fallen to the floor. Pulling it up, I realized that his numbers were still flickering back and forth—but 2051 was now getting more play. He was still alive, and I thought he’d make it if they could only get him to the hospital in time.
As if on cue, an ambulance pulled up and Faraday shouted to the two men helping him—who were also a little singed—to move toward it. Two paramedics jumped out, and within seconds they had Wallace on a gurney and were putting him into the ambulance bay.
More sirens sounded in the distance and I knew that the fire trucks were on their way.
The moment the ambulance took off, Faraday limped his way over to me and pulled open the door. “What’s the picture say?” he demanded, his face, clothing, and hair smudged with soot.
“I think you got to him in time. His numbers are still flickering, but the twenty fifty-one date is a little stronger now.”
Faraday jumped in the car, and without another word he put it into gear and headed off in the direction of the ambulance.
I peered behind me. “Should we really be leaving?”
“They can handle that mess for now,” Faraday said, pressing his foot to the accelerator.
When we reached the hospital, Faraday’s phone was going off repeatedly. He ignored it. After parking in an illegal zone, he flashed his badge to a hospital worker, who looked like she might protest, and pulled me over to the ambulance, which was parked with the back doors flung open. Faraday went right over to the gurney where Wallace was being unloaded, and ran alongside it when he was wheeled inside. “Kevin!” he yelled. “Buddy, you gotta fight! You hear me? You gotta fight and stay with us!”
I hurried along behind the gurney but was soon crowded out by emergency room staff. Faraday was finally tugged away by a woman in scrubs who grabbed him by the elbow and tried to get a look at a bad cut on his arm. “It’s fine,” he said moodily, trying to shake her off.
She lifted up his elbow. “You need to let them work on your friend without you in the way. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you also need stitches.” She tugged him back down the hall toward me. “Don’t make me sedate you!” she snapped when he resisted.
I had to work to suppress a smile. Faraday caught my eye and motioned to me with his chin. I followed him and the nurse to a curtained area. The minute he was seated on the gurney he said, “He’ll need blood. I’m O negative; I can donate to anybody. Hook me up and let me help him.”
The nurse scowled. “Oh, you FBI boys sure know how to give orders, don’t you?”
Faraday was looking around wildly. I knew he was worried about Wallace. I lifted the photo, which I’d brought with me, and peered at it. “What’s it say?” I heard him ask me.
Wallace’s numbers were flashing less and less frequently and settling for longer and longer periods on 8-7-2051. “He’s doing better,” I said. Lifting my gaze, I saw the nurse eye me curiously—but she continued scrubbing Faraday’s arm and prepping it for the stitches.
I waited with him while he was stitched up, and when the nurse finally left him to answer a page, I moved over to his side. I’d been keeping an eye on Wallace’s photo, and I hadn’t seen it change in almost two minutes. “Anything?” he asked me.
I turned the photo so he could see it. “I think you can put this back on your desk, sir. He’s gonna make it.”
Faraday let out a huge sigh and grabbed the photo to hug it to his chest while turning his face away from me. “He’s my best friend,” he said after a few minutes, lifting his gaze back to look at me. “And you saved his life, Maddie.”
“Me? You’re the one who found him.”
“I never would’ve gone looking if you hadn’t seen his photo. He’s got a gunshot wound to the chest. That son of a bitch shot him.”
I’d guessed as much from all the blood. “Do you think Wes Miller was inside the house when it blew up?”
Faraday ran a hand through his hair. It came away covered in singed black hairs. He looked at his palm with some measure of surprise before answering me. “I have no idea. They’ll need to put out that fire first and then go looking for a body, but I doubt he was inside. His truck wasn’t in the drive or on the street, so he’s probably running for the Canadian border by now. If I was him, that’s where I’d be headed.”
“Can you catch him?”
Faraday lifted his phone and tapped at the screen, wincing as his injured arm moved. “Oh, we’ll catch him,” he said. “Or die trying.”
I LEFT FARADAY TO HEAD to the waiting room. He came out and sat with me while Wallace was in surgery. Faraday spent much of that time on the phone getting yelled at by his boss, who was angry at him for leaving the scene. Around four thirty my own phone rang. The caller ID said it was from Stubby’s house. “Dude!” I sang happily the moment I picked up. “I’ve missed you!”
“Maddie?” I heard a woman say.
It took me a minute to recognize her voice. “Mrs. Schroder?”
“Yes, sweetie, it’s me. I’m calling to see if you’ve heard from Arnold.”
“Uh…no. Isn’t he home?”
I could almost feel the anxiety from Mrs. Schroder radiate through the phone. “No. No, he’s not here, and I don’t know where he’s gone. I came home from the grocery store with Sam and Grace, and Arnold wasn’t in his room and he didn’t leave me a note.”
“Maybe he’s out boarding,” I said, and then I remembered that Stubby had thrown away his skateboard. “Oh, wait,” I added.
“He threw his skateboard away,” Mrs. Schroder said, and then she sniffled. “He’s been so depressed lately, Maddie. I’m very worried about him.”
