Page 49

BURY SAINT EDMONDS, ENGLAND

After being kept all night, Ryan is finally allowed to make a call. It’s not from a dirty payphone in a jailhouse corridor like in the movies. He’s taken to a tidy conference room. The detectives leave him alone, but they’re probably recording the call or listening.

“We’ve been worried about you,” his dad says, sounding breathless. It’s late morning in the UK, after five in the morning in Kansas. “You haven’t responded to texts and—”

“I found him,” Ryan says.

His father is quiet for a long moment. “Found who?”

“The man who took Ali,” Ryan’s voice shakes. “I’m not crazy, he’s real.”

A tear escapes his eye and he wipes it away with a hand. For so long, he’s felt the guilt from that night, and rage at himself for not remembering. Conjuring a monster rather than accepting that he’d been a coward. But he hadn’t imagined the man, he wasn’t a coward.

Now the questions: Who is he? Why did he take Ali? Who are the men found dead in Ali’s car? Who killed them?

“I don’t understand, Son.” His dad sounds exhausted. “Start from the beginning.”

Ryan tells him about The Monster, Peter Jones, tracking Ryan to Italy. Jones meeting him at the Palazzo Comunale and saying Ryan had to cover for Jones or else Jones and she would be in danger. Jones’s suggestion that the Leavenworth sheriff knew something. Jones rushing home to England after he got the video call.

It’s then that Ryan understands: Whoever called Jones was waiting at his house on the church grounds, probably holding a knife to his wife’s throat.

And another realization: Jones might have been referring to his wife when he said she would be killed too? Maybe he wasn’t referring to Ali. Maybe Ryan’s gotten ahead of himself.

“Ryan? You there?”

“I tracked him to England,” Ryan says.

“You what? You’re in England?”

“I’ve been arrested.”

“Ryan, what the hell is going on?” In a matter of seconds his father’s tone has gone from exhausted, to disbelief, to panic.

Ryan tells him about finding Jones and his wife dead. He leaves out the ghastly details. His parents are under enough stress.

His father listens, the silence heavy and heartbreaking. He says something to Ryan’s mother, whom Ryan pictures sitting up in the bed with a worried look on her face. It takes a moment, but Dad regains his composure.

“I’ll call Marty, he’ll be able to help us get you a UK lawyer.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can handle this myself. I don’t want you to spend more money on—”

“Son, don’t you understand?” his father interrupts. “We’d spend every last penny we have to help you.”

More tears well as Ryan collects himself. “Okay. Well, please tell Mom I’m okay,” he says. “She shouldn’t worry.”

There’s another long silence. “After I call Marty, Mom and I will get on the next flight out. Where are they holding you?”

Before Ryan answers, the lead detective comes into the conference room. Her look is more sympathetic than stern now. “When you’re done with your call, you’re free to go.”