MADDOX WOKE UP Monday morning to the wafting scent of J.Lo Glow in his nostrils. Madison stood over his bed, in a red-and-pink dress and five-inch heels. “Why aren’t you up?” she hissed.

He jumped to his feet with a start. By the pale whitish light from the window, he could tell it was still early, but he was surprised he’d fallen asleep. All day yesterday, he’d stressed over packing and mapping the correct route and poring over the news. And then for hours last night, his head had swirled with anticipation. A girl was missing. Only they knew who did it. And Brett was out there, arms outstretched, waiting for them to come and play.

It scared the crap out of him. It would sound wussy if he admitted how petrified he’d been the night Marissa Ingram had trapped them all in the bathroom at the Easter Bunny party, a shard of glass to Aerin’s throat…but he had been. And Brett was a murderer. What if this was a trap? It felt like walking into a shark tank in nothing but swim trunks and a snorkel mask. But he thought again about Brett’s letter. The long, heartbreaking silence on Seneca’s end of the line after Madison had finished reading. The determined quiver in her voice when she’d convinced Aerin that they needed to get Brett. He would do anything for Seneca. And also? Seeing her face-to-face, he would finally be able to check in with her…and tell her how he felt.

Maddox climbed out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. The house was quiet and still; his mother and stepfather were sound asleep in the bedroom at the end of the hall. Madison followed him toward the bathroom, and he gave her a weary glare and half shut the door. “Have you figured out how you’re going to explain being away to Mom and Dad?” he asked her.

“How do you plan to explain it?”

“I decided to do a couple of days at the track camp in Jersey. It’s starting today.” Because he’d dominated at the national high school track meet that spring, he’d received several invitations from track camps all over the country, inviting him to attend for free. Leaflets for programs in Florida, Maine, Indiana, and Kansas littered his bureau.

“Well, don’t worry about me.” Madison tapped a giant hard-shell rolling suitcase. It was the one she’d used for their three-week trip to visit her cousins in Korea last year. “Let’s go.”

Maddox gawked at the bag. “Do you plan on being away all summer?”

Madison retreated to her bedroom and appeared with yet another suitcase, this one only slightly smaller and printed in cheerful pink plaid. “I might want to be a detective, but I don’t want to look like one.” She grabbed the handles of both bags and headed toward the garage. “Let’s go!”

A FEW HOURS later, after listening to Beyoncé’s Lemonade on repeat, they crossed a small bridge that led into the little seaside town of Avignon. A choppy blue-gray bay gave way to a swanky boutique hotel called the Reeds at Shelter Haven, and then they were spat out onto a main drag lined with surf shops, a saltwater taffy store, and a place called Ralph’s 5 & 10 that had boogie boards and inflatable beach loungers displayed on the sidewalk. It was midmorning, and the street bustled with vacationers. A pancake house had a line out the door. Maddox spied a sign taped to a telephone pole. Missing. It showed a photo of the girl Maddox had stared at last night until his eyes blurred. Chelsea Dawson. Five feet five, blue eyes, blond hair.

Chelsea was a dead ringer for Helena. In the photo, she was cradling a Labrador puppy. She wore a Pandora bracelet containing charms of a horse and a camera. Unlike the racy photos she posted on Snapchat and Instagram, in this one Chelsea seemed like a girl who sang Disney ballads until she was twelve and wrote poetry about boy bands and unicorns. Maddox gripped the steering wheel hard, feeling charged. They were going to save this girl and get Brett in the process. They had to.

“So this is what I read about Chelsea,” Madison said, following his gaze to the poster. “She’s from outside Philly. Her family has a house here and comes every summer. She’ll be a senior at Villanova, and until this year, she volunteered at a facility where they do equine therapy for kids with special needs.” She made a face. “I don’t get horsey girls. What’s the big draw of shoveling huge piles of poop all day?”

Maddox felt impatient. “What do you know about the night she went missing?”

“I’m just giving you a full picture. As I was saying, she was really into horses…but then she started her Instagram account. This girl posts All. The. Time. Mostly selfies. The pictures were pretty innocent at first, but they became sexier and sexier over time. She went from having a few hundred followers to tens of thousands. Her account isn’t private, and a lot of the comments are pretty pervy.” Madison wrinkled her nose. “But I guess she likes the attention.”

Maddox bit his thumbnail as they waited for a group of kids to cross the street. “What if Brett believes he’s doing the world a favor by killing these women? Like he goes after women who he finds morally shameful. Helena because she was with an older man. Seneca’s mom because…” He trailed off, hating to think of it. “She kissed him and was married. Who knows? Maybe he took Chelsea because he thinks she’s a narcissist.”

“Maybe,” Madison said, her gaze on her phone again. “The last thing Chelsea posted was from the night she went missing. She’s half-naked, and she practically broke Instagram with it.”

