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“You absolute idiot.”

My hands shake as I grab my coat and tote, then a few necessary items from the garage. I’m already mourning the future of this dress.

I take Gage’s truck. Not my car. And call Maisie as I pull out.

She answers on the second ring. “Frolic.”

“I found someone.” Silence.

The humor disappears from her voice. “Someone who?”

I back out of the garage. “The man I think took Grady. I’ve been looking into Halloween night since Gage told me what happened. I finally told him tonight, and now he’s gone with weapons and the motorcycle.”

Maisie exhales. “Of course he did.”

“I’m tracking him now.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

I blink as I turn onto the road. “I don’t know. Moral support?”

Maisie goes quiet for half a second. “Go get my Jerkface. Call me when you have him, Frolic.”

“Bye, Psycho.” If it works, it works. She hangs up.

The blue dot is twenty-three minutes ahead. Heller lives about forty-five minutes from the house, so I’m not catching Gage before he gets there. But I can keep him from getting too much of a head start.

Halloween turns uglier the farther I drive. Wind flings leaves across the county road while clouds swallow the moon. Gated acreage gives way to weathered fences, dark barns, neglected fields, houses sitting farther from the road.

I call twice. Nothing. The third time, he declines it. “Oh, you asshole.”

I press the accelerator. Aggressively responsible.

Then his dot stops, and my stomach sinks.

A narrow county road. Aging farmhouse. Several acres. Trees on three sides. Detached workshop behind the house.

Twenty minutes. Gage can do a lot in twenty minutes.

“Fuck.”

CHAPTER 34

Gage

Where did he keep my brother?

It’s my first question when I arrive at Martin Heller’s property. The thought hits before I’ve even killed the motorcycle.

My helmet is still on. I can hear my own breathing inside it, too loud and too fast, and for one disorienting second it sounds like a kid breathing through a mask. I remove it and get a lay of the land. House. Garage. Workshop. Woods. Was Grady here? Or somewhere Jubilee couldn’t see on a satellite map?

My hands have gone numb inside my gloves. Not from the cold. I’ve ridden through January with less trouble. My body is quietly letting go of everything it doesn’t need, the way it does before a kill. I’m not here to kill yet. I’m here to find out whether my brother ever stood where I’m standing.

Seventeen years of not knowing compress into a few dark acres beneath an ugly Halloween sky, and suddenly every window could contain the last place Grady ever saw. Every stretch of trees could hide what my mother has spent half her life waiting to bury.

Did he fight? Did he scream? Did he call for me? My stomach lurches so hard, I nearly lose my grip on the bike.

I shut the bike down, and the sudden quiet is suffocating. Seventeen years press against my sternum like a boot. Grady was nine. I was sixteen.