AT 10:00 A.M., Maddox and the others stood on the main drag between a pancake house and an office called Golden Shores Realty. The pancake house was a bright space, painted in cheerful shades of yellow and orange; tourists were eating stacks of waffles and fluffy, buttery omelets. But the mood was fraught—there were three cop cars on the sidewalk, and the crimes that had rocked Avignon were on everyone’s lips as they waited in line for a table. Maddox had heard the name Gabriel Wilton from at least three different groups—the news had broken that morning that Gabriel was a “person of interest” in the Chelsea kidnapping case. As the news told it, an anonymous tip on a crime website revealed evidence of a second phone line in Chelsea’s name, and after some scrambling, the cops were able to track it down and look through its records. Apparently, Gabriel and Chelsea texted nonstop, including the night of the party. His flight from his condo without warning was very incriminating.

Seneca breathed in sharply and pointed out an overweight bleached-blond woman wearing too much pink lipstick walking quickly into the real estate office. “There.” It was Amanda Iverson, Gabriel Wilton’s boss. They’d been waiting for her to show up to work all morning. Seneca hurried over to the woman. Maddox followed.

“Mrs. Iverson?” Seneca trilled.

The woman looked up cautiously. Her gray eyes narrowed. But before Seneca could say more, a reporter elbowed past her. “Mrs. Iverson! Can we get a few words?” The reporter shoved a microphone in her face. “How well did you know Gabriel Wilton? Did you ever suspect he might be a kidnapper?”

Mrs. Iverson fumbled to push her keys into the lock. “No comment.”

“Do you know where he might have taken Miss Dawson? Has he ever seemed violent to you?”

The woman finally got the door open. Her keychain, a large pink rabbit’s foot, swung merrily from the lock. “I’ve told the police everything I know.” She hurried into the office and slammed the door shut. The reporter pounded on it, and she pulled down the shade. Shrugging, the man retreated to the sidewalk, then stopped a passerby. “What do you think about the Chelsea Dawson abduction?” he asked smoothly, microphone at the ready.

Thomas glowered at the reporters. “They’re like vultures.”

Madison was studying a report on her phone. “According to this, the cops can’t link Gabriel Wilton to a bank account—he paid for everything in cash. Also, it says his Prius is missing. He took things from the condo. No one has seen him anywhere.”

Maddox sank down onto a wooden bench next to the street. “That’s because he isn’t Gabriel anymore. He’s someone else. And I’m sure he ditched that Prius somewhere it’ll never be found.”

Then he caught sight of a TV broadcast on the set over the counter at the pancake house. A reporter stood in front of the local hospital. He knew they were talking about Jeff Cohen. He was about to turn away when an image caught his eye: a simple selfie of an unsmiling Jeff on Instagram. Below the picture, highlighted for clarity, was a simple, horrifying sentence: Sometimes it’s all just too much.

His jaw dropped. He grabbed his phone and called up Jeff’s account. The post was there. It had uploaded yesterday at 9:08 p.m.—around the time Seneca had hinted that she was into him.

“Seneca,” he said sharply, motioning her over. Her eyes widened as she read the post and the comments beneath it, which said things like, Wish we’d have talked more, man, and A life cut short, and a number for a suicide-prevention hotline.

Seneca’s eyes darted back and forth. “Do we know what happened to Jeff’s phone?”

Maddox nodded. “Cops found it smashed near his body. They figure it was on him when he fell.”

She gritted her teeth. “Or the person that pushed him could have tossed it over after posting his suicide message on social media.”

“Exactly.” It felt like another big point scored for Brett.

Seneca slapped her hands to her sides. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. But we have to get Brett. We have to.” She held up the Sushi Monster menu they’d taken from “Gabriel’s” condo. “This has to mean something.”

A couple in a golf cart whizzed by down the main street. Someone was blasting a thrash metal song out an open car window. Maddox studied it carefully. “Maybe it’s something on Instagram? Have we searched Sushi Monster on her account?”

“Searched on her account, searched for the hashtag in general—there isn’t much,” Aerin grumbled. She showed everyone her phone. A Chelsea video from a few months ago was playing. Chelsea’s face flooded the screen, her smile white, her eyes glittering. “Hey, everyone! I just want to say first that I am thrilled that all of you followed me. Thank you so much for the love! And now, because I know you’ve been waiting, here’s what I’ve been up to this week….”

Aerin and Madison studied Instagram some more, though there were no sushi references. Thomas loitered in front of the realty office, perhaps waiting for Mrs. Iverson to pop back outside. Seneca retreated to Maddox’s bench, her leg bumping against his as she sat. He smiled, but she looked away quickly and anxiously jiggled her foot.

“So,” he said, his voice cracking. He so badly wanted to say something about what had happened between them at the party. Part of him wondered if it even had happened, it had been so fleeting. But it was like that Seneca had disappeared again, swallowed up by Crime-Solving, I’m-Going-to-Get-Brett Seneca. Now definitely wasn’t the right time.

She held the sushi menu in her hands, folding it back and forth over the well-worn creases. “He left this deliberately. I can feel it.”

