The Tyler Matthews case was definitely in FBL, but Maggie and Calvano were going to put in their fair share of work to get it out of limbo. Calvano was following up on the list of volunteers Martin had given him; Maggie was going to lend a hand once she started the trace on the gun used to shoot Fiona Harker.

That was the kind of grunt work I’d avoided while alive. I avoided it now as well.

Using the names Robert Michael Martin had given them, Maggie helped Calvano pull together a list of addresses where the KinderWatch volunteers lived, or at least the ones that Martin felt might match the profile of Tyler’s abductors. I memorized the list and headed over to the house where I knew Tyler Matthews was being held in hopes of finding a match. It would mean help was on its way to the boy, sooner or later.

None of the addresses provided by KinderWatch volunteers matched that of the small cedar-shingled house nestled among the grasses and flowers that thrived in its landscaped yard. I had no clue what the name of the man inside might be, but chances were good the house had not been rented under his real name. And that, if he had volunteered for KinderWatch, he hadn’t signed up under the same name, either.

There would be no one coming for Tyler Matthews anytime soon.

By then it was Saturday afternoon and Tyler Matthews was facing another night without his mother. It was the best I could hope for. I had watched over him during the night before, noting that the man who held him had slept in a separate bedroom down the hall from Tyler. But anything could have happened to the boy since. He was being prepared for something terrible, I knew. I entered the house, fearful of what I would find. But it felt calm inside. The living room was empty, the cameras still there but clearly turned off. They were probably controlled remotely. The man who was staying in the house with Tyler had no say in the matter.

I checked the kitchen. No sign of the boy.

I got a bad feeling about that. I could feel the boy near—his innocence was unmistakable—and I could both smell his abductor’s sweat and pick up on his internal conflict over protecting the child or destroying him by taking all that made him innocent. I searched a den, small bathroom, and one of the back bedrooms before finding the man and Tyler in a corner of the second bedroom, far from camera range.

That gave me a bad feeling, too.

But the little boy looked safe. He was wearing new clothes and sitting on a pillow placed on the floor, drinking chocolate milk while eating tiny powdered doughnuts from a bag. The man who had taken him was reading to him from a Batman comic while lying on his back on the floor, a pillow beneath his head. Had I not known the situation, I would have guessed that they were father and son.

“You can have another one,” he told Tyler when he saw the small boy hesitating to pull another doughnut from the bag.

Tyler took a doughnut and nibbled it. “When is Mommy coming for me?” he asked.

The man put the comic book down. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Your mommy is sick and in the hospital. You have to stay here for now.”

Lying bastard. Tyler frowned at the news that his mother was sick and I felt anxiousness tug at his little heart. Even at his age, he knew his mother was fragile. How could this man have used that against him?

A cell phone rang and the man reached for it quickly, fear rising in him. I could hear the man on the other end. It was the same authoritative voice that had spoken from the other side of the camera feed. “Where are you?” he demanded.

“We’re in a back bedroom,” the first man said.

“Leave the boy alone until it is time,” the unseen man ordered him.

The man looked up at Tyler, who had started to flip the pages of the comic book while he pretended to know how to read.

“Did you hear me?” the second man asked.

“Yes,” the man in the house said abruptly. “I hear you.” He was filled with so many different emotions that it was impossible to separate them out: rage, anger, fear, guilt, lust, shame, hunger—and evil, too, I thought, but I could not be sure if it was coming from the man or something the man himself had sensed.

“Get back in camera range now,” the unseen man ordered. “You’re getting sloppy about this.”

“I have followed your orders precisely,” the first man argued, his voice growing in pitch. The emotions in him roiled and I felt his shame and guilt grow.

“You’ve been sloppy. Haven’t you been reading the papers? They’re getting closer. I’m moving the timetable up.”

“I’m not ready,” the first man insisted, panic in his voice.

The second man laughed. It was an ugly sound that filled me with darkness. It was so ripe and evil and filled with certainty that the first man would fall. “You’ll be more than ready when the time comes. Then it will be all I can do to control your appetite.”

“I’m not like you,” the first man insisted.

“Aren’t you?” the second man challenged. “Now get back into camera range and take the boy’s shirt off.”

The first man started to argue, but changed his mind. He hung up his phone and coaxed the boy back into the living room. He did not remove the boy’s shirt. “I’ve got to go out for a moment,” he told Tyler. “I’ll be right back. I’ll bring you a treat.”

