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had left to remind him of her beautiful voice.
    With the bottomless sorrow that follows regret, Caleb thought of the countless messages, vanished to vapor like the call of a bird who has flown to another sky. He would gladly swap his soul for a scattering of messages to meander through again; something beyond the endless loop of her final voicemail.
    He had seen her the night of those final words, but he had come home too late. She was already asleep. His mind burned at the memories of all the times he’d ignored her, putting her second to work. How he wished he could turn back time and go home to spend just a few more hours with her.
    Two days later, she would be dead.
    His heavy eyelids still draped the pupils that would have been wet if he’d had any tears left to cry. Sadness had eroded to numbness over time. Nowadays, he didn’t feel much of anything.
    He turned his phone off, put it back in his pocket, and was about to reach for the pills again when he heard someone coming — Agent Luis Alvarez.
    “Cops in Westchester found the car,” Alvarez said.
    Caleb shot to attention, and instantly saw that Alvarez had the look of a man about to bear bad news.
    “What?” Caleb asked.
    “Cop on the scene broke protocol,” he said. “He approached the car on his own. And then shit hit the fan.”
    Caleb’s eyes narrowed to two even slits, his voice a harsh whisper, “What the fuck?!”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 7 — John

    6:42 p.m.
    A half hour earlier…

    John rose from his sleep to the smell of soap and the bottled sound of television. On the other bed, Abigail sat, knees folded to her chest, hair wet, wearing one of the dead woman’s black long sleeve shirts.
    Silent, Abigail pointed to the television.
    His image was plastered on the screen over the word “SUSPECT.” Beside it, a photograph of the girl with the word “MISSING” in bold letters, sheet white.
    “They think you took me,” she said.
    He could only stare.
    The inevitable was unfolding. His eyes followed the reporter, running his hand through his hair as the reporter broadcast the make and model of their vehicle, with the license plate number as the cherry on the top. “… requesting that anyone with information call 1-800-93…”
    The car!
    John leaped from bed and ran to the drawn curtains before stopping himself.
    “Is it still light out?” he asked the girl.
    “Yeah,” she said, “I just looked outside to see if any cops were here.”
    He glanced at the clock on the TV’s cable box — 6:42 p.m. He wasn’t certain how he knew, but he figured he probably had another 20 minutes before nightfall.
    “Can you drive?” he asked the girl.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 8 — Abigail

    Abigail tried to cloak her fear, but her hammering heart and quivering limbs gave lie to the guise as she stepped from the safety of the motel room and into the smeared tangerine sunset.
    Clad in an indigo hooded jacket, draping down nearly to her knees, she hoped to adopt the look of a wee woman on her way to the car.
    Nothing to see here, folks, no siree.
    A simple request from John, to move the car, but he may as well have asked her to initiate a space shuttle launch. Abigail had never driven before, and the last time she was a willing passenger was before her parents died, back when she was seven. Her memories of driving with her father hazy enough to make her wonder if they were of her own invention.
    Yet, when John requested she move the car, she had agreed without a flinch. What else could she say? She had to be brave for the angel who saved her from the monster’s closet. Before she left the motel room, John explained the basics of driving a car, which she committed to memory and wrote down on a piece of motel stationery — just in case.
    The parking lot was fuller than it had been when they arrived in the morning. That was probably a good thing, she figured, as she was far less likely to be recognized among others. But it also increased the odds that she’d run