“Maybe this is Brett’s favorite takeout place?” he posited, but he felt so stymied. They’d been staring at this crazy menu for hours and it just looked…well, like a menu. But suddenly, something caught his eye, and he leaned in. Beams of sunlight illuminated the shiny paper, giving it a slight iridescent sheen and sharpening all its blemishes. Invisible before, he now noticed a few light pencil marks around certain menu items. Edamame, Krab Stick, and the First Date roll were circled.

He pushed it to Seneca. “Look.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she brought the menu closer to her face. “Maybe it’s the first letter of each dish. E, K, P? Or maybe First Date is significant?”

“Or maybe it’s their numbers.” The first dish was number nineteen on the appetizers, the second nine on the sushi nigiri menu, and the third was three on sushi rolls. “Nineteen, nine, three,” he said aloud. “A locker combination?”

Seneca stood and stared across the street at a large decorative sign. When there was a break in the traffic, she hurried across; Maddox loped behind. It was a cartoon map of Avignon. The pancake house they were standing at was drawn at the top of Ninety-Fifth Street, Ralph’s was at the bottom, and it showed the surf shop, the fudge place, the ice creamery, and the Wawa. Spiraling out from the main drag were the other streets, and at the very bottom of the map were abstract swirls that represented the sea.

“What if it’s an address?” she whispered.

They exchanged a glance. Maddox raised his eyebrows. The corners of Seneca’s mouth pulled into a nervous smile. They waved over Madison, Aerin, and Thomas, saying they needed to get going.

“Go where?” Madison asked warily.

“We’ll explain on the walk,” Seneca said. “Come on.”

THE HOUSE AT 19 Ninety-Third Street had three different vehicles with Fraternal Order of Police bumper stickers in the driveway, and at one point, a burly, rugged, strong-looking roughneck appeared on the patio and glared. One Ninety-Ninth Street led to a ramshackle building next to a marina, and it didn’t have an apartment 3. But there was a 1993 Yellowtail Drive, which seemed promising, as yellowtail was an item on the sushi menu, and maybe that was a link.

They drove up wearily, desperate for a lead. The house on Yellowtail Drive was a large yellow Victorian with four second-story decks, three quaint gables, and a fish-shaped wind sock blowing on the front porch. The front offered a view of the town’s public water tower, and Maddox could hear the roaring ocean a block away. When he was younger and it was just him and his mom, his mother used to pin pictures of beach houses just like this one into a scrapbook, saying someday they’d get to vacation somewhere like here.

The house was quiet, and there were no cars in the spaces on the street. There was a big sign out front that proclaimed the house was managed by a local rental agency—the agency, in fact, that Brett, aka Gabriel, worked for—but it didn’t seem like anyone was renting it for the week. Madison curled her hands around the wrought-iron gate. “Do you really think she’s in there? All the windows are huge, and nothing’s covered. We can see right in.”

“Maybe there’s a basement?” Aerin asked.

Seneca peered at the foundation for small windows that indicated a lower floor. “I don’t think there is one.” She started to walk around the perimeter. Her sneakers crunched in the white-gravel yard. “What are you looking for?” Maddox asked as he trailed behind her.

“I’m not sure.” She stooped to pick up something under a pebble, but it was only the top to a Sprite bottle. Maddox peered at the electric meter in the back, then poked his toe into a bush. The yard was pristine. The gravel was carefully raked, like a Zen garden.

But when Maddox crunched around to the other side of the house, he stopped short. “Whoa.” Tied to the railing of the lower deck, bobbing in the sky, was a shiny balloon with a rainbow peace sign printed across its front. Maddox’s breath caught. That same peace sign was the logo on Gabriel’s Bastille Day party flyer. “Guys!”

The others came running. Maddox untied the balloon from its post; the string went taut in his hand, the balloon tugging toward the sky. Was it a clue? There wasn’t any writing on the balloon. No note tied to the string.

He let it lift into the air once more; the balloon recoiled when the string went taut. Seneca frowned. “Do that again.”

Maddox grabbed the balloon between his hands, pulled it down, and let it bob to the sky once more. “It sounds like there’s something rattling around inside,” Seneca said.

Madison backed away. “An explosive.”

Maddox gazed around. The street was so still. It was like no one lived in this town at all. Far away, he could hear a police siren. Overhead, an airplane groaned. When the wind shifted, he swore he caught sight of something moving behind the bushes, but when he looked away, it was gone.

He turned back to Seneca. “Should we open it?”

She nodded, her hands already at the gathered rubber at the bottom of the balloon. Within moments, she had pried it open. Helium began to leak out, and the balloon deflated quickly. She pressed the balloon between her palms. “There is something in here.”

She worked to slash the peace sign in two. A folded piece of paper tumbled out, and Maddox gasped. On the front of the paper, generically typed with the same wonky typewriter as the one that had been used for his letter, was the name Seneca.

Seneca snatched it and unfolded it. Her eyes scanned, and she frowned. “Huh?” Maddox glanced over her shoulder, but the message made no sense to him, either.

Red, white, and awesome

With some caramel syrup and

a spot over the eye.

I met her, and it was love.

Thought she thought so, too.