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DACHE DOES NOT talk very much when he is training Maddy. But when the great man does speak, Maddy knows that it’s bound to be important. As a result, his words are the only ones she ever writes down with an actual pen in a paper notebook. One of his rules now comes to mind:

Your power does not exist for your own convenience. It exists only for the good of others.

Maddy remembers this as she stands outside a locked wrought-iron gate at the state-run youth rehab center in Harriman, New York, the current residence of her friend Belinda.

Should she press the Visitors button, even though there is a sign underneath that warnsSUNDAYONLY? Even if they allow her inside the building complex, Maddy knows there will be an avalanche of paperwork for her to fill out if she wants to see Belinda.

She keeps turning Dache’s words over and over in her mind.

Only for the good of others.

She decides to chalk this one up to the good of Belinda. Maddy isn’t there to do something wrong like help her friend escape. She’s not bringing Belinda contraband. She just wants to see her and tell her about the progress of her unofficial investigation. Anything Belinda might know about a green car and a man with an accent would be welcome, as well.

Maddy looks through the locked gate, as if she is hoping that Dache might magically appear and give her his point of view on the subject of breaking and entering. No way. She’s on her own. She looks up toward the sky, then she tightens all of her muscles.Focus, Maddy, focus. Be someone or something other than yourself. The smaller, the better.

The guard manning the security cameras thinks nothing of it when a small, adorable gray squirrel scurries under the base of the wrought-iron gate and heads for the main building.

CHAPTER 61

“YOU’RE CUTE, BUT if you shred my pillow, I swear—” Belinda begins, then shrieks when Maddy transforms from a squirrel back into her usual self.

“Holy shit!” Belinda screams, jumping to her feet, holding the aforementioned pillow above her head, and smacking Maddy in the face with it.

“Unhelpful,” Maddy says, rubbing her nose.

“Sorry, I just…” Belinda looks from Maddy’s face back to her feet, as if expecting her to suddenly shrink back into a furry animal again.

“We’ve had every form of vermin in this room. Rats, mice, cockroaches. Not to mention a perverted gynecologist. But, man, we’ve never had a squirrel that turned into a woman. What the hell, girl? You holding out on me?”

“Let’s just say I have some special skills,” Maddy says.

They laugh. They hug. For all their terrible arguments and emotional disagreements in the past, they embrace each other tightly, and for a good long time.

“Nice place you got here,” Maddy says. Her voice has only a mild, teasing note of sarcasm, because it’s notthatbad. Maddy was expecting a prison cell with a toilet in the middle of the room. But Belinda’s room looks like it could be any college dorm. That is, if the students were forbidden to add any decorative touches. No photos. No pictures taped to the wall. No comfortable visitors’ chair. No video. Only two twin beds, each covered with a coarse gray blanket, and one closet without a door.

Maddy gestures to one of the beds and asks, “So, who’s your lucky roommate?”

“Oh, just a mass murderer and part-time serial killer,” Belinda says. “Good work if you can get it.”

They settle down for a visit—a visit that could immediately force Maddy back into her disguise if a guard or matron or roommate comes along, so they talk quickly.

“I wanted toseeyou, not just talk to you for three minutes on a cell phone.” Maddy pauses, then adds, “And I’ve got to say, you are looking terrific.”

“Amazing what three square meals a day and a good night’s sleep will do for a girl,” Belinda says.

Then Maddy turns serious.

She tells her that she’s been gathering information about the scumbag who is kidnapping and possibly killing Belinda’s friends.

“I uncovered some very specific information over coffee with Kailyn, Mama-Girl, and a few others. They said—”

“Wait a fucking minute, lady,” yells Belinda. “You had coffee with Mama-Girl? I’d like to have seen that. How many pancakes she put away?”

“The equivalent of half my paycheck,” Maddy says. “But it was worth it.”

Maddy tells Belinda about the green Escalade; Belinda remembers it well.

“Yeah, that’s right. I saw that car about a million times. The one with the darkened windows and the hula dancer bobblehead on the dashboard,” she says.