The boy’s face showed nothing, and he kept his mouth shut. “Is that for luck, too?”

“No.” Johnny paused, looked away. “That’s different.”

“Johnny-”

“Did you see in the news last week? When they found that girl that was abducted in Colorado? You know the one?”

“I know the one.”

“She’d been gone for a year and they found her three blocks from her own house. She was less than a mile away the whole time. A mile from her family, locked up in a dirt hole dug into the wall of the cellar. Walled up with a bucket and mattress.”

“Johnny-”

“They showed pictures on the news. A bucket. A candle. A filthy mattress. The ceiling was only four feet high. But they found her.”

“That’s just one case, Johnny.”

“They’re all like that.” Johnny turned back, his deep eyes gone darker still. “It’s a neighbor or a friend, someone the kid knows or a house she walked past every day. And when they find them, they’re always close. Even if they’re dead, they’re close.”

“That’s not always true.”

“But sometimes. Sometimes it is.”

Hunt stood as well, and his voice came softly. “Sometimes.”

“Just because you quit doesn’t mean that I have to.”

Looking at the boy and at his desperate conviction, Hunt felt a great sadness. He was the department’s lead detective on major cases, and because of that, he’d taken point on Alyssa’s disappearance. Hunt had worked harder than any other cop to bring that poor child home. He’d spent months, lost touch with his own family until his wife, in despair and quiet rage, had finally left him. And for what? Alyssa was gone, so gone they’d be lucky to find her remains. It didn’t matter what happened in Colorado. Hunt knew the statistics: Most were dead by the end of the first day. But that made it no easier. He still wanted to bring her home. One way or another. “The file is still open, Johnny. No one has quit.”

Johnny picked up his bike. He rolled up the map and shoved it into his back pocket. “I have to go.”

Detective Hunt’s hand settled on the handlebar. He felt specks of rust and heat from the sun. “I’ve cut you a lot of slack. I can’t do it anymore. This needs to stop.”

Johnny pulled on the bike but couldn’t budge it. His voice was as loud as Hunt had ever heard it. “I can take care of myself.”

“But that’s just it, Johnny. It’s not your job to take care of yourself. It’s your mother’s job, and frankly, I’m not sure she can tend to herself, let alone a thirteen-year-old boy.”

“You may think that’s true, but you don’t know anything.”

For a long second the detective held his eyes. He saw how they went from fierce to frightened, and understood how much the kid needed his hope. But the world was not a kind place to children, and Hunt had reached the limit with Johnny Merrimon. “If you lifted your shirt right now, how many bruises would I see?”

“I can take care of myself.”

The words sounded automatic and weak, so Hunt lowered his voice. “I can’t do anything if you won’t talk to me.”

Johnny straightened, then let go of his bike. “I’ll walk,” he said, and turned away.

“Johnny.”

The kid kept walking.

“Johnny!”

When he stopped, Hunt walked the bike over to him. The spokes clicked as the wheels turned. Johnny took the handlebars when Hunt offered the bike back to him. “You still have my card?” Johnny nodded, and Hunt blew out a long breath. He could never fully explain his affinity for the boy, not even to himself. Maybe he saw something in the kid. Maybe he felt his pain more than he should. “Keep it with you, okay. Call me anytime.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to hear about you doing this again.”

Johnny said nothing.

“You’ll go straight to school?”

Silence.

Hunt looked at the clean, blue sky, then at the boy. His hair was black and wet, his jaw clenched. “Be careful, Johnny.”

People were not right. The cop had that part straight. Johnny had peered over more fences and into more windows than he could count. He’d knocked on doors at all hours, and he’d seen things that weren’t right. Things that people did when they thought they were alone and no one was watching. He’d seen kids sniff drugs and old people eat food that fell on the floor. He once saw a preacher in his underwear, hot-faced and screaming at his wife as she cried. That was messed up. But Johnny was no idiot. He knew that crazy people could look like anybody else. So he kept his head down. He kept his shoes laced tight and a knife in his pocket.

He was careful.

He was smart.

Johnny did not look back until he’d gone two full blocks. When he did turn his head, he saw that Detective Hunt still stood in the road, a distant speck of color next to a dark car and green grass. The cop was still for an instant, then one arm rose in a slow wave, and Johnny rode faster, careful to not look back again.

The cop scared him, and Johnny wondered how he knew the things he knew.

Five.

The number popped into his head.

Five bruises.

He pedaled harder, pumped his legs until the shirt on his back clung like a second skin. He went north to the far edge of town, to the place where the river slid beneath the bridge and widened out until the current went flat. He rode his bike down the bank and dropped it. Blood pounded in his ears and he tasted salt. His eyes burned from it, so he wiped at them with a grubby sleeve. He used to fish here with his father. He knew where to find the bass and the giant cats that hugged the mud five feet down, but none of that mattered. He never fished anymore, but he still came here.

This was still his place.

He sat in the dust to untie his shoes. His fingers shook and he did not know why. The shoes came off, then he touched the feather to his cheek and wrapped it in his shirt. The sun put fierce heat on his skin, and he looked at the bruises, the largest of which was the size and shape of a large man’s knee. It wrapped around the ribs on his left side and he remembered how Ken held him down with that knee, shifted his weight whenever Johnny tried to squirm out.

Johnny rolled his shoulders, tried to forget about it, the knee on his chest, the finger in his face.

You’ll fucking do what I fucking say…

Open hand slaps to Johnny’s face, first one side, then the other, his mother passed out in the back room.

You little shit…

Another slap, harder.

Where’s your daddy now?

The bruise had yellowed out on the edges, gone green in the middle; and it hurt when he pushed it with a finger. The skin went white for a second-another perfect oval-then the color rushed in. Johnny scrubbed more salt from his eyes, and when he moved for the river, he stumbled once. He stepped in and river bottom pushed between his toes; then he dove, and warm water closed above him. It wrapped him up, shut out the world and bore him tirelessly down.

Johnny spent two hours at the river, too worried about Detective Hunt to risk more of his search, too ambivalent about school to make going worth his time. He swam across the river and back, made shallow dives from flat rocks baked hot by the sun. Driftwood lay in silver stacks and wind licked off the water. By late morning he was physically worn, stretched out on a flat rock forty feet downriver from the bridge, invisible behind a willow that dragged long strands in the black water. Cars made the bridge hum. A small stone clattered on the rock beside his head. He sat up and another pebble struck him on the shoulder. He looked around and saw no one. A third rock glanced off his leg. It was large enough to sting. “Throw another and you’re dead.”

Silence.

“I know it’s you, Jack.”

Johnny heard a laugh, and Jack stepped from the wood’s edge. He wore cutoff jeans and filthy sneakers. His shirt was yellow white, with a picture of Elvis in black silhouette. He had a backpack on his back and more stones in his hand. One side of his mouth turned a sharp edge, and his hair was slicked back. Johnny had forgotten that it was Friday.