“Does Claire know?”

“I don’t know. If she does, she’s never said anything.”

“This affair. Is it serious?”

“Yes.”

“How did Aimee find out?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure that she did.”

“Aimee never said anything to you?”

“No. But . . . like I said. There were changes. I would go to kiss her cheek and she’d pull back. Almost involuntarily. Like I repulsed her.”

“That might be normal teenage stuff.”

Erik hung his head, shook it.

“So when you were spying on her, trying to check her e-mails, besides wanting to know what she was up to . . .”

“I wanted to see if she knew, yes.”

Again Myron flashed to Claire, this time to her face on her wedding day, starting a new life with this guy, smiling like Esperanza had on Saturday, no doubts about Erik even though Myron had never warmed to him.

As if reading his mind, Erik said, “You’ve never been married. You don’t know.”

Myron wanted to punch him in the nose. “You say so.”

“It doesn’t just happen all at once,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“It just starts to slip away. All of it. It happens to everyone. You grow apart. You care but in a different way. You’re about your job, your family, your house. You’re about everything but the two of you. And then one day you wake up and you want that feeling back. Forget the sex. That’s not really it. You want the passion. And you know you’re never going to get it from the woman you love.”

“Erik?”

“What?”

“I really don’t want to hear this.”

He nodded. “You’re the only one I’ve told.”

“Yeah, well, I must live under a lucky star then.”

“I just wanted . . . I mean, I just needed . . .”

Myron held up a hand. “You and Claire are none of my business. I’m here to find Aimee, not play marriage counselor. But let me just make something clear because I want you to know exactly where I stand: If you hurt Claire, I’ll . . .”

He stopped. Stupid to go that far.

“You’ll what?”

“Nothing.”

Erik almost smiled. “Still her knight in shining armor, eh, Myron?”

Man, Myron really wanted to punch him in the nose. He turned away instead, turned toward a yellow house with two cars in the driveway. And that was when he saw it.

Myron froze.

“What?” Erik said.

He quickly averted his gaze. “I need your help.”

Erik was all over that. “Name it.”

Myron started walking back toward the path, cursing himself. He was still rusty. He should have never let that show. The last thing he needed was Erik going off half-cocked. He needed to hash it out without Erik.

“Are you good with a computer?”

Erik frowned. “I guess so.”

“I need you to go online. I need you to put all the addresses on this street into a search engine. We need a list of who lives here. I need you to go home right away and do that for me.”

“But shouldn’t we do something now?” Erik asked.

“Like what?”

“Knock on doors.”

“And say what? Do what?”

“Maybe someone is holding her hostage right here, right on this very block.”

“Very, very doubtful. And even so, knocking on doors will probably get them to panic. And once we knock on one door at this hour, that person will call the police. The neighbors will be warned. Listen to me, Erik. We need to figure out what’s what first. This could all be a dead end. Aimee might not have taken that path.”

“You said you thought she did.”

“Thought. That doesn’t mean much. Plus maybe she walked five blocks after that. We can’t just stumble around. If you want to help, go home. Look those addresses up. Get me some names.”

They were through the path now. They moved past the gate and walked back to their cars.

“What are you going to do?” Erik asked.

“I have a few other leads I want to follow up on.”

Erik wanted to ask more, but Myron’s tone and body language cut him off. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve finished the search,” Erik said.

They both got in their cars. Myron watched Erik drive off. Then he picked up the cell phone and hit Win’s speed dial.

“Articulate.”

“I need you to break into a house.”

“Goody. Please explain.”

“I found a path where I dropped Aimee off. It leads to another cul-de-sac.”

“Ah. Do we have a thought then about where she ended up?”

“Sixteen Fernlake Court.”

“You sound fairly certain.”

“There’s a car in the driveway. On the back windshield is a sticker. It’s for teacher parking at Livingston High School.”

“On my way.”

CHAPTER 26

Myron and Win met up three blocks away near an elementary school. A parked car here would be less conspicuous. Win was dressed in black, including a black skull cap that hid his blond locks.

“I didn’t see an alarm system,” Myron said.

Win nodded. Alarms were minor nuisances anyway, not deal breakers. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

He was. On the dot.

“The girl isn’t inside the house. Two teachers live there. His name is Harry Davis. He teaches English at Livingston High School. His wife is Lois. She teaches at a middle school in Glen Rock. They have two daughters, college age, judging by the pictures and the fact that they weren’t home.”

“This can’t be a coincidence.”

“I put a GPS tracker on both cars. Davis also has a well-worn briefcase, stuffed with term papers and lesson plans. I put one on that too. You go home, get some sleep. I’ll let you know when he wakes up and starts to move. I’ll follow. And then we’ll be on him.”

Myron crawled into bed. He figured sleep would never come to him. But it did. He slept deep until he heard a metallic click coming from downstairs.

His father had been a light sleeper. In his youth, Myron would wake up at night and try to walk past his parents’ room without stirring Dad. He had never made it. His father did not wake up slowly either. He woke with a start, like someone had poured ice water down his drawstring bottoms.

So that was how it was when he heard the click. He shot up in the bed. The gun was on the night table. He grabbed it. His cell phone was there too. He hit Win’s speed dial, the line that rang for Win to mute and eavesdrop.