“Maybe he went for a walk or something.”
“That’s why I’m worried. With that killer still on the loose…”
I wanted to reassure Mrs. Schroder that the FBI knew who the killer was and that he was probably on his way to Canada, but I didn’t know that for sure. The truth was I had no idea where Wes Miller was. He could be roaming the streets looking for unsuspecting teens to abduct, torture, and kill.
“Maybe you should go look for him,” I said.
“Will you come with me?”
I glanced over at Faraday. I didn’t think he’d mind if I left to go search for Stubs, but I’d need Mrs. Schroder to come pick me up, and I didn’t want to worry her about why I was there. “Sure. I’m at the hospital right now, uh…visiting a sick neighbor, so could you come pick me up?”
Faraday was still talking on his phone, so I wrote him a note that said I’d gotten a ride home, and he nodded and waved good-bye.
While I was waiting for Mrs. Schroder, Donny called me. “Hey, kiddo,” he said with a weary sigh. “Man, have I had a day!”
I smirked. I could bet him I’d had more of one but decided to tell him about it later. “What’s up?” I asked.
“My car broke down. I had to get it towed and the guy can’t work on it till Monday.”
“Are you staying in the city?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want you in that house alone. You go over to Mrs. Duncan’s house and spend the night, okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, Donny,” I told him because I didn’t want to argue and possibly make him mad enough to rent a car and drive up to babysit me when he really needed to deal with his car.
“Good. I’ll call you in the morning.”
Stubby’s mom pulled up then, and I waved to her as I clicked off with Donny
.
Mrs. Schroder had Stubby’s two siblings with her, and they were making a racket in the back. Her face was creased with worry. “We’ll find him,” I promised.
We started our search in Poplar Hollow, going street by street from the Schroder residence out toward my house and beyond. We tried the park, and the school, and then it started to get dark.
I didn’t get seriously worried until about seven o’clock, when we still saw no sign of Stubby. We got Grace and Sam something to eat and continued our search, but he was nowhere.
At last we headed back to the Schroders’ and I helped put the kids to bed, then I waited with Stubby’s mom in the kitchen, willing him to come home, but the hours ticked by and there was still no sign of Stubs.
When I couldn’t take it anymore I got up from the kitchen table and said, “Mrs. Schroder, does Stubby still have that scooter in the garage?”
She nodded and wiped her eyes. She’d been crying steadily now for over an hour. “I checked. He didn’t take it.”
“Can I borrow it?”
She gave me a puzzled look and I explained. “There’s one place we haven’t looked where I think he might be. It’s over in Jupiter.”
“Take the scooter, Maddie,” Mrs. Schroder said. “But please be careful. There’s a helmet on a hook in the garage. You have to wear that. And please call me if you find him?”
“I will,” I promised, and she fished around in a drawer for the keys to the scooter. Taking them from her, I hurried out.
It took me only about ten minutes to make it over to Jupiter, and then I had to crisscross through a neighborhood to the skate park, which was always well lit until eleven at night. I’d had a thought that, even if Stubs hadn’t gone there to skateboard, maybe he’d gone to watch the other boarders.
As I pulled up into the lot, I saw one lone kid zipping up and down the ramps. I knew immediately who it was.
I reached into my pocket and called Mrs. Schroder. “I found him,” I said.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, Maddie! Where is he?”
“He’s at the skate park in Jupiter. I’ll bring him home in a little while.”
After hanging up with Stubby’s mom, I sat on the scooter for a long time and watched my best friend whiz up and down on what appeared to be a brand-new board, doing twists, turns, and other tricks.
Something had changed in Stubby—he was far less clumsy and stiff on the board. It was as if he’d lost the fear of screwing up and was committing himself to every stunt, as if he didn’t care what happened. That courage proved to be exactly what he needed to land the trick.
When I was so cold I was starting to shiver, I walked over to the ramp. Stubby flew up the opposite side, flipped his board around with his feet, landed perfectly, and whizzed back down out of sight only to reappear at the top of the ramp closest to me and land his board on the rim. I looked at him in amazement as he grinned down at me—his eyes still black and blue and his nose swollen, but grinning all the same. “Mads!” he exclaimed, clearly happy to see me—and I knew that my friend was back.
“Nice board,” I called, pointing to his new ride.
He stepped off of it and onto the rim of the ramp, then did a little kick with his foot, and the board flipped up to land neatly in his left hand. “I got it today!” he gushed, already moving toward the stairs.
I waited for him at the bottom. “Your mom’s been worried sick about you,” I said when he landed next to me in the grass.
His face fell and he eyed the skyline. “Aw, man! How late is it?”
“It’s after ten.”
Stubby’s jaw dropped. “It is not!”
I showed him the display on my phone and he palmed himself on the forehead. “I lost track of time,” he said. “Is she really mad?”
I handed him my phone. “Better ask her yourself.”
