Benjamin stepped out of the cathedral and into the bright, busy, noisy world of Lower Manhattan. No one paid attention to the quiet, old, decrepit church. No one had any idea what it hid.

Benjamin stood in front of the wrought iron gates, heart pounding. Where could he go from here? If Daniel had been right, and the boys’ kidnapping had been faked, what was his real objective now? The early morning call, Samuel and Neil’s lie, the safe house, the two cars, Janet Coleman, the East Hounds, the Red Brotherhood; it all had to be connected, but he could draw only the faintest lines between each piece.

In the meantime, Benjamin was hungry. His last meal had been dinner the previous night, and it was almost noon.

He entered the stream of people on the sidewalk. As he set out to find a place to eat, his phone rang.

It was Nia. He answered the call.

“Hey.”

“Ben, where are you?”

“I’m in the city. Something important’s come up, and I have to work today.”

“It’s the weekend. Don’t they have someone else who can do the job?”

He thought about telling her the case wasn’t with the NYPD, that he was going solo, but it would’ve made things worse. “No. I’m needed, it’s an urgent case.”

“And how’s it going?”

He grimaced. “I’m making progress. But… it’s more complicated than I thought.”

“We’re at the museum right now. Aniyah’s been asking about you.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Yeah.”

Benjamin rounded a corner and stopped along the wall of a drug store, escaping the flow of the crowd.

“Hi, daddy,” Aniyah said.

“Hey there. I’m really sorry I can’t be with you right now. I’m working.”

“When will you be done?”

He exhaled. “Soon, I hope.”

“Will you be home for dinner?”

Benjamin checked his watch. 11:41 AM. “I’ll try.”

“But will you be there?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Promise. Please.”

Benjamin closed his eyes and exhaled. “Okay. I promise, I’ll be there.”

“Stay safe, daddy.”

He smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Nia took the phone back. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“No. It’s just another case.”

“Look, if you need help with anything…”

“I don’t.”

There was a long silence. Benjamin checked to make sure she hadn’t hung up.

“Tell me if you ever do,” Nia said.

“Okay.” He didn’t mean it. He could solve the case alone, and he would. No help was wanted. No help was needed.

“Get home as soon as you can.”

“I will.”

Nia sighed. “Bye.”

She hung up.

Benjamin didn’t move for a moment. Finally, he pocketed his phone and walked to a pizza shop across the street.

Five minutes later, he sat down at a table with two slices of buffalo chicken pizza and pulled out his notebook. As he took a bite, he flipped through the pages.

The next best step, as far as he could tell, would be to find out who had driven the car that Ezra and Noah had been taken in. Whether the kidnapping had been faked or not, finding that person could lead him to the boys.

He had no leads on the driver’s identity, but maybe focusing on the car could work.

He pulled up his phone’s map and located the Hell Gate Bridge. The car had taken a little more than fifteen minutes to reach the boys from the time it was called, which meant it probably came from some place around a fifteen-minute drive from the bridge.

Benjamin set a route from the Cathedral of the Crucifix to the Hell Gate Bridge, with a start time of 6:30 P.M. on the previous day to adjust for similar traffic conditions, and checked the estimated drive length.

Thirty minutes. The car couldn’t have come all the way from there.

He set a route from Janet Coleman’s apartment to the bridge. The estimated time was between thirty-five minutes and an hour.

The third time, he set the starting point at Samuel Martin’s brownstone.

The estimated driving time was sixteen minutes.

He stared at it. It could easily be a coincidence; there were plenty of other places in the city the car could’ve come from and arrived at the same time. But no other starting point was of any significance to the case, as far as he knew.

According to his records in the NYPD system, Samuel Martin didn’t have a driver’s license. That didn’t mean he hadn’t been the driver, but even if he had been, that raised more questions than it answered. The boys showed no sign of recognizing their father upon entering the car, and there would’ve been no advantage to claiming it was a RideX if the driver was actually their father. If the kidnapping was faked—which itself was a hasty assumption from an untrustworthy source—that could explain some lie, but still, the chance that Samuel had been the driver was small.

As he looked over his notes, and made a few new ones, a picture began to take shape in Benjamin’s mind. There was something there. The lines were becoming clearer.

Benjamin finished his pizza and stood up. As he walked toward the nearest train station, he called a number from his notebook. It took a few moments, but the call was answered.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Martin, it’s Detective Adelson. I need to get in touch with Neil.”

There was a pause.