“I saw it.” It was hard not to stare at Chelsea and her come-hither eyes, pouty lips, and nipples that were visible through her gauzy blue dress.

“The thing is, she looks really happy. I bet she had no clue someone was going to kidnap her in the parking lot later that night.”

Maddox shivered despite the warm burst of sun. He thought of the last pictures they’d seen of Helena before she died, quick snaps they’d found on an app called Under Wraps. In the last photo, she looked hopeful, happy, and in love.

She hadn’t known anything bad was about to happen to her, either.

The group had arranged to meet at a coffee shop called Island Time, which had a fifties-style sign in the parking lot and a turquoise-painted roof. Seneca had texted Madison about an hour ago to report that she’d already arrived, and as Maddox navigated the Jeep into a space, his chest burned with nerves.

Madison pushed through the double doors, and a bell jingled. A figure sitting at a table at the back of the café looked up. Don’t stare, Maddox thought, but he couldn’t help himself. It felt like a hummingbird had been unleashed in his stomach. Seneca wore the same jean jacket she’d had on when she’d stepped off the train in Dexby the first time they’d met. Her cheeks were adorably pink, her shoulder-length hair was full around her face, and her eyes were bright and stunning. It was jarring being in Seneca’s presence after spending so many hours thinking about her. He’d forgotten that she was just as human as everyone else, with ragged fingernails, a Band-Aid on her finger, and an untied sneaker.

Seneca hugged Madison first, and then she turned to Maddox. As she stepped forward, he worried she was going to spread out her arms for a hug…and then he worried she wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure which gesture would make him feel worse, so he crossed his arms over his chest. “Hey” was all he could muster.

“Hey,” Seneca said back, sounding just as tentative—maybe even defensive. Maybe his hey had come out too pitying. Seneca hated being pitied.

Maddox gritted his teeth. Cut through the bullshit. Seneca was hurting. Brett’s letter was brutal. He needed to tell her he was here for her.

But then the door opened again, and Aerin Kelly breezed in, clad in a flowing maxi dress, round sunglasses, and a bag with two interlocking Cs on the front. She looked tanner, blonder, and even more glamorous than when Maddox had seen her last. “Sorry I’m late,” she breathed. “I had to take a train and two buses and a cab to get to this place.”

“Maddox and Madison just got here, too,” Seneca said, and everyone sat down. She eyed Maddox carefully. “Did you have any luck researching Metro-North?”

Maddox rolled his shoulders. Yesterday, he’d looked into how to identify passengers on Metro-North—maybe there was a way to track Brett’s train tickets from when he stalked Helena. But it had been a dead end. “When you buy tickets, you don’t give your name. And while some of the trains have surveillance cameras, the Dexby line doesn’t. Grand Central Station has tons of security cameras that might have picked up an image of Brett, but we’d need police permission to access them. And even if we did do that, I doubt they saved images from five years ago.”

“I looked into his posts from Case Not Closed,” Madison said, sounding just as frustrated. “They’re impossible to trace.”

“Shit,” Seneca muttered, biting her lip.

“I’m guessing the Target search didn’t go well, either?” Maddox asked uneasily.

Seneca stared into her coffee cup. “I called and asked if anyone remembered someone named Brett working there five years before, both by his name and description. Nobody did, no surprise. They also told me they recycle their security footage every thirty days—so there’s no chance of Brett on camera. They have a Facebook page, and it goes back five years, but I didn’t see pictures of Brett anywhere.”

Aerin tapped her nails against the table. “Do you think Brett lied about working at Starbucks?”

Seneca’s features brightened for a split second, as if she would love nothing more than for this to be true. But then she shook her head. “I think he’s telling the truth—in some capacity. Anyway, then I contacted Darcy on CNC—she goes as TheForceWithin? She helped get some Starbucks records in that case in Missouri where a rapist was targeting women at their local coffee shops. She had a contact in Starbucks corporate. Anyway, I asked if she could look into that particular franchise’s employee history. She said she’d try, but it might take a while.” Seneca tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I’m not sure what good it will do. Brett probably used an alias, with a fake social security number.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Maddox pointed out. “What if your mom was his first victim? Maybe he’d used his real name, and all his names after that were aliases.”

Seneca flinched at the mention of her mom. “Maybe. I also called the hotels he stayed at in Dexby in April. It turns out that the Restful Inn and the Dexby Water’s Edge don’t have operational cameras. The Ritz-Carlton in New York might have, but they erase their security data after a month.”

“What about a credit card?” Maddox remembered how Brett had paid for the suite at the Ritz-Carlton—and the big party that had ensued.

“All the hotels say he paid in cash.” She massaged her temples. “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack, guys. We have to think. We don’t know Brett’s real name. We don’t know how old he is, where he’s from. Can anyone remember what he looks like, exactly? It’s like the more I think about him, the blurrier he gets in my mind.”

