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I haven’t told him. Not because I don’t trust him. Because I do. That’s the problem. Hope nearly destroyed me once. I’m not handing it to Gage until I know it won’t do the same to him. Instead, I’ve spent the last four nights digitally trespassing through seventeen-year-old scraps of other people’s lives.

Old neighborhood message boards. Archived photo albums. Dead social media accounts nobody remembers the passwords to. Tax records. Vehicle registrations. Store databases acquired through sources that would give Gage an aneurysm if I explained them.

Grady disappeared sometime after eight-thirty on Halloween night. Nine years old, wearing the homemade Batman costume he and Maisie spent a month perfecting. Asthmatic. Inhaler left in Gage’s jacket.

So I stopped searching for a missing child and started searching for what someone might suddenly need after taking one.

At 11:07 p.m., somebody bought Primatene Mist from a twenty-four-hour pharmacy twenty-three minutes from where Grady vanished. The rewards account belonged to a man with no children at his address.

At 11:49, the same rewards account shows up at a big-box store eleven miles farther west. Boys’ sweatpants. Gray sweatshirt. Socks. Cheap sneakers. Candy. Apple juice. Nothing criminal about any of it. Nothing remotely conclusive. Except the sizes are right for a nine-year-old boy.

Somebody’s mom uploaded eighty-seven Halloween pictures to Flickr in 2009 and apparently forgot the account existed. Most are blurry children, inflatable pumpkins, porch lights, and exhausted adults. But one, taken three blocks from where Grady disappeared, catches the rear half of a dark SUV. Forty-three minutes later, someone else photographed what looks like the same make and model several miles west.

The man attached to the pharmacy account owned one.

My pulse kicks every time I scan the files. It’s nothing. But it could be everything. And until I know which, Gage doesn’t hear one goddamn word. I save everything into an encrypted folder and stare at the grainy photograph again.

Outside, tires crunch over gravel. Shit. I nearly launch my laptop across the room. The front door opens as Tartlet and Cannoli explode from the kitchen like furry security personnel, and I slap the screen shut so hard that Marzipan springs off the sofa beside me.

“Princess?”

“In here!”

Gage appears with three bulging reusable bags and a box of tiny potted plants balanced against his hip, looking offensively good for a man who willingly woke before sunrise.

I rush over to take the plants before he loses one. “You bought more.”

“They needed homes.” He shrugs, shifting the bags to his other hand.

I peer down at the little collection of herbs and succulents. “You already have plants.”

“These are different plants.”

“That sounds exactly like a cat hoarder.”

Tartlet winds around his boots while Cannoli sniffs one of the dangling bags. Gage steps carefully over both of them. “I have six cats.”

“Five,” I point out. “I stole one.”

“Marzipan defected. Different legal classification.”

Fair.

I carry the box to the kitchen island while he follows with the bags. “Anything exciting at the market?”

He pulls out a bundle of carrots, then a loaf of bread. “Mrs. Kowalski proposed marriage again.”

“Understandable.”

“Her husband seconded the motion.”

I pause with one hand still on the box. “Even more understandable.”

“He offered acreage.”

“Oh, shit.” I set the herbs down. “You should’ve heard him out.”

“I told him I’m spoken for.”