Benjamin Adelson sat across from Samuel Martin on a burgundy couch. Warm, bright beams of sunlight streamed in through the windows onto the hardwood floor and olive-green carpet. They were in the living room, a spacious area with a massive TV, artwork on the walls, and a modern chandelier. Samuel moved a chair to sit opposite the couch and sat down. A low glass table separated the two, where several large books were stacked upon a marked-up map.

After informing Samuel of what had happened at the park and the early morning phone call, Benjamin pulled out his leather notebook and began to write.

“The call was at two nineteen this morning. I think it was from one of your sons. What kind of phones do they have?”

“Ezra and Noah both have CruiseTech Eight Pros, something like that. Whatever model came out last month.”

“Do you use the tracking feature?”

Samuel hesitated. “No.”

Benjamin watched him closely. It must have been regret he’d seen in his eyes. “Okay. Why would they have taken a RideX cab around six, never arrived home, and only called me for help at two in the morning? What happened during those six hours?”

“They never stay out late like that, unless they’re at a friend’s house.”

Benjamin remembered something. “Aren’t RideX cabs supposed to pick passengers up within ten minutes?”

“Yeah, X stands for express, that’s their whole thing.”

“The car showed up at least fifteen minutes after Ezra requested it. I know for a fact there are plenty of RideX cabs in Queens, and I’ve never had to wait more than the promised ten minutes for one.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Hm.” Benjamin jotted down a note.

He asked Samuel about his sons: detailed physical descriptions, personal histories, all standard questions. After he finished, he closed the leather notebook.

“I’m going to need to file a report on this case. After that, I can get—”

“No. No need for a report. Consider yourself a private investigator.”

“I’m not a freelance detective, I work for the NYPD. If you want me to investigate this case privately, I’m going to need a good reason.”

Samuel exhaled and leaned forward.

“I just want this case solved as quickly and quietly as possible. Off the record.”

Benjamin almost pressed for more, but chose not to.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Martin?”

“Finance.”

“Where?”

“Bluestone Investment Bank.”

“You’ve been there…”

“Five years.”

Benjamin wrote a note, then looked into Samuel’s eyes. “Would you say you have a good relationship with your sons?”

“Yeah. I mean, they don’t listen to me as much as I want them to. But we get along. Why?”

“We have to consider the possibility that they ran away.”

“And why would they have called you?”

“Could’ve been an accident. Point is, we know so little about this case that I’m not convinced there was any third party involved. Is there anyone else who might know anything that could help?”

“My ex, Janet.”

“Where is she now?”

“She moved back to Brooklyn after the divorce.”

As Benjamin began to ask his next question, there was a knock on the door.

Samuel stood up, gesturing for Benjamin to stay put. “I’ll get it.”

There was a small clatter of metal on the other side of the door, as if someone had dropped something.

Samuel peered through the window to see who stood outside, and then opened the door a sliver. Benjamin leaned forward and saw the edge of a man in a light gray button-up shirt and khakis. He caught a glimpse of tousled reddish hair over Samuel’s shoulder.

The two at the door exchanged a few quiet words.

Samuel stepped aside and opened the door wider, and the man outside stepped in. He was shorter than both Samuel and Benjamin but well built, with an amiable and inquisitive look on his face. Benjamin stood up as he approached.

“Hi, name’s Neil O’Connor,” the man said, extending his hand.

“Detective Benjamin Adelson.”

“Sam and me, we’re coworkers,” Neil said. “He called me this morning about his kids. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do to help…”

“Do you know them?”

“Ezra and Noah? Yeah, they’re good kids. I’ve known them for eight years, since I started working with Sam at Bluestone. Used to babysit them, until they grew too big.” Neil laughed. His face quickly fell. “But… there anything I can do?”

“We’ll see. First priority is finding out where that car went.”

“You’re sure?” Samuel asked.

“You suggest I start somewhere else?”

“With who did it,” Samuel said. “Look into Janet. She’s always wanted the kids back.”

“Order of operations. Finding your kids is the most important thing right now. We can find where to place the blame later.” Benjamin looked around. “You have a map?”