Maddox stared at the popcorn ceiling. Weirdly, he couldn’t remember, either. Brett was one of those guys whose features were so generic he could look different from every angle. Maddox thought of his clothes—those gold sneakers and oversized sweaters at Le Dexby Patisserie, the too-small tuxedo he’d squeezed into at Kevin Larssen’s engagement party, the crisp button-down and skinny jeans at the Ritz-Carlton. His style was all over the map. “And none of us have a photo of him?” he checked. They’d had their phones out plenty when they were together in Dexby. He’d certainly snapped enough pictures of Seneca.

“Nope,” Seneca answered.

“He texted me one once.” Aerin scrolled through her phone, then frowned. “But I didn’t save it, and I got a new phone since we saw Brett….”

A blaring sound made Maddox shift his gaze to the TV that hung over the counter. A woman reporter with dark hair and crinkles around her eyes stood at the Ralph’s mart they’d just passed with two red-eyed adults. “Investigators are searching for a missing vacationer named Chelsea Marie Dawson,” the reporter said. “Miss Dawson was at a party on the night of July tenth but never came home. Witnesses at the party say they saw her leave down a secluded path through the dunes, but no one can say what happened to her after that. If you have any information, please call the number below. Mr. and Mrs. Dawson are desperate for their daughter to come home safely.”

The reporter gestured to the man and woman next to her. Chelsea’s father made a statement begging for Chelsea to come home—and offered a reward to anyone who came forward with information. Chelsea’s mother looked comatose. A few pictures of Chelsea appeared on the screen, including the sweet one from the Missing poster. A lump formed in Maddox’s throat, and he looked away.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

A guy in a Phillies ball cap stood behind the counter, bending a straw back and forth. He had angular shoulders, a five o’clock shadow, and a jutting chin. “I can’t believe it happened,” he said softly, his gaze on the screen. “She seemed so sweet.”

“Do you know her?” Seneca asked.

The guy, whose name tag read Corey, kept his eyes down. “Not really, but my manager does.” He held up a finger and scurried into the back. Moments later, a petite girl with dirty-blond hair came to the counter. “Hi, I’m Kate. Yeah, everyone’s asking about Chelsea today. I didn’t know her that well, but I was at that party the other night. The one she went missing from.”

Maddox leaned on the counter. “Did you notice anything weird about her?”

Kate spun a silver ring around her finger. “Not really. She was mostly taking selfies. She had this new selfie stick, a motorized thing with a fan.” She made a face like she thought that was kind of lame, but then quickly shifted her features back to neutral.

Maddox fiddled with his napkin. “Did you know everyone at the party, or were there a lot of vacationers?”

She shrugged. “I recognized almost everyone. It’s a condo complex connected to a private beach club, and there was a guest list. I still can’t believe this happened.”

The door chimed, and new customers stepped inside. “Corey?” Kate called toward the back room. Corey didn’t materialize. Kate rolled her eyes, then smiled apologetically at Maddox and the others. “Sorry, I’ve gotta take this.”

Maddox leaned across the table after she left. “We need to get our hands on that guest list. If it was invite-only, and Brett’s telling the truth on CNC about being at the party, then he’s been making friends here. Someone must know him.”

“Though by a different name, obviously.” Seneca drained the rest of her coffee.

Madison looked around the café with trepidation. “Just think. Brett might have sat at this very table.”

Seneca blotted her lips. “Let’s not waste time feeling scared. Let’s play.”

Aerin tapped her manicured nails against the tabletop. “How?”

Seneca was about to speak, but the news came back on. A big banner that read Just In flashed across the screen. “Breaking news from the Avignon police station,” the reporter said excitedly. “Sources say that the authorities have a person of interest in the Chelsea Dawson case. Mr. Jeff Cohen, Chelsea’s twenty-one-year-old ex-boyfriend, was brought into police custody for questioning earlier today. Mr. Cohen was the last person to see Miss Dawson before she vanished, and eyewitnesses attest that the couple had been arguing. No one can account for Mr. Cohen after eleven until early the next morning. We’ll have more news on this developing situation as we receive it.”

A picture of Jeff Cohen appeared. He had thick eyebrows, a square jaw, large dark-rimmed eyes, and wavy brown hair pulled into a little knot at the crown of his head. Maddox twisted his mouth. He so didn’t understand hipster hairdos.

Then he realized what this meant. He turned back to the table and, for the very first time, met Seneca’s gaze straight on. When Seneca stared back at him, he could feel the connection between them. “That’s who Brett pointed to…”

“On Case Not Closed,” Seneca finished, narrowing her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?” She picked up her phone, tapped the screen, and began to type. After she was finished, she slid the phone across the table for the others to read. Case Not Closed’s website was on the screen, and Seneca had accessed the private-message part of the site and composed a message to BMoney60.

Got your letter, B. We’re here. And we’re coming for you.