Stubs talked to his mom for a bit, and mostly he just said he was sorry over and over, and then he asked her if it was okay if he and I went to McDonald’s ’cause he was starving. She told him to be home by midnight, and once he hung up he grinned at me again. “Crisis averted.”
Stubs drove us to McDonald’s, and we sat in a booth and joked and laughed like old times. I told him about what’d happened earlier at Wes Miller’s place, and Stubby was so amazed by it all that he made me tell him a second time. It was after eleven by the time we left the restaurant to get home before Stubby’s curfew.
Stubs dropped me at my driveway, and I handed him his skateboard and he strapped it to the scooter with a bungee cord he kept in his seat. Then he saluted and was off again.
I watched him go with a wistful sigh. It felt so good to have my friend back. I turned toward my house and thought about what Donny had said. Looking at Mrs. Duncan’s darkened windows, however, convinced me not to wake the old woman. Plus, the patrol car was parked between my house and our neighbor’s on the other side. I could faintly make out the dark outline of the police officer inside, and I waved to him and headed up the drive.
As I rounded the corner of the house I sniffed the air. Something smelled familiar—then I realized: it was cigarette smoke wafting toward me. When I got to the back door, I saw that the kitchen light above the stove was on and the back door was open. Only the storm door was shut.
I opened the back door tentatively, the smell of cigarette smoke growing stronger. My first thought was that Ma had somehow escaped rehab and had come home. My heart lifted. I missed her so much. “Ma?” I called excitedly, stepping into the kitchen and shutting the back door before locking it. I heard the noise of a throat clearing from the vicinity of the living room.
“Ma?” I called again, hurrying to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.
The orange glow of a cigarette butt caught my attention immediately. A figure was sitting in Dad’s chair, lifting the cigarette to their lips and making it glow bright.
“Ma?” I asked one more time, as a whisper of alarm snaked up my spine.
I started to back up, but then the light next to the chair was flicked on. “Hey, Maddie,” Rick Kane said.
My breath caught in my throat as my mind filled with questions. What was Rick Kane doing in my house? How had he gotten in? Had he heard about his cousin? Did he know that Wes had nearly murdered an FBI agent? Did he know that Wes had also murdered all those kids? And hadn’t he called off work because he’d been having chest pains? How had he survived?
While all my questions tumbled over each other in my mind, Rick stood up, and a smile spread slowly across his face. But it wasn’t a nice smile. It wasn’t the smile he’d offered me each time we’d met. This was a sick smile—similar to the one his cousin had worn. Sinister and dark, but perhaps even more evil. This was the smile of a serial killer.
“No,” I stammered, backing up as my mind started to put it all together with a thousand synapses firing all at once, like the finale of a fireworks display. It’d been Rick. All along, it’d been Rick. And now, here he was. In my house. Stepping forward to kill me, too.
I took another step back and began to turn, intending to run, but Rick came at me so fast I barely had time to react. In an instant, he had me twisted around with my right arm pulled up behind me and his free hand pressing hard across my throat, cutting off most of the oxygen.
I struggled, but he pulled up harder on my arm, and I would’ve screamed in pain if I’d had any air. “Ah, ah, ah, Maddie,” he said softly…tauntingly. “If you struggle, I’ll hurt you so much worse than if you don’t.”
I shut my eyes; tears were leaking out of them and streaming down my cheeks. Rick eased up a bit on the pressure of my arm and at my throat, and I sucked in a lungful of air. I was about to scream when I felt a sharp prick at my neck. “Scream, and I’ll cut your throat,” he said.
I held back a sob and more tears flowed down my cheeks. “Why?” I gasped. He’d been so nice. He told me I’d helped him by giving him a year to prepare and take care of his family in the event of his death.
“Why?” he repeated. “Well, Maddie, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? But I think you deserve an answer, so I’m going to tell you.” Rick pivoted me toward the mantel, and my gaze landed on the photo of my dad.
“See, when I first came to see you,” Rick began, “and I heard what you had to say—that I’d die on December sixth, twenty fourteen—well, I believed you meant it. Like I told you before, I’ve got a few health issues, and I figured it was perfectly logical that I’d bite the dust at fifty-three. My dad died at fifty-five, and I’ve got an uncle who kicked the bucket at forty-nine, so it runs in my family.
“And like I also told you, I decided to get all my affairs in order and make sure my family was well provided for, and I did all that, Maddie. I did it all. But then those dark cravings that I’d fought against my whole life started to crop up again, and I had an amazing thought. I was going to die soon anyway, right? Why not act on some of those thoughts? I’ve wanted to my whole life, you know. And I wondered what it’d be like to stop trying to be someone else and instead let me be me. So I did. And I can tell you it’s been awesome.”
I was so scared that I felt light-headed.
“I considered choosing you, you know, as my first. I mean, you gave me such a gift, I wondered if maybe you had more to give?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and shuddered, and Rick squeezed me tighter. “But we both know I didn’t pick you first, Maddie. I wanted to, but I thought it might be too easy to trace your death back to me. So I watched your house and waited, and one day I followed a woman home. And wouldn’t you know it? In her house was the perfect little lamb.