“Is that what I think it is?” Wilcox asks.

Nobody answers. Nobody even breathes.

Driving home late that evening, I remember Carter Robb. Instead of calling, I flip through my notebook for the address he gave me, stopping by on the way. I find him with a group of other men, all stripped to the waist, nailing plywood sheets across the windows of a two-story brick building that could pass for the scrawny cousin of the one housing the Morgan St. Café. The ground floor is done, and now they’ve mounted ladders to reach the second, the work illuminated by shop lights in the yard, since the streetlamps are too far away. The boom box is tuned to ktru, only audible during lulls in the hammering.

I call up to Robb, who shimmies down the ladder and snatches a black T-shirt from a pile on the ground, using it to wipe the sweat from his face.

“I thought you forgot about me,” he says.

“I did.”

There must be a residual glow on my face, left over from the discovery at the marina, because Robb perks up all the sudden.

“Something’s happened?”

“Not with Hannah, no. I just happened to be in the neighborhood so I stopped by. The truth is, the task force is waiting for new developments.”

He nods slowly. “So we’re back where we started.”

“There is one thing. I talked to a friend in New Orleans and had him track down the Dyer family. According to the mother, Evangeline Dyer ran away from home again. I know you said she’d done it before. She left eight weeks ago. I haven’t spoken to the mother myself, but I have her contact information, assuming you’d want it.”

“I should call her,” he says.

I copy the information onto a blank sheet of my notebook, ripping the page out and handing it to him. He studies the writing, though his eyes don’t seem to focus on the numbers. More like he’s looking through the page, or seeing something reflected on it.

“I should call her,” he says again.

Over his shoulder, the other workers have knocked off for the moment, keeping their distance but clearly interested in our conversation. I glance their way, prompting Robb to turn as if noticing them for the first time. He waves a hand toward the building.

“This is the outreach center.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

He cocks his head to one side, smiling faintly. “The idea is to provide an encounter space. People from the church, people from the surrounding community, all coming together to talk. Not just about religion, but life. Everything under the sun.”

“I thought it was more of a homeless shelter.”

One of the others, a friendly, broad-chested man of about thirty-five, with sunken eyes and a wooden cross around his neck, steps forward to join us, chuckling at what I’ve just said.

“A homeless shelter would probably be of more use these days, but what can I say?” He shrugs in an outsized, eloquent way. “This is the vision God gave me. ‘If you build it, they will come.’ ”

“Do they?”

He seesaws his hand in the air. “We host some book clubs that are pretty popular.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say, remembering the women gathered at the Morgan St. Café. I pat Robb on the bicep and turn to go.

“Oh, wait,” he says, digging in his back pocket. He removes his wallet, shuffles through a wad of folded receipts, and finally produces a folded photograph. “Here you go.”

I hold the picture up to the light. Hannah, radiant in the camera’s flash, smiles invitingly, her hand thrown lazily around the shoulder of another girl, her face half concealed behind a lump of matte black hair, a bad dye job maybe, her one visible eye rimmed thickly in dark liner. Evey Dyer raises two fingers to the lens, her nails painted black. Whoever snapped the photo probably assumed this was a peace sign, but from my Anglophile ex-partner, I know the gesture she’s flashing is rude.

“Thanks,” I tell him, tucking the picture away. “So you took your youth group to this place for their summer trip?”

Robb nods. “We helped fix the place up, went out in the community to get the word out, hosted a couple of get-acquainted parties.”

“And it was much appreciated,” the other man says. “I’m Murray Abernathy, by the way.” His handshake has a lot of power behind it. “Resident dreamer.”

The three of us stand there in the quickening wind, my jacket whipping around my hips. The sky rumbles overhead, prompting us all to look up momentarily.

“You met Hannah Mayhew, Mr. Abernathy? And her friend Evan-geline Dyer?”

“Hard to miss those two,” he says, still gazing overhead. “They really helped out a lot here. It’s a terrible thing, what’s happened to Hannah. We’re praying she gets home safe.”

“Evey ran away,” Robb says under his breath, causing the other man to deflate.

As I turn to go, the first fat drops of rain start to fall. One breaks cool against my neck. Robb knits his eyebrows as another splashes the bridge of his nose. Within seconds the clouds open and the rain drills down on us. Everyone in the yard moves closer to the building, sheltering under the eaves.

Everyone but me.

I reach my car door, glancing back in time to see Robb, his hair plastered against his scalp, ascending the ladder again, rain-battered, his face pointing heavenward.

CHAPTER 23

The dream ends with a crash. I sit up, peeling the damp sheets off my skin, unable to remember a thing. On the nightstand, the glowing numbers on the clock face have disappeared. The fan overhead whirs to a stop. Uncertain whether the collision happened in real life or my head, I move to the window, peering through the rain-washed pane. It’s black outside, some shadows darker than others. The sky’s accustomed glow – an effect produced by light reflected on the clouds, producing a faint nightlong radiance – is extinguished.

Wind whistles past the house, slapping branches against the walls. I see nothing, and I’m too dog-tired to go out and look. I lie back down on top of the sheets, cocooned in a womb of white noise, and try to get some sleep. My mind races with the last images I saw on television before hitting the sack, newscasters down in Galveston knocked flat on their backsides and skyscrapers downtown popping their windows left and right.

A steady banging starts up not long after. At first I ignore it, but as my head clears and I awaken fully, the sound takes on a panicked intensity. Feeling around in the dark, I grab my flashlight, a tiny Fenix that puts my old Maglite to shame, and head down the stairs. The pounding comes from the kitchen door. As soon as I open it, Tommy pushes through, half-dressed and a little crazy, rivers of water sluicing off him.

“Hey, man,” he says, breathless. “You’re not gonna believe your eyes, I’m telling you. It’s, like, unreal up there.”

The door swings wide, propelled by the wind, slamming against a breakfast table chair. I shoulder it closed, then turn to check on him, running the light up and down his chest. His jeans, soaked through, puddle around his bare feet, the cuffs ragged.

“You all right?”

“Nothing hit me, I don’t think. But you gotta go look, man. It’s like tv.”

His mouth twists into a maniacal grin, like he’s just bungee-jumped for the first time and is ready to go again. I shine the light along his head, making sure it’s water plastering his hair down and not blood and brain tissue.

“What happened to you?”

“You gotta come see,” he says, starting for the door. He stops, finger lifted, remembering something. “Oh, yeah. Hey, do you have any plastic bags – you know, like trash bags or something? I need to cover some stuff so it doesn’t get any wetter than it already is. I don’t know, maybe we should try to carry some things down.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, not waiting for a reply. I bolt through the door, lighting a path up the garage stairs. Everything looks normal to me. He follows me up, panting with excitement. I pass through the door and into the living room, noting nothing.