Hale spread the newspapers across the kitchen counter. Luckily, since there was only one every week, there were just three papers to go through—but that still meant a fair amount of reading. Austin pulled two chairs up to the kitchen counter and seated himself on one. Hale took the other. Already clear on what they needed to do, they started to read.

Most of Hidden Creek’s local news was positive. The high school had organized a silent auction that had generated a few thousand dollars toward repairs on their track circuit. The recent food drive had been a tremendous success and helped a hundred nearby families put food on their table for the next month. The goose problem at Moore Wood park pond was *not* a problem, according to a local wildlife expert. The geese simply had to be left alone. Wild animals were wild for a reason, after all.

Nothing about robbery.

Austin scanned each column, careful to read everything. Even the smallest mention might help Hale find the answers he was looking for. Austin was under the impression that Michael was safe and laying low somewhere until whatever storm he was involved in passed, but Hale seemed genuinely concerned, and he didn’t want to brush him off. He got the feeling that Hale didn’t have very many people in his life, despite being moderately popular in high school. Austin knew what it was like to feel alone and unheard, and if he could spare Hale that feeling, he would.

Like it or not, he’d come to like the kid.

Go figure.

“Are you seeing anything at all?” Hale asked with a sigh. “They’re talking about the clean-up effort along the I-45 and how the movie theater is starting a junior filmmakers program, but I’m not seeing anything at all about any suspected robberies or… well, anything, really.”

“I’m not getting much either.” Austin started on the paper from the week of Michael’s suspected disappearance. “Are you reading every single column, just to see if there’s any mention of crime? I’m scanning through all the articles to see if there’s even a mention of something weird happening in the community. I don’t know if we’re going to find something that jumps out at us as suspicious, you know?”

“I know.” Hale sighed. “I’m reading, and I’m going to keep searching, but I just thought that we were on to something. It seemed like such a promising lead.”

“Don’t give in until it’s over.” Austin reached the advertisement section at the back, where townspeople paid a small fee to promote their businesses, post goods for sale, or list job openings. “If we don’t find anything, we’ll figure something else out. That’s all.”

He was about to turn the page when he stopped. One of the words on the listing had caught his eye.

Quarter.

Austin dropped the page he was about to turn and lifted the paper up, examining the listing more closely. It was short and sweet, but the more he read, the more it tripped his alarm bells.

Looking for help.

Need dependable young man for manual labor job at warehouse. Payment as discussed. Quarter down, the rest will be due swiftly. Contract terms to be negotiated.

There was no phone number or address, nor was there a name. It was the strangest listing Austin had ever seen, but when it was planted in with all the other advertisements, it blended right in. If he hadn’t been looking for something suspicious, he would have written it off as an ad by a scatterbrained individual who’d forgot to include their contact information, but the wording of the message combined with the wording from Michael’s note left him feeling like there was something more to it than what met the eye. “Hale, what did the note Michael leave say?”

“‘Grind at eight. Don’t forget. Quarter down, or they will come.’”

“Look at this.” Austin slid the newspaper across the counter to Hale and pointed out the block of text he’d just read.

Hale read the ad. When he was done, he looked up at Austin with widened eyes. “Holy shit.”

“I think that it has something to do with the note Michael left you,” Austin said. “It doesn’t say who’s posting this, or why, and it’s shady as hell.”

“What warehouse are they even talking about? There aren’t any warehouses in Hidden Creek… well, none except for the abandoned one.” Hale’s lips tightened. “Do you think that Michael might be somewhere there? It feels too coincidental for it to be a coincidence. The paper is from three weeks ago, right?”

“Yeah. Right around when you said he disappeared.”

“There’s no way that it’s a coincidence, then. Something is going on.” Hale grinned. “I can’t believe we actually found something!”

“I thought you were banking on it,” Austin said flatly. He narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized Hale. “You weren’t lying to me so you could come back here, were you?”

“Of course I wasn’t,” Hale chirped. It was impossible to tell if he was lying or not—his enthusiasm was off the charts, and his happiness drowned out any superficiality he might have playfully injected into his speech. “It’s just… it doesn’t feel real now that we’ve seen it. How could someone do that in plain sight? This is the local newspaper, you know? I’m pretty sure no one ever reads it, but… it just feels so brazen. Something’s going on in Hidden Creek, isn’t it?”

“At this point, I think you might be right.” Austin didn’t want to admit it, but Hale seemed to be onto something. Michael’s disappearance did seem awfully suspicious now they’d discovered the ad. “What do you want to do about it?”

“What anyone would do in a situation like this,” Hale said. “We’re going to go on a stakeout and check out the warehouse. If anyone’s been using it, we should be able to see signs of recent activity—and if Michael is in there, maybe we can get some answers about what the hell is going on, and why he’s dropped off the face of the earth for the last three weeks.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“I know.” Hale beamed. “It’s because I thought of it.”

