Tony did so, and Avery collapsed to his knees, sobbing. “That really hurt, don’t hurt me anymore, please don’t.” He thought of adding it’s not fair, but what did these people care about what was fair? Nothing, that was what.

“I don’t want to,” Mrs. Sigsby said. This was a thin truth, at best. The thicker one was that years spent in this office had inured her to the pain of children. And while the sign in the crematorium was right—they were heroes, no matter how reluctant their heroism might be—some of them could try one’s patience. Sometimes until one’s patience snapped.

“I don’t know where he went, honest.”

“When people have to say they’re being honest, that means they’re not. I’ve been around the block a few times, and I know that. So tell me: Where did he go, and what was the plan?”

“I don’t know!”

“Tony, lift up his shirt. Winona, your Taser. Medium power.”

“No!” Avery screamed, trying to pull away. “No zap-stick! Please, no zap-stick!”

Tony caught him around the middle and lifted his shirt. Winona positioned her zap-stick just above Avery’s belly button and triggered it. Avery shrieked. His legs jerked and piss watered the carpet.

“Where did he go, Mr. Dixon?” The boy’s face was blotchy and snotty, there were dark circles beneath his eyes, he had wet his pants, and still the little runt was holding out. Mrs. Sigsby could hardly believe it. “Where did he go and what was the plan?”

“I don’t know!”

“Winona? Again. Medium power.”

“Ma’am, are you s—”

“A little higher this time, if you please. Just below the solar plexus.”

Avery’s arms were greased with sweat and he wriggled out of Tony’s grip, almost making a rotten situation even worse—he’d have gone flying around her office like a bird trapped in a garage, knocking things over and bouncing off the walls—but Winona tripped him and pulled him to his feet by his arms. So it was Tony who used the Taser. Avery screamed and went limp.

“Is he out?” Mrs. Sigsby asked. “If he is, get Dr. Evans in here to give him a shot. We need answers fast.”

Tony grabbed one of Avery’s cheeks (plump when he’d come here; much thinner now) and twisted it. Avery’s eyes flew open. “He’s not out.”

Mrs. Sigsby said, “Mr. Dixon, this pain is stupid and unnecessary. Tell me what I want to know and it will stop. Where did he go? What was the plan?”

“I don’t know,” Avery whispered. “I really really really don’t kn—”

“Winona? Please remove Mr. Avery’s pants and apply your Taser to his testes. Full power.”

Although Winona was as apt to slap a sassbox resident as look at him, she was clearly unhappy with this command. Nevertheless, she reached for the waistband of his pants. That was when Avery broke.

“Okay! Okay! I’ll tell! Just don’t hurt me anymore!”

“That is a relief for both of us.”

“Maureen told him to go through the woods. She said he might find a track for golf carts but to keep going straight even if he didn’t. She said he’d see lights, especially a bright yellow one. She said when he got to the houses, he should follow the fence until he saw a scarf tied to a bush or a tree, I don’t remember which. She said there was a path behind it . . . or a road . . . I don’t remember that, either. But she said it would take him to the river. She said there was a boat.”

He stopped. Mrs. Sigsby gave him a nod and a benign smile, but inside, her heart was beating triple-time. This was both good news and bad. Stackhouse’s search party could stop floundering around in the woods, but a boat? Ellis had gotten to the river? And he was hours ahead of them.

“Then what, Mr. Dixon? Where did she tell him to get off the river? The Bend, am I right? Dennison River Bend?”

Avery shook his head and made himself look directly at her, all wide eyes and terrified honesty. “No, she said that was too close, she said to keep on the river as far as Presque Isle.”

“Very good, Mr. Dixon, you can go back to your room. But if I should find out that you’ve lied . . .”

“I’ll be in trouble,” Avery said, wiping at the tears on his cheeks with trembling hands.

At that, Mrs. Sigsby actually laughed. “You read my mind,” she said.

15

Five o’clock in the afternoon.