“We can use my phone,” Neil offered.

“I prefer physical in this case,” Benjamin said. He sat down on the couch again and pulled a map from under a stack of books on the glass table. There were several points marked across the city, and a small section of streets were circled and shaded red.

“That’s part of the city I don’t want my kids going to,” Samuel explained. “You know. It’s not safe.”

“Right.” Benjamin took a pencil out of his pocket and found the Hell Gate Bridge on the map. He circled it. “Here’s where your sons were last seen.” He held up the map. “Mind if I keep this?”

Samuel hesitated, but Benjamin already had it in his pocket. Samuel nodded.

“Could I have your number?” Benjamin asked, holding out his notebook and a pen.

Samuel wrote his number, and Benjamin took the notebook back.

“All right. I’ll contact you once I’ve made some headway. Hopefully, you’ll have your sons back within the day.”

“Good luck, man,” Neil said.

Benjamin opened the door, nodded, and left.

As he descended the brownstone stairs, he pulled out his phone. There were two texts from Nia.

Benjamin wrote a reply as he walked.

He struggled to hit Send. Both Nia and Aniyah would be disappointed, but there were lives on the line. Solving the case outweighed any other priorities at the moment.

He sent the text, and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk to look for a cab. After a minute, he hailed a nearing taxi, got in, and told the driver where he was headed.

Just over half an hour later, the cab came to a stop in front of Benjamin’s destination. He paid the driver and got out.

Benjamin stood in front of his precinct in Queens, a blocky, tan building lined with dark windows. Several police cars and a few trucks were parked in front and in an adjoining parking lot. Benjamin strode toward the entrance doors and walked into the small lobby.

An officer standing behind the front desk nodded in his direction. “Didn’t expect to see you here today. Don’t you have off?”

“Yeah, forgot about some paperwork I needed to scan,” Benjamin replied. He quickly headed to the elevator before the chat could continue.

He checked his watch on the way up. With the boys’ whereabouts and wellbeing unknown, every second counted.

Before the doors opened all the way, Benjamin strode out and down the hall. He pulled out a key and unlocked a door, stepped inside, and shut it behind him. The large window at the opposite end of the office let in light from outside.

He sat down at his desk and opened a computer in front of him. He pulled up the city’s Domain Awareness System, a network of video feeds from sensors and CCTV cameras mounted on buildings and squad cars. He typed in an address and time.

Hell Gate Bridge

6:45 PM

One search result appeared. Video feed from a patrol car parked along the river. He’d seen it when talking with Jada and her friends.

Benjamin skimmed through the video. He saw himself standing with Jada, Clara, Ezra, and Noah at the edge of the frame. After Clara was picked up in a green SUV, Benjamin slowed down the video. A black car drove into view. The driver wasn’t visible through the tinted windows, but the license plate was readable.

Benjamin jotted down the number in his notebook. The plate was a civilian number, not a TLC number, required for taxis and vehicles from ride-hailing apps like RideX. He should’ve noticed.

Benjamin typed the plate number into the system, along with the car’s manufacturer.

No live feeds recognized the plate, so he went back in time until he hit a result.

The car had last been spotted by a street camera at 7:21 the previous evening entering a warehouse in Long Island City. And it still hadn’t emerged.

The warehouse’s garage door had opened to let the black car in, just enough that a second car, a silver one, could be seen parked inside. There had been no activity outside the warehouse since then, but the camera only covered the front; there wasn’t any feed of the back. Anyone could have exited unseen.

Benjamin exited the system and started to close the computer, but stopped.

He opened a records database and typed in a name.

Neil O’Connor

There were several results, but he quickly found what he was looking for. Neil’s profile was sparse but clean, populated with medical and employment records and a driver’s license. Benjamin scrolled down to the list of employers, which was short and unremarkable. What stood out was what wasn’t there.

Neil O’Connor had never been employed at Bluestone Investment Bank.

Benjamin found Samuel Martin’s records. His were similar to Neil’s, but he had no driver’s license. He, too, had never worked at the banking firm. In fact, neither of them had been employed on the record for the past eight years.

