Page 66 of No One Aboard

Or maybe Lila was the one who’d riled up somebody. Tia’s mother had a habit of attention-seeking that could border on antagonizing.

Once when Tia and Rylan were eleven, Lila’s professionally photographed nudes were leaked all over the press. That week, there’d been paparazzi hiding on the beach behind their house, following Tia and her friends in the mall, eating casually at their favorite restaurant while snapping pictures of the family from behind a menu. Tia remembered feeling annoyed, even protective of her mom, but later a classmate had shown her the article that accused Lila of leaking her own nudes. Tia didn’t doubt that for a second.

Lila Logan would do anything to be noticed.

Even if it meant her daughter felt uncomfortable leaving the house. Even if it meant her husband didn’t speak to her for a week.

Maybe that answered her question, though. If Lila were in danger, she would run right toward it.

Which just led Tia back to Francis.

Tia peeled the sheets off her face, coming to terms with the fact that she would not be falling back asleep. A tall, skeletal man stood in the dark corner of the bedroom.

Tia slammed her hand over the lamp switch on the bedside table, and her brother’s features snapped into focus.

“Jesus,” she said, heart thrumming. “Why are you standing there like a psychopath? Have you been there all night?”

Rylan blinked. “Sorry.” He stayed where he was. “Couldn’t sleep.”

That was, distinctly, not an answer. Tia checked the time—6:00 a.m.—and loosened the sheets that mummified her lower body. Over twenty-four hours since they’d found the radio cord cut. “And I’ll never sleep again after that.”

“Sorry,” he repeated.

“What’s wrong?” Tia briefly considered throwing a pillow at his face to reanimate him, but she decided against it. “Was Mom up?” She knew Lila’s past fits of insomnia often involved waking Rylan up to talk with him at late hours of the night.

Rylan shook his head.

“Dad?”

A nod.

Figures.“Why were you up in the first place?”

He waved his hand at his bed. The sketchbook peered out from underneath the comforter, which had been tossed like a candy wrapper. He must have gotten out of bed in a hurry.

Maybe he’d had a bad dream. There was enough nightmare fuel to go around. Tia peeled herself from bed and guided Rylan to sit. He resisted and made his bed neatly before finally relaxing.

“You slept through every alarm I set for the first three years of high school. You think me drawing and shuffling around could wake you up?” he said.

Tia returned to her own bed. “Oh please, you were in a different room.”

Rylan seemed to be in another world even as he held a conversation with her. It unnerved her.

“A room that shared a vent. And I had the volume on the loudest setting. But no, I had to wake you up myself.”

Tia tossed a pillow into Rylan’s chest, hoping that would hit a switch and snap him out of the cloud that encased him. “My personal alarm clock.”

Rylan picked the pillow up. He seemed a bit more focused, at least. “What did you do at St. Bernadette’s to get up?”

“I slept in. Then I got a nice, personal wake-up from Sister Mary Sebastian every morning. Trust me, I preferred when you did it. So... tell me what happened.”

Rylan quieted. He fixated on picking at a loose thread in the pillowcase’s stitching. Tia waited.

“Dad was on watch.”

Tia waited for more, but he was agonizingly slow. “And?” she prompted at last.

“And... and he’s running away.”