“Neil? What do you need him for?”

“I need some information to help with the case.”

“Yeah. I’ll… I’ll give you his number.”

Benjamin stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, pulled out his notebook, and jotted the phone number down as Samuel dictated it.

“Thanks for the help,” Benjamin said.

“Yeah. No problem.” Samuel hung up.

Benjamin immediately dialed Neil’s number. No one picked up. He called again. Still nothing. He called a third time. Nothing again.

He exhaled. It wasn’t going to work.

He called the number a fourth time.

“Hello?” a voice asked, sounding on edge.

“Is this Neil?”

“Yeah… yeah, yeah, it is. Who’s this?”

“Detective Adelson.”

“Oh, hey! Any luck with the case?”

“Some. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

There was silence.

“Can we meet in person somewhere?” Benjamin asked. “I can come to you.”

“We can… we can meet… how about the High Line on Twenty-third Street, does that work?”

“I’ll be there by twelve thirty.”

“Right. Me too,” Neil said.

Benjamin hung up and headed down into the subway.

Benjamin stood thirty feet above a narrow street lined by old brick buildings, looking out at the cars and pedestrians.

Built on the remains of an abandoned elevated train track line, the High Line wove through the city like a green vine through a maze of concrete, glass, stone, steel, and brick. The long strip of platform, dotted in greenery and benches, served as a pathway above the streets, and as a viewing spot for tourists and locals alike. The old rails ran through the walkway like a rusted, metallic skeleton, half-buried in gravel, shrubs, and grass.

It was an open location; narrow but long, well populated but not too crowded. Neil hadn’t asked to meet at a secluded location. Benjamin decided to take that as a good sign.

Neil arrived shortly after 12:30. Benjamin saw him approaching from a distance, rounding a bend in the path and striding to meet Benjamin. There was a little spring in his step; perhaps just the way he walked, or perhaps brought on by eager or fearful anticipation. He wore a jean jacket over a light gray shirt, and ran a hand through his messy red hair as he came to a stop next to Benjamin.

“So…”

“Let’s walk,” Benjamin said.

They began to walk along the path, entering a passage through a building. People sat at tables on one side, and several small vendors sold food and souvenirs on the other.

“Do you know anything about the kidnapping of the Martin boys?” Benjamin asked.

“Nothing you don’t already know. Sorry.”

“Hm.”

Benjamin waited until they emerged back into sunlight to speak. He glanced over at Neil. He looked a little nervous, but then again, almost anyone in his position would.

“Do you have a car, Neil?”

Neil frowned. “Yes, I do. Why?”

They walked past a tree surrounded by flowers and tall bushes. Benjamin stayed silent, gazing at the tree, thinking.

“I’m going to tell you what I think happened, and you can tell me what you think.”

“Okay, sure,” Neil said, though he sounded uncertain, maybe even concerned.

“Yesterday evening, at about six thirty, you received a text from Ezra Martin. You took a car to pick him and his brother up at a park in Queens, and then drove them to a warehouse in Long Island City.”

Neil couldn’t hide the shock from showing on his face.

“You were the driver that kidnapped Ezra and Noah Martin.”

Neil seemed at a loss for words. “That’s not—I mean, you can’t just—”

Benjamin came to a stop in the shade of a building.

“You don’t understand, I didn’t kidnap them,” Neil said. “I don’t want to harm those kids. I wouldn’t do that.”

“But you were the driver?”

Neil stared up at him for a long moment, a pained expression on his face. “Yes… yes, I was the driver.”

“And you were working with Samuel.”

Neil looked askance. “Yeah.” When he looked back at Benjamin, there was fear in his eyes. “You’re not going to arrest me, right? I didn’t—I didn’t do anything…”

Benjamin began walking again, and Neil followed.

“I won’t arrest you if you tell me what happened.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s fair.” Neil took a deep breath. “The kidnapping was faked. Samuel, the boys, and me were all in on it. Samuel followed the kids and their friends after school, in disguise and at a distance, to make them think they were being followed by someone. That was my idea. It was vague, but just enough to make the kidnapping believable. After that, I picked the boys up in a car and drove them to a safe house with food and supplies to last us a while.”

“But why the faked kidnapping?”

“The boys were in danger. They needed to get away. The plan was to use the kidnapping to get them out of the city without a trace. They could live upstate under new identities with their aunt and uncle.”

“In danger from the Red Brotherhood?”

Neil gave a start. “You know about them?”

“Knowing things is my job.”