Which meant they’d both lied about being coworkers at Bluestone Investment Bank. The only hint of a lie was the differing accounts they gave of their employment tenure; Neil had claimed to have worked for eight years, and Samuel for five.

Benjamin had made a mental note of the disparity, but chalked it up to bad math or misremembering.

He double-checked it with employment records from Bluestone Investment Bank itself. Sure enough, no Neil O’Connor or Samuel Martin had ever worked for the company.

Benjamin sat back in his chair, staring at the screen in disbelief. There was a reasonable explanation for his findings, but he couldn’t think what it might be.

Whatever the case, finding Ezra and Noah was far more urgent. The rest could be sorted out later.

Benjamin closed the computer, left his office, and departed from the precinct.

Benjamin arrived at the warehouse shortly past 10:15 AM. The surrounding streets were industrial, quiet, empty. Mostly warehouses and overgrown parking lots. The streets were cracked and uneven, and broken glass and litter lay on the bare sidewalks and in patchy beds of weeds. The warehouse he was headed for was closed, the metal garage door pulled down and the small walk-in door locked. He checked to be sure.

Benjamin walked around the block to the other side of the warehouse.

There, the garage door was wide open. Benjamin entered with caution. The warehouse was dimly lit by sunlight, enough to see but not nearly enough to feel safe. Water dripped from rusty chains hanging from crossbeams above. The cement floor, like the sidewalks outside, was uneven and grimy. The cavernous space was mostly empty. Stacks of crates and several rusted barrels stood along one wall. A spare tire leaned against a support column. A black car sat in the corner, shrouded in shadow.

Keeping an acute sense of his surroundings, Benjamin strode quickly to the car. As he feared, it was the same one that had taken the boys. Same plate, same model.

He tried the passenger door, and to his surprise, it opened. He looked inside. There was no one there; he checked the trunk to be sure.

Benjamin examined the car’s interior. It was empty and mostly clean. No damage from a struggle, no blood, no objects left behind. In theory, were he to get the department involved, a forensic analysis could reveal something. Fingerprints and hair could be run through a lab, but it would take too long, and there was no guarantee anything would have a match in the criminal database.

He stepped away from the car and looked around. On the surveillance feed, there had been a second car, a silver one, parked in the warehouse. It was nowhere to be seen.

Benjamin walked over to where it had been parked, and spotted something. He crouched and picked up a phone from the ground. A second was lying in a dirty puddle of water a foot away.

Benjamin turned on the phone. The screen was cracked, the battery almost dead. The CruiseTech logo was visible through a transparent blue case, which had the name Noah M. written in the corner. It was password protected.

He picked up Ezra’s phone, shook off the water and wiped away the grime, and turned it on. To his relief, it was unlocked. The screen displayed a contact card for Benjamin Adelson. One call to the number, lasting a mere eleven seconds, had been made at 2:19 that morning.

Benjamin stood up, pocketing the phone.

He thought about trying to track the silver car with the Domain Awareness System, but he’d only seen the edge of the vehicle on the surveillance feed. No license plate, and not enough of an image to determine the make. And there were too many silver cars and too few surveillance cameras in the area to figure out which car was the right one.

Benjamin noticed three mattresses lined up in the corner of the warehouse. They each had a pillow and a blanket. As he drew closer, he saw Ezra’s skateboard leaning against the wall next to one of the cots, his baseball cap perched on top. Both boys’ backpacks lay on the ground a few feet away.

Benjamin turned his attention to the stacked wooden crates along the warehouse wall. One had been taken down, and its top was askew as if it had been opened. Benjamin pushed the lid aside.

Inside were dozens of stuffed aluminum packets. Benjamin took one out and ripped it open. An energy bar, jerky, and a can of refried beans fell to the floor.

He moved to one of the rusted barrels and tried to open it. The lid was shut tight, so he grabbed a crowbar resting on a metal shelf on the wall and pried it open. It was too dark to see much of what was inside, so he pulled one of the objects out.

He held a shotgun in his hands.

He stared at it for a moment in shock, then shoved it back in the barrel and used his phone’s flashlight to illuminate the inside of the container. It was filled haphazardly with boxes of ammunition, several pistols, an axe, and a can of mace.