Ellis gone at least eighteen hours, maybe longer. The playground cams didn’t record, so it was impossible to tell for sure. Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse were in Mrs. Sigsby’s office, monitoring developments and listening for reports from their stringers. They had these all over the country. For the most part, the Institute’s stringers did no more than groundwork: keeping an eye on children with high BDNF scores and compiling information on their friends, family, neighborhoods, school situations. And their homes, of course. Everything about their homes, especially alarm systems. All that background was useful to the extraction teams when the time came. They also kept an eye out for special children not already on the Institute’s radar. These did show up from time to time. BDNF testing, along with the heel-stick PKU and the Apgar score, was routine for infants born in American hospitals, but of course not all babies were born in hospitals, and plenty of parents, such as the ever more vocal anti-vaxxer contingent, forewent the tests.

These stringers had no idea to whom they were reporting, or to what purpose; many assumed (incorrectly) that it was some kind of US government Big Brother thing. Most simply banked the extra income of five hundred dollars a month, made their reports when reports had to be made, and asked no questions. Of course every now and then one would ask questions, and that one would discover that as well as killing cats, curiosity killed their monthly dividend.

The thickest concentration of stringers, almost fifty, was in the area surrounding the Institute, and tracking talented children was not their major concern. The chief job of these stringers was to listen for people asking the wrong questions. They were tripwires, an early warning system.

Stackhouse was careful to alert half a dozen in Dennison River Bend, just in case the Dixon boy was mistaken or lying (“He wasn’t lying, I would have known,” Mrs. Sigsby insisted), but most he sent to the Presque Isle area. One of these was tasked with contacting the PI police and telling them that he was quite sure he’d seen a boy who had been in a news story on CNN. This boy, according to the news, was wanted for questioning in the murders of his parents. His name was Luke Ellis. The stringer told the police he wasn’t positive it was that kid, but it sure did look like him, and he’d asked for money in a threatening, disjointed way. Both Mrs. Sigsby and Stackhouse knew that having the police pick up their wandering boy wasn’t the ideal solution to their problems, but police could be handled. Besides, anything Ellis told them would be dismissed as the ravings of an unbalanced child.

Cell phones didn’t work in the Institute or in the village—indeed, not for a two-mile radius—so the searchers used walkies. And there were landlines. Now the one on Mrs. Sigsby’s desk rang. Stackhouse grabbed it. “What? Who am I talking to?”

It was Dr. Felicia Richardson, who had spelled Zeke in the comm room. She had been eager to do it. Her ass was also on the line, a fact she fully grasped. “I’ve got one of our stringers on hold. Guy named Jean Levesque. He says he found the boat Ellis used. Want me to transfer him to you?”

“Immediately!”

Mrs. Sigsby was standing in front of Stackhouse now, hands raised, lips forming the word What?

Stackhouse ignored her. There was a click, and Levesque came on the line. He had a St. John Valley accent thick enough to cut pulpwood. Stackhouse had never seen him, but pictured a tanned old guy under a hat with a bunch of fishing lures stuck in the brim.

“Found dat boat, me.”

“So I’m told. Where?”

“She come aground on a bank about five miles upriver from Presque Isle. Ship quite a bit of water she did, but the handle of the oar—just one oar—was prop on the seat. Left it right where it was. Didn’t call nobody. Dere’s blood on the oar. Tell you what, dere’s a l’il bit of a rapids a little further up. If dat boy you lookin for wasn’t used to boats, specially a l’il one like that—”

“It might have spilled him out,” Stackhouse finished. “Stay where you are, I’m going to send a couple of guys. And thank you.”

“What you pay me for,” Levesque said. “Don’t suppose you can tell me what he do.”

Stackhouse killed the call, which answered that particular foolish question, and filled in Mrs. Sigsby. “With any luck, the little bastard drowned and someone will find his body tonight or tomorrow, but we can’t count on being that lucky. I want to get Rafe and John—all I’ve got for security, and that’s going to change when this is over—to downtown Presque Isle, ASAP. If Ellis is on foot, that’s where he’ll go first. If he hitches a ride, either the State Police or some townie cop will pick him up and hold him. He’s the crazy kid who killed his parents, after all, then ran all the way to Maine.”

“Are you as hopeful as you sound?” She was honestly curious.

“No.”

16