“Yeah… it was them.”

“But why were the boys targets?”

Neil shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you can’t tell me?”

Neil observed the passing pedestrians. “I don’t know.”

“And where are the boys now?”

Neil’s expression reverted to one of fear. He had trouble forming a response.

“Where are they?” Benjamin repeated.

“They’re gone,” Neil whispered.

Benjamin stopped. “What do you mean?”

“They’re gone, they’re just gone,” Neil said, staring at a stretch of rusted rails in shock. “We went to sleep last night in the safe house, sure everything had gone right. I called Samuel to let him know we’d made it. And… when I woke up this morning… the boys were gone. There was another car in the safe house, too; that one was there so no one could track the first car from the park to our final destination. But it was gone.”

“Someone else kidnapped them? For real?”

“Yeah. Maybe we were followed. Maybe someone knew where the safe house was. I don’t know.” Neil sat on a wooden bench and stared at the grass across the walkway. Benjamin sat next to him. “I don’t think it was my fault. Was it… was it my fault?”

“No. You were just doing what you thought was right. You were helping a friend.”

“I could’ve stayed up… I could’ve protected them…”

“You have any idea how we could follow them?”

“Their phones had GPS tracking enabled, but those got left behind.”

“Samuel said tracking wasn’t turned on.”

“Really? Well, if he’d told you the truth and showed you where they were, they wouldn’t be able to escape the city in secret.”

“So why’d he hire me in the first place? He clearly didn’t need my help at the time.”

Neil shrugged. “I don’t think he wanted to. But if he hadn’t done something, you would’ve gotten a Missing Persons squad involved, turned it into a whole debacle. He hired you to keep the investigation under control. The point was to be as inconspicuous as possible.”

“And staging a kidnapping was inconspicuous?”

“We tried to do it quietly, under the radar of the cops but hopefully on the radar of the Red Brotherhood. If the kids disappeared with no explanation, the Brotherhood would know we got them out, and they’d try to hunt them down. But with a kidnapping, one not linked to me or Samuel, they’ll think someone else did it, and the boys are as good as dead to them. They wouldn’t try to track an anonymous kidnapper; where would they even start?”

“I’m not sure that’s the best plan.”

“Neither am I, now!” Neil retorted. “But we needed to get them out fast. We got word earlier this week that the Brotherhood had the boys in their sights for something this weekend. Kidnapping, murder, we weren’t sure what. It didn’t matter. We had to do something.”

“You have any idea who could’ve taken them from the safe house last night?”

“Ideas, sure. Clues, no.”

“Does Samuel know?”

Neil exhaled. “I haven’t found the courage to tell him. I wanted to when I showed up at the brownstone this morning, but you were there, and I… I just couldn’t work up the nerve, I guess. I mean, how do I tell him that?”

“I’ll handle it.” Benjamin stood up from the bench. “Thanks, Neil.”

Neil shook his head. “You weren’t supposed to know any of this.”

“Like I said… knowing things is my job.”

Benjamin walked away, entering the dappled shade of a row of trees.

What had once been a potential kidnapping, then a real kidnapping, then a faked kidnapping, was once more a real kidnapping. And despite the new information he had learned, Benjamin found himself lost. Almost.

The clean picture he had of the case was shattered; the reality was far more complicated than he had bargained for. But he did have a few leads, and more than a few new ideas.

As Benjamin walked along the High Line, looking for the nearest exit down to the street, his phone rang.

It was Samuel Martin. He accepted the call.

“I’ve got great news,” Samuel said. “I found them.”

It took Benjamin a moment to register what he’d heard. “What?”

“My sons. They’re back home now. That RideX took them to the wrong address, way across the city, and they got lost. They have a friend in the neighborhood and stayed the night at his house. They got back a little while ago.”

“Really? That’s fantastic.”

“Thanks for all your help with the investigation. I wish I could do something to make it up to you.”

“Well, could I speak to one of your sons?”

Silence.

“They’re with their friend right now,” Samuel said. “I’d hate to interrupt. But they’re having fun. Glad to be back, too.”

“Of course. So you don’t need my help anymore?”

“No. Just enjoy your weekend.”

“Yeah. You too.”

Samuel hung up.

Benjamin pocketed his phone. As much as he wished it weren’t the case, every single word Samuel had said on that call had been a lie.

Samuel had been trying to get him to end the investigation, and Benjamin had an idea why. He knew where to go to find out if his hunch was right.