“Can you bring me my mommy?” the boy asked hopefully.

“Not yet,” the first man lied. “But soon. When she’s feeling better. How about some French fries. Do you like French fries?”

“I like the toys that come with them.”

“Okay, I’ll bring you some. In the meantime, here are your other toys.” The man arranged the plastic soldiers he had bought earlier in front of the boy and left. His cell phone was ringing again before he was even out the door. “What are you going to do?” he said into the phone. “Come over and make me?” The front door shut behind him and I was alone with the boy.

Or maybe I wasn’t.

Tyler Matthews picked up a toy solider and held it out, like an offering, speaking to someone I could not see.

“I share,” he said proudly. “I learned how in preschool. I will give you a soldier.”

He smiled at whatever answer he alone had heard. He arranged the soldier on the rug and added a few more plastic men. “That’s you, Pawpaw,” he said, pointing to a toy soldier dressed in a paratrooper outfit. “See his gun?”

The boy touched a tiny gun painted on the plastic soldier’s hip. “Let’s play army.” He cocked his head, listening intently. “No,” he told his invisible friend. “I’m not scared. I’m a big boy. But I think Mommy will be mad about the doughnuts. Do you want one? I can get one for you.” Whatever he heard in reply, he settled back into place on the rug, then stretched out on his stomach and, with the deep intensity of small children, became lost in his imaginary world, unaware that the cameras above him were recording his every move and that the man who would soon return was not his friend.

A few minutes later, the man who had abducted Tyler Matthews returned to the apartment, carrying a Happy Meal and a newspaper. He left the food with the boy and took a seat at the far end of the kitchen table, where the cameras could not see him. He lit a cigarette and began to read the newspaper intently. The front page was splashed with the news about Tyler’s abduction. He pulled on a cigarette as he scanned through the articles on the front page. Both excitement and dread danced in him as he read of Tyler’s abduction, the adrenaline overcoming any fear he had at being caught. Then I felt something in him catch, a curiosity and some sort of recognition. He let his cigarette drop and reread the article he’d been scanning, frowning as he did so. Images flickered across his mind as he searched to find meaning in something he remembered. Confusion followed, then a revelation, and, right on its heels, guilt again and a sense of obligation. He stood up abruptly from the table and joined Tyler in the living room, coaxing the boy to eat. I lingered behind, curious to see what he had been reading.

It was not an article about the abduction of Tyler Matthews. The article that had triggered his internal turmoil had been a story about the murder of Fiona Harker, relegated to a spot on the second page, juxtaposed ironically above a story detailing the success of a recent fundraiser for the hospital.

What in the world could Fiona Harker have to do with him? I wondered. What was the connection?

The man’s cell phone rang again. This time he sounded angry rather than obedient when he answered it. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“Have you been smoking in the house?” the man on the other end asked.

“No,” the first man said.

“You’re lying. The smoke is spoiling the clarity of the shot. It’s a filthy habit.”

“You should know about filthy habits,” the first man snapped. He was staring at Tyler Matthews, who was trying to feed French fries to his plastic soldiers.

The other man took a long time to think before he spoke again. “I forbid you to smoke,” he said flatly. “It is forbidden.”

“You smoke,” the first man said. “Why is it you want me to pick up some of your filthy habits, but not all of them?”

“You will do as I say,” the second man ordered, his voice growing in volume. It had an instant effect on the first man—I could feel overwhelming fear, shame, and revulsion fill him. It was a conditioned response. “You will do as I say or suffer accordingly. Need I remind you why I am this way? It’s your fault and your fault alone.”

Guilt flared in the first man, a crushing, overwhelming guilt.

“Did you hear me?” the second man barked.

“Yes,” the first man said, his voice reduced to a whisper. “I heard you.”

“Now, take off the boy’s shirt and leave the room. I want to watch him alone for a while. I will call you when I am ready.”

The first man gently removed Tyler’s tiny T-shirt and folded it neatly into a square, as precisely as a soldier might fold his uniform, before leaving the room.

If there had been anything I could have done to protect the boy, I would have stayed. But I thought I knew who the man on the other end of the phone was. I prayed that the core of goodness languishing deep inside the man who was with Tyler would hold, at least for a while, and I left to find out if I was right.