Her eyes drifted to the clock by the bed. It was ten past two. Frank must just be getting home, probably reeking of alcohol and cigarettes, maybe even perfume. A brief surge of rage penetrated her sleepy haze. She wondered if she would have the energy to raise the issue.

Her eyes closed again as she surrendered to exhaustion, one maternal ear open to external sounds as her face fit into a cool, comfortable space in a pillow, as her conscious mind spiraled away—

Her eyes popped open. Her body stiffened. Something dark and uneasy filled her chest. Her legs slid out of the bed. She stepped past her slippers and moved across the carpet in her bare feet. An unknowing feeling of dread reached her throat as she moved down the hall and pushed the bedroom door open, where her boy, Sammy, slept over the covers of his bed.

She crossed the kitchen toward Audrey’s bedroom and felt a breeze reach her. She picked up her pace to a jog. Before she saw the empty bed, with the covers pulled back, she saw the open window, a window that had been closed when she had put her daughter down hours ago.

She didn’t hear herself scream.

* * *

AS HE NAVIGATED the corner in his sedan, Detective Vic Carruthers groaned. A small crowd of neighbors had already gathered around a squad car that had just pulled up outside the house. Was it idle curiosity surrounding the police presence? Or had word leaked out?

It had been five hours since two-year-old Audrey Cutler had been abducted from her home—snatched out of her bed at two in the morning. An insomniac neighbor, three doors down, had seen someone running down the street from the Cutler house. It looked like they were carrying something, the neighbor had said, with a trace of after-the-fact apology.

The trail had gone cold. The description was next to nothing. Medium height, baseball cap—best the neighbor could do from a distance of a football field, with the lighting weak at best. Nothing telltale from the scene. No fingerprints, no shoe prints, nothing.

Until they had run a check on prior offenders. Griffin Perlini, age twenty-eight, lived a quarter mile from the Cutler home. He had a kiddie sheet. And not just minors: He liked them young.

The arrests had been for sexual contact, but one had been dropped, the other convicted on the lesser charge of indecent exposure. Griffin Perlini had lured a four-year-old into the woods by a playground in a downstate town. The state had apparently decided it couldn’t prove the sexual touching, but they convicted on eyewitness testimony that Perlini had been seen pulling up his pants as the witness approached him.

“Got a feeling about this,” Carruthers told his partner, Joe Gooden.

They got out at the curb. Carruthers nodded at the uniform who followed in step behind the senior officers. Carruthers did a once-over. It was a ranch, like many of the places on the block. Old place with vinyl siding. Cobblestone steps leading from the driveway to the small porch. The lawn had seen better times. No vehicle in the driveway. A one-car attached garage.

Only seven in the morning, but already sticky-hot. Gooden had a sheen across his forehead.

Carruthers rang the doorbell and stepped back, keeping an angle that allowed him to look for movement near the windows. It came quickly, a stirring of a curtain on the east side front.

“He’s got five seconds,” Carruthers said. If his gut was right on this, he wasn’t going to give Perlini time to dispose of evidence—or a little girl.

He heard a small pop at the door—the deadbolt releasing—then a face that resembled a mug shot he’d recently seen, staring at him through a torn screen door.

“Mr. Perlini?”

The man didn’t answer.

“Detective Carruthers. This is Detective Gooden.”

Carruthers stopped there. Curious about the response he’d get.

Perlini’s eyes dropped. Pedophiles were like that. Wouldn’t look adults in the eye.

“Yeah?” Perlini said.

“We’re looking for a little girl, Mr. Perlini. She wandered off from her house. We think she walked this way, and we were wondering if anyone took her in. Y’know, to take care of her, until her parents showed.”

The first order of business here was to get that little girl back home safe. Didn’t matter how. He was giving Perlini an out, the opportunity to pretend that the child had simply wandered off, that Perlini had done what any good citizen might do. From Perlini’s perspective, it was a way to stop this right now, with the possibility of avoiding a criminal charge.

Perlini didn’t answer.

“She’s real young,” Carruthers elaborated. “Probably too young to even say her name. So we figured, maybe someone was hanging on to her. To be safe.”

It was going to work now or never. The suspect couldn’t hesitate on the answer. Either he had her or he didn’t. If he had her, and he was going to buy this out Carruthers was offering, he’d have to purchase that ticket now.

“I was just sleepin’.” Perlini scratched his head, gathered a bunch of his thick red hair in his hand.

Well, you answered the door pretty damn fast for being asleep.

“How ’bout we step inside and talk a minute.” Carruthers wasn’t asking.

Perlini scratched his head again and looked back over his shoulder. He had a small frame. He was skinny and below-average height. The neighbor’s description wasn’t much, but it generally fit this guy.

“What do ya say, Griffin? A quick talk.”

“Um—well—my lawyer is Reggie Lionel.”

His lawyer. Carruthers felt a rush.

Perlini pointed behind him. “I could call him, but it’s early—”

“Your lawyer needs his beauty sleep, Griffin.” Carruthers grabbed the handle to the screen door, but it wouldn’t move.

Perlini’s eyes moved up to the detective’s, reading pure fear.

“You’ll need to unlock this door, Griffin. Right now. Right now.”

“O—okay. Okay.” He pushed the door open.

Carruthers took the door handle. “Take two steps back, please.”

Carruthers, Gooden, and the uniform stepped in. Perlini suddenly looked lost in his own house, unsure of what to do, where to stand or where to go. Carruthers thought he’d let Perlini make the call. Surely, Perlini would try to direct them away from anything telltale.

The detective’s pulse was racing. She might be here in the house. She might still be alive. Behind him, Detective Gooden was strolling casually beyond the foyer, looking for anything in plain view.

“Is anyone else in this house, Griffin?”

Perlini shook his head, no.

“Griffin, you know a girl named Audrey Cutler?”

Perlini’s eyes were once again downcast, in anticipation of unwanted questioning, like a child expecting a scolding. On mention of the girl’s name, his eyes froze. His posture stiffened.

The answer was yes.

“No,” Perlini said.

“Griffin,” Gooden called out, “you don’t mind I look around a little?”

He did mind; it was all over his face. But pedophiles, they didn’t have a spine, not with adults. It wasn’t exactly textbook consent, but Perlini hadn’t said no. Carruthers was pretty sure he’d be able to reflect back on this moment and remember Perlini nodding his head.

“Eyes up, Griffin. Look at me.” Carruthers gestured to his own eyes, his fingers forked in a peace sign.

Perlini did the best he could, his eyes sweeping back and forth past Carruthers like a searchlight.

“If there was a misunderstanding here, Griffin—if maybe you thought about doing something but changed your mind—hey, let’s get that girl back home. No harm, no foul—”

“No. No.” Perlini shook his head, the insolent child, and gripped his tomato-red hair in two fists.

Carruthers heard a noise outside. A voice, yelling. He looked through the door and saw a man pointing at the house, talking to a gathering crowd. Something about a child molester.