The cots, the food, the weapons—it seemed more like a safe house than an ordinary warehouse. As if someone had intended to stay inside for an indeterminate length of time.

But it seemed the boys weren’t in mortal danger. If their kidnapper had wanted them dead, they would be, and Benjamin would know.

He pulled Ezra’s phone out of his pocket. Like Noah’s, it was running out of power. He quickly pulled up the phone’s contacts and looked for anything of note. Ezra hadn’t called anyone the previous night except Benjamin.

He scrolled down until he found what he was looking for. Janet Coleman, ex-wife of Samuel Martin. Her phone number and address were in the contact information.

He called her with Ezra’s phone as he exited the warehouse. She eventually picked up.

“Ezra?”

“This is Detective Benjamin Adelson. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you. Do you mind if I stop by?”

“What is this about? Why are you calling from my son’s number?”

“Ms. Coleman, your sons have gone missing.” He heard a stifled gasp. “They’re fine. They’re alive. I’m going to find them, and to do so, I need your cooperation.”

“Okay, yes,” Janet breathed. “You need my address?”

“I have it. I’ll be there within the hour.”

“So, tell me about your sons.”

Benjamin sat in a creaky wooden chair at a kitchen table with a stained green cover. Harsh sunlight streamed in through the open window on his right, along with the noise of children at a nearby playground, traffic in the street below, and the receding wail of a siren. Janet Coleman sat across from him, legs and arms crossed, staring at the cracked tile floor. She was thin, tall, and didn’t move much. Her dark hair was shaved, and she wore black jeans, a wrinkled yellow blouse, and a loose red scarf.

“Ezra makes music. He loves skateboarding. He’s… the louder of the two, and he teases Noah sometimes, but he always looks out for him. Ezra’s got a lot of friends, and he lets Noah tag along with them.”

They sat in the cramped kitchen of a small Brooklyn apartment. A cool breeze sent a shiver through a row of flowers sitting on the windowsill. Ezra’s phone was charging on the counter, just in case it would be needed again.

“Noah’s quieter. Thinks a lot. But he gets… he gets really passionate about things, whatever new thing he’s learning about in school, or something he heard in the news. I hear he’s a good student.”

“How often do you get to see them?”

“Every other month. If I’m lucky.”

“Really?”

Janet glared at him. “The custody hearing didn’t go my way. And Samuel doesn’t give me a chance to be with them. He wants my boys to be his alone. And because he’s so well off, they’re happy living with him instead of me.”

“If you don’t mind my asking… what prompted the divorce?”

Janet laughed bitterly. “I found out something about him. And I knew I couldn’t be married to that man anymore.”

“What did you find out?”

She glanced at the window. “I can’t. I can’t tell you.” She leaned back and thought for a moment. She took a paper napkin from the table and a pen from the kitchen counter behind her and wrote something down, then slid it across to Benjamin.

He started to ask something, but she put a finger to her lips.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Benjamin read the napkin, which had only two words on it.

EAST HOUNDS

He put it in his pocket, and pulled out a folded-up paper from another pocket. “I was wondering about this.” He spread it out on the table. It was the map from Samuel’s brownstone, with red markings across the city.

Janet stared at it. “You got that from Samuel?”

Benjamin nodded. “Does it mean anything? Does it have anything to do with your sons?”

“The red dots and that shaded area are places the boys aren’t supposed to go. They’re unsafe.”

“Unsafe in general, or specifically unsafe for them?”

“Unsafe for them.”

He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

“Do you think their disappearance could have anything to do with those places?”

“It’s not the places, it’s the people who use them.”

“And…”

“I think they could’ve kidnapped my boys.”

Benjamin leaned forward.

“Who are they?”

Janet stared at him for a long moment, and finally stood up. “I think I’ve said enough. I hope I’ve helped you find my sons.”

Benjamin folded up the map and put it back in his pocket. He stood up and took Ezra’s charged phone from the kitchen counter. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Coleman. I’ll find them. That’s a promise.”

She nodded, and he headed for the door.

As he stepped into the hall, she said, “Be careful. I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.”