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and take a look.”
    “Oh, certainly,” she said again. “If you want to go through the house, the kitchen door’s that way.”
    They’d pass the cellar door if they went that way. Had Andrew Snow closed it? Rew must have been thinking the same thing, because he started trying to kick again. But the first policeman said, “That’s all right — we’ll go around the house. Thanks for your time, Miz Morgan. And just in case, make sure you keep your doors locked for the next few days. I tell you there’s nothing to worry about, but if you see anything to make you the least bit concerned, you give us a call at this number.”
    I thought for a minute how strange it was that the first time anyone ever told us to worry about locking our doors was when Andrew Snow had already gotten in and locked us in with him.
    We heard footsteps again overhead, and the front door close. Outside, the policemen’s voices grew clearer, near the vent.
    “Well,” the second one said, “three more houses, and then it’s a clean sweep. Every one of them up the highway. What a mess.”
    “Be glad you don’t work at the prison,” the other one said as they moved off.
    I felt sick. Between the taste of Andrew Snow’s sweaty hand against my mouth, the stink of the old couch, and the mothbally basement, I thought I might retch. But it must have been Andrew Snow’s lucky day, because I didn’t. Instead, I felt myself going greener and greener as the minutes ticked by. Rew kept squirming every once in a while, but I was too nauseous even to try moving. Finally, we heard the policemen again. They’d made their way back to their car. We listened as the doors creaked open and slammed shut, the engine revved to life, and they drove off, down our muddy front lane.
    The police car had been out of earshot for five full minutes before Andrew Snow let us go. All that time, sick and smothered by his hand, I kept thinking,
Where is Gran?
But she didn’t come looking. She didn’t even call out to us.

A ndrew Snow marched us upstairs and went straight to rebolt the front door. Then he put his chair against it again. Rew and I stood blinking in the light of the kitchen. Neither of us said a word. My head still felt funny, and my stomach worse. I sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and pressed my cold hands against my forehead, trying to right myself.
    Rew leaned over me, tugging a little at my arm.
    “You okay? Did he choke you too much?”
    I tried to shake my head, but it made my stomach lurch. So I said, “No, it’s just the stink of that old basement. I hate that couch.” I looked at him from the corners of my eyes and tried to smile, but I could see his relief quickly turning to fury again. He looked up, past me, into the living room.
    “She cares more about him than she does us,” he said.
    With an effort, I lifted my head and followed his gaze. Gran was sitting there, still, on the couch. But she hadn’t spoken to Andrew Snow. She looked frozen, staring out the window. As for Andrew Snow, he seemed to find his hands extremely interesting, because he didn’t raise his head once.
    My stomach was beginning to settle, and I took a deep breath. “Maybe she was afraid they’d shoot him or something,” I said quietly.
    But I could see Rew working himself up. His face had gone blotchy. Ever since he was little, Rew’s face would go red and white and his freckles would stand out when he got mad. He’d been white-faced when we’d come from downstairs. Now the red was coming out.
    “She’s worried, Rew,” I told him, getting more worried myself by the minute. “That’s all. That’s why she sent them away. She won’t let him do anything to us.”
    But Rew was so mad, tears started in his eyes. And Rew was tough. Once, in third grade, he’d been bullied so badly in school, I found him curled up in the back of the bus, nursing a big scrape he’d gotten down one arm when some bigger kid pushed him off the jungle gym. And he hadn’t