Then the leader leaned in, voice dropping to a gravel murmur, and I heard two words that made my plates rattle: “Henderson Creek.”
The abandoned quarry outside town. The place people use to disappear.

The Photo on the Table

I drifted closer with a coffee pot I didn’t need. The leader’s gaze skimmed the room and snagged on me for a heartbeat. He slipped a folded square from his vest and slid it across the table. The man opposite opened it halfway, and my breath snagged.

It wasn’t a map. It was a photo of a boy—gap-toothed grin, eight years old. I knew that face from posters stapled to telephone poles in the next county.
Daniel. Missing. Day three.