“What’s with the ‘if you’ll accept me’?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I handed her back the phone.

“But does that sound like a guy who had a change of heart?”

“No, but you know how guys are.”

“I do,” Ema said with a frown.

I thought about it. “Jared wrote that he still has one more thing to do and then he can put it all behind him. What was he talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

I mulled it over for a few seconds. “He left school. Do you think it has to do with that?”

“I guess it has to,” Ema said. “School was important to him. He’s as basketball crazy as you are.” She checked her phone and slid it back into her pocket. “Did he tell you why he was home?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I remembered what Rachel had said. “We didn’t come to change his life. Our mission was to find him and make sure he was safe.”

My words came out with more sting than I intended. This all felt strange for some reason. Seeing that e-mail had thrown me off guard a little. Ema, a girl I cared about a whole lot, had this big relationship with some guy she was really into and with whom she exchanged words of . . . love?

I wanted not to care. But I didn’t like it.

For a second—a half second, maybe less—I considered asking her when she had first sent him her picture. Had it been late in the game, maybe right after she received this e-mail? I know how cruel that sounded, but I had seen the way Jared looked at Rachel.

Was that it? Was the answer that simple—and that superficial?

I started thinking about that again and now my emotions turned back to rage at Jared Lowell.

But I stayed quiet.

“He may still be in danger,” Ema said. “He could be covering something up. He could be trying to protect me.”

“Protect you how?”

“There was something going on in his life. Something he was trying to get away from so that he could be with me. But suppose he couldn’t? Suppose he tried to but, whatever it was, he couldn’t escape it.”

We sat there in silence. Finally I asked, “What was he trying to escape?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But maybe we still need to find out.”

Chapter 32

It was dark when I headed home. Niles offered me a ride, but I wanted to walk. I needed to clear my head. The walk home would do me good. Ema’s house was not only ginormous but it sat atop a ginormous plot of land. I started down a driveway that had to be a quarter mile long.

When I reached the bottom of the hill, I spotted the familiar car across the street. It was black with tinted windows. Its license plate number was A30432. During the Holocaust, prisoners in Auschwitz had numbers tattooed on their arms. Lizzy Sobek had survived that death camp. Her tattoo number?

A30432.

The car was here for me. I didn’t walk toward it. I would let them make the first move.

The back door opened. The man I had called Shaved Head stepped out. He wore a dark suit and tie. I knew now that his name was Dylan Shaykes. As a young child, curly-haired Dylan Shaykes had vanished, never to be seen again. I didn’t know what happened or how he had joined Abeona, but he had been watching me from the beginning.

The black car drove away, leaving Dylan alone on the street with me.

“Funny thing,” I called to him.

“What?”

“I’ve never seen the driver. Who is he?”

Dylan didn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to. “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

We started down the street together. Neither of us spoke for the first hundred yards or so. We were waiting each other out. It was odd. I had always thought my . . . what was he anyway? My mentor? My immediate superior? I didn’t know. But I always thought that my relationship with a guy like this would be more teacher-student, master-pupil, like in some karate movie. But it wasn’t. He was on my side. I knew that. He had been with Abeona a long time and would, I’m sure, help me in a pinch, yet there was always a tension between us.

“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” Dylan said.

“What’s that?”

“A tape.”

“Oh, right. Well, since my father was on it, I kinda think it belongs to me too.”

We kept walking.

“My father helped rescue Luther, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So why is Luther our enemy now?”

“It’s a long story,” Dylan said.

“I can walk slower if you’d like.”

“You’re still new to this,” Dylan said.

“Not that new.”

“Do you know who Abeona was?”

“A Roman goddess who protected children.”

“Something like that,” Dylan said. “To be more exact, Abeona is the Roman goddess of outward journeys. She guards over children as they leave their home for the first time to explore the world.”

“Okay,” I said. “And how long has the Abeona Shelter existed?”

He smiled. “No one knows.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was called. You were called. Lizzy Sobek was called. There were ones called before her. There will be ones called after us.”

“And you don’t know when it all started?”

“No.”

“Who calls us?”

“For now? It’s Lizzy Sobek. One day, we will have a new leader.” He smiled at me. “I have been on both ends, Mickey. I’m a rescuer. And I was rescued.”

I flashed back to the “memorial” service for a little boy named Dylan Shaykes. “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

He kept walking.

“Even your father.”

“Yes.”

“You’re okay with that?”

“He’s the reason I was rescued. My father . . .” He closed his eyes for a second, as though in pain. “He was a cruel man.”

“Did Bat Lady rescue you?”

“Her name is Lizzy Sobek.”

“I know. But it’s dangerous to use her real name, right?”

He nodded. “Good point. Yes. She rescued me. I was in the hospital. My father had hurt me. Again. I told the police that I fell down the stairs. Again. I don’t think they believed me, but my father could be a very charming man when he wanted to be. I remember sitting in the hospital room and thinking about hurting myself again. So I could stay longer. I didn’t want to go back to that house. I was scared.” He stroked his chin. “Do you know those containers for disposable needles?”