Austin rolled his eyes, but on the inside, he was laughing. If he kept his up, his abs were going to be made of steel.

For as pesty as Hale could be, he’d brought energy back into Austin’s life that hadn’t been there before, and Austin was grateful for it. He’d help Hale out to the best of his ability if it meant keeping him around a little longer. He liked the way Hale made him feel whole again.

* * *

The warehouse was just outside of Hidden Creek city limits, off I-45. The road itself looked like it had been in a fight with a jackhammer and lost. As Austin drove it, he had to dodge perilous pothole after perilous pothole. If someone else had come down here unprepared, they’d likely put their car through hell.

Austin parked before they reached the warehouse, tucking his car as best he could off-road to try to keep it out of sight from anyone heading to or from the warehouse. Hale, who looked a little too comfortable in the seat next to him, unbuckled his seatbelt and set his hand on the door handle. Before he opened it, he spoke. “You remember the plan?”

“Watch silently and wait,” Austin said. “It’s not hard.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it. Your phone is on silent?”

“Yep.”

“So is mine. Okay. I think we’re ready. You good to start our stakeout?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then let’s go.”

They left the car together, closing the doors carefully so as not to make too much noise. There was a chance that whoever was in the warehouse had heard the car approaching, but Austin hoped that he’d parked far enough away that it wouldn’t be an issue. Besides, even if someone found his car, it wasn’t like they were staying near it. With any luck, they’d know that they’d been discovered before they were actually found, and it would give them some time to prepare for what was to come… if there was anyone here to begin with. There was still the distinct possibility that the place was empty and that the ad really was just a coincidence.

The only way they’d know for sure was through investigation.

Hale led the way, picking through the brush and forging a path through the trees. When he came to a stop, Austin came to a stop, too. Hale gestured forward, then crouched down behind a bush and started to get comfortable. In the distance, Austin saw the warehouse. It wasn’t anywhere near as frightening as he’d expected an abandoned warehouse out in the middle of nowhere to be.

The metal doors were down, and while they weren’t shiny and new, they weren’t rusted, either. The signage on the front had been stripped away, and there was a dark outline on the face of the building where it had once hung. Apart from the state of the road and the surrounding asphalt and the fact that the windows were boarded up, the warehouse looked like it could be functional, but there was nowhere else Hale could think to go, and Austin didn’t think that he was wrong about his hunch.

“I think we should go investigate,” Hale said in a quiet voice after several minutes of watching. “We’re wasting time sitting here.”

“You’re the one who wanted a stakeout,” Austin whispered back hotly. “We don’t know what’s going on in there. We just got here. The place might be crawling with mobsters, for all you know.”

“You think the mob is involved in this?”

Austin pinched the bridge of his nose. This wasn’t the place to have a conversation. “No, I don’t think the mob is involved in this, but the thing is, we’re not going to know for sure unless we give it some time. The very first thing we need to do is establish that there’s no threat to us if we get in there—that means waiting long enough that we feel confident there’s no human activity here.”

“I’m confident.”

“Well, I’m not.” Austin made a face. Hale needed to learn to be patient. “We’re going to wait here until we know for sure that there’s no threat to us. I want to help you, but I’m not going to put my ass on the line because you want to get this over with quickly. I’m not going to get shot at.”

“The fact that you think we might get shot at is troubling.”

“Why else would Michael not come home for three weeks if he wasn’t goofing off somewhere?” Austin didn’t want to think about it. He’d been thrilled to find the lead, but he was less than thrilled to think that they could be in actual, legitimate danger. It was his duty to make sure that those he was working with stayed safe, and he wasn’t about to let Hale run into trouble head-first.

Both of their asses could be on the line.

“We didn’t prepare for what to do if we get caught in a gunfight,” Hale murmured. He kept his voice hushed, thankfully, but Austin would have preferred that he keep his silence. If there was someone here, and they had security cameras with audio set up…

“If we get caught in a gunfight, you’d better run and pray you make it out alive. That’s about all the advice I have for you right now.” Austin looked Hale in the eyes, trying not to let himself be swayed by them. Hale touched him in a way that no one else had before, and he found himself increasingly weak against him. “Now can we please stop talking? The less noise we make, the less attention we draw our way. The less attention, the more likely it is we make it out alive if something vile is going down.”

“Got it,” Hale said with a nod. “My lips are sealed.”

“You can text me if you need to,” Austin said. “As long as your phone is on silent and is muted, then we should be fine, at least until the sun goes down and the light source gives us away.”

“You think we’re going to be out here for that long?” Hale asked, aghast.

“I don’t know. We’ll deal with that if it happens. For now, let’s zip it, okay? We’ve got a lot of waiting to do, and I’d prefer to do it without getting caught.”