The two teenagers were sitting side by side on the lumpy old couch in the den. Though it was barely afternoon and the room was flooded with sunlight, the boy was a teenager, after all, and taking full advantage of being alone with the girl. She was fending his hands off routinely as she watched television. No sooner had she removed his palm from one of her breasts than he was all over the other breast, or sliding his hand up her thigh, or trying to stroke the smooth expanse of her stomach. At first she was too engrossed in the movie to care much about these familiar territorial encroachments, but when a commercial flashed on, she turned her pent-up irritation on him.

“Will you stop that,” she snapped. “I told you, no. It’s broad daylight and a Sunday afternoon and you’re not even supposed to be here and I am not in the mood. Quit pawing me.”

The boy looked as if she had insulted him deeply. I’d have laughed under any other circumstances, since I’d tried that hangdog expression many a time myself as a teenager. But I could not laugh because I was terrified the tiff would escalate into a full-blown fight and he would leave her alone. She must not be left alone.

“Come on, baby. What’s the difference?” He smiled. “Let’s draw the blinds and pretend it’s Friday night.”

Wrong move. Ah, but high school football players should never go out with the smart girls. They’re just too easily outsmarted by them. The girl jumped to her feet, slapped his hand away, and told him to go now because she had to wash her hair.

“Seriously?” the guy asked. He was incredulous. “That is the oldest excuse in the book.”

“Really?” she asked, her eye blazing. “How’s this one? Get the hell out.”

“Oh, come on, baby,” he complained as he started to rise from the couch.

No, I rooted silently. How can you give up so easily? Stay put, man. Show some backbone. Don’t leave this girl alone. Please, dear god, do not walk out that door. Do not leave this girl alone.

“You don’t really mean it,” he told her when she refused to dignify his comment with anything but silence. “You’re just going to call me in twenty minutes and tell me to come back.”

It was so the wrong thing to say. Teenage boys and their egos. This one might cost the girl her life.

“I don’t think so,” she told him, then turned her back on him and pretended to be interested in the TV. My hopes sank. She was giving him the silent treatment. There was no way to fight it. He’d have no choice but to leave.

The boy shrugged and rolled his eyes, for my benefit only since the girl refused to even look at him. And then, to my dismay, he slouched out the front door. It slammed shut, bounced, and settled into the jamb.

The girl did not lock it behind him. She had refused to give him the satisfaction of even acknowledging that he was leaving.

I rushed to the front door and peered out through a window inset in it, hoping the boy would come back. I willed him to put his pride aside. I cursed the virtue that had caused the girl to want him to leave. And I cursed a world that would let a young girl die because she’d tried to live up to being the kind of young lady her father wanted her to be.

The boy reached the end of the front walkway, then turned around and stared at the door for a moment. I peered back at him through the glass, willing him to return. And as I stood there, praying for him to come back inside, I saw it: a black SUV passed behind the boy. It was gliding slowly down the street, its engine silent and efficient, the tinted windows hiding the occupant from view. It hesitated, nearly imperceptibly, before sliding out of view. But not to go away, I knew that with a certainty. His need was too great. Hayes would park down the block, or circle it and return. He would keep watch, he’d see the boy was leaving, and then he would return. All I could do was wait.