EARLY FRIDAY MORNING, Aerin stood in the parking lot of the closest Target to the beach—the only Target, actually, for at least forty miles. The store had just opened twenty minutes ago—they’d meant to come first thing, but there was unexpected traffic on the bridge out of Avignon—and there were a fair number of cars in the parking lot. Tourists, probably, stocking up on beach supplies. The sky was gray with low-hanging clouds, and though a huge storm had whipped through at daybreak, the humidity had rushed back in, and even Aerin’s eyeballs felt sticky.

“You holding up okay?” Thomas’s fingers closed around hers.

Aerin smiled at him gratefully. “Yeah. Thanks.” It was weird how natural Thomas’s presence felt. Like he’d been part of her life—and this investigation—since the start. All at once she couldn’t remember how she functioned without him around.

Seneca got out of the Jeep and surveyed the parking lot. Her face was gray, and she kept pressing her hands against her cheeks as if making sure they were still there. Aerin watched her carefully. A Target in Annapolis was where Seneca’s mom was last seen; Seneca had told her that she hadn’t actually been to a Target since her mother was killed. Just driving by the stores gave her panic attacks.

Maddox pressed the lock button on the key fob. “So you think he means Starbucks, right? In his letter, that’s where he said they spent time together.”

Seneca shot him a look. “You make it sound like they were friends.”

“I—I didn’t mean it like that. I just…”

“It’s not a crime that your mom talked to Brett,” Aerin jumped in. “Brett charmed Helena, too.”

Seneca stared at Aerin helplessly, and Aerin could guess at the thoughts churning in her brain. They were probably the same emotions she felt—fury, disbelief, devastation, all of it fresh and intense. The details in Brett’s letter had ripped off a Helena-sized Band-Aid Aerin had tried so hard to keep adhered to her skin for years now. Underneath was a wound that was still bloody, raw, and very unhealed.

All at once, Aerin regretted losing touch with Seneca this summer. It felt selfish…but also self-destructive. If they’d been in touch, if they’d really talked, maybe handling this now—this pain so specific to both of them, this hell only the two of them understood—might be a little more bearable.

“Come here.” Aerin pulled her into a hug. They stood like that for a long time, both of them silently suffering. “I’m sorry,” Aerin whispered. “And if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. We can handle all of it. We can go in there.”

Finally, Seneca broke away and wiped her eyes. “No,” she said shakily. “Brett’s trying to get to me. He thinks bringing me to a Target, making me re-create what he described in the letter is going to wear me down. But I won’t let it. Come on. We don’t have much time left.”

She turned and marched toward the doors. Madison glanced at Aerin, and Aerin shrugged. Seneca wasn’t any more over what happened than Aerin was. But they were alike in that way—they just needed a distraction, something else on which to concentrate instead.

Shopping carts jammed the front of the Target store. The air was cool and smelled like buttered popcorn. The Starbucks, set off to the right, was empty of patrons, and one of the sleepy-looking baristas was reading an Us Weekly next to the espresso machines. They didn’t seem to care as Aerin and the others poked around the tables, the gift shelves, and big bags of coffee beans for a clue. Then Aerin noticed a lone drink sitting on the pickup counter. The name Collette was scrawled across it. Her heart stopped in her chest.

She pointed it out to Seneca. Seneca looked like she was going to explode. She darted over and picked up the cup. “Who is this for?” she asked the girls behind the counter.

The shorter of the two walked over and inspected the name. “Huh. Not sure.”

“You don’t remember who ordered it?”

The girl shook her head. “Sorry, no. We had a busy morning.”

Seneca looked chagrined. Thomas nudged his chin at the register. “Go through your receipts. Figure it out. I’m a cop. This is official business.”

“Thomas.” Aerin felt uneasy. “What good is that going to do?” Brett wouldn’t be stupid enough to use a credit card.

But to her surprise, the barista was compliant, glancing at the coffee order on the side of the cardboard cup and then looking at the register tape. “Okay, so there were only three Americanos,” she said. “One at 7:33, one at 7:41, and one at 8:02. All of them paid with cash.”

Aerin looked at the clock over the bar. It was eight thirty. Had Brett really been here so recently?

Thomas eyed the barista again. “Do you have security cameras?”

The barista looked suspicious. “Yeah…”

“Can we see them?”

The barista’s eyes went blank. “I’ll have to ask my manager. Unless, um, you have a warrant?”

Aerin groaned. That might take forever—and they didn’t have forever. She snatched the Collette drink off the counter, looking at the cup from all angles. If this was a clue, what was it supposed to tell them?

“Uh, miss?” The taller barista peeled away from the counter. “You can’t take that if it’s someone else’s….”

Aerin ignored her, walking straight out of the store with the cup in her hand. The others hurried behind. It began to drizzle, then rain harder, and people jogged in from the parking lot with jackets over their heads.

She pulled off the plastic sip top, and everyone peered into the cup. There was dark liquid inside…and a rolled-up piece of paper. “Whoa,” she whispered as she pulled it out. Coffee dripped off the ends. Had Brett ordered this drink, stuffed this clue inside, and then left?

Seneca unrolled it with trembling hands. Tonite at the Avignon Boardwalk Aquarium, the Oddly Shaped Men, read words across the top. Beneath that was a blurry black-and-white photo of three guys with guitars. It listed today’s date and the aquarium’s address.

“So we go back to the aquarium?” Madison murmured.

Aerin shivered. The sudden rain had sucked the humidity from the atmosphere, and her skin felt chilled. “No way. That place was too creepy.”

Seneca leaned against a stray shopping cart. “We can’t just not go.”

“Look.” Madison pointed at the flyer. “More numbers are circled.” Part of the address and part of the two phone numbers listed had faded pen marks around them.

“That’s the answer.” Aerin sat down on a red bench, pulled out Post-its and a pen from her bag, and wrote down the circled numbers—thirty-nine, eight, five, seventy-four, forty-seven. “Could they stand for letters?” She jiggled the pen.

“Sports jerseys?” Maddox suggested. “Joe DiMaggio was number five. Kobe Bryant’s eight. And there’s an NFL guy who’s thirty-nine—”

Madison snorted. “You really think Brett would know that?”

Maddox looked surprised. “Doesn’t everyone know that?”

“Wait.” Seneca pursed her lips. “Maybe they’re GPS coordinates.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Thomas said.

“So maybe longitude and latitude?” Maddox jumped in.

Thomas nodded. “The latitude coordinates around here start with thirty-nine, and longitude is seventy-four, which was what made me think of it. But you’re missing a few numbers for it to give a precise location.”

“What about the numbers circled on the menu?” Maddox asked. “It led to an address in Avignon, but maybe it’s part of a bigger picture.” He wrote nineteen and ninety-three on Aerin’s list.

“If that’s the case, then we have to include this place, too,” Madison said. “Brett might be using all the clues to spell out something.”

“Target’s address?” Madison pointed to the number on the building. Twenty-two.

Aerin grabbed her phone, opened Google, and found a site that mapped GPS coordinates. Once she plugged everything in, her eyes widened at a picture on Google Earth. The aerial image showed lush green wetlands just beyond Avignon. Sitting off to the left was a dilapidated brown shack.

A rush of certainty flooded her. “This has to be it.”

Seneca’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “It looks promising. But what about the aquarium? Is Brett trying to send us in two different directions?”

Aerin looked at the image again. This was where Brett had Chelsea. She could feel it in her bones. “I’m going here. I have to.”

Thomas placed his hands on Aerin’s wrist, and she felt the familiar jolt of electricity. “Then we’ll have to divide and conquer,” he declared. “Aerin, I’m going with you.”