Chris looked at his son, and his heart ached. In a good way.

Brian was his number-one priority in life. He would do everything in his power to keep his boy safe. Safe from predators like the one who’d scarred him. The boy shifted in his booster, and Chris eyed the seatbelt to make certain it still crossed Brian’s chest in the right spot. How careful parents were these days. When Chris grew up, children had avoided seat belts, lying down in the backseat or in the back of station wagons. He’d had a friend who liked to lie down against the window above the backseat as his parents drove.

Today, a parent would get pulled over for a stunt like that.

His parents had shielded him from the outside world after he’d returned from the forest. Which was good. He hadn’t wanted to interact. He’d spent years simply wanting to stay in his room. School had been a nightmare. His mother had finally resorted to homeschooling. Actually, Chris did most of the learning on his own. He’d outline each month what he planned to learn, and his mother had approved. She was available if he needed help, but frankly, schoolwork was a breeze.

His brain was a sponge. He read history for pleasure, did math because he was curious, and studied computers because they fascinated him. His idols were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their lifestyles were too public for his taste, but he understood how their brains worked.

When Jamie was studying fractions as a sixth grader and struggling to master them, he’d written a simple computer program for her to watch and interact with. Seeing her face light up as she finally understood had been like a hit of crack. He wrote more programs. And more. Back then, there were simple message boards that programming geeks posted on, asking other geeks for help. That became his social life. The other geeks couldn’t see the external and internal scars.

The Internet exploded, and he was perfectly positioned to take advantage. His simple websites for local businesses caught the attention of other businesses. By the time he was eighteen, he was making more money than his father. Life was spinning along quite comfortably. Plastic surgeries had improved his scarring…or so he thought, until he’d stepped out in public and caught the children’s stares and the quick glances of adults who rapidly looked the other way.

Only once had he asked to see some of the other children who’d vanished with him. He’d been lucid for a few days between surgeries, during the second month, and asked his mom if he could talk to David Doubler, who’d been released a few months after they’d been kidnapped. He still remembered the shock and pity on his mother’s face.

“David is still gone, Chris. No one but you has come home.”

He’d nearly blurted out that he’d seen the other children released one by one. But he bit his tongue in time. If he admitted he’d seen them released, he’d have to admit he remembered where they’d been held and describe who had held them.

He kept his mouth shut.

But the minute he had the ability to search the Internet when he was older, he looked for all of them. And found nothing. Except families who still waited and grieved for their children.

How many nights had the belief that his friends had been released helped him stay sane in that bunker? He’d hated the children who were released, yet he was overjoyed for them at the same time.

He would never study his son’s face on a missing-child poster.

Now he knew where all the children were. They’d been buried in the dirt for two decades while their families waited for their return. At least the families finally had their answers. At least now the families could give up hope that their children were still alive and move on. Living with the unanswered questions was the worst. He’d wanted to tell the families he believed the children were dead, but he had no proof. He didn’t know what the Ghostman had done with them. And he had to continue his charade of memory loss.

His heart clenched at the thought of Daniel’s family. Their son hadn’t returned home. His body wasn’t found with the other children.

What was that lack of knowledge doing to his parents?

Their wounds had been freshly reopened. No doubt, Daniel’s parents had learned to cope without their son for so long. But while all the other parents had answers, they still suffered from the unknown.

Should he tell them what had really happened to Daniel? How they’d escaped from the Ghostman together? For nearly two decades, he’d wanted to tell the senator and his wife what had happened to their son. But he’d had to keep his mouth shut. If he’d told, there would be blood spilled. Innocent blood and guilty blood. He didn’t give a damn about the guilty blood, but he would do his best to protect the innocent. That meant being silent.

It’d been an enormous burden to bear.

The quiet highway stretched out before him. He’d passed very few cars at this hour. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon on his left side. The more miles he put on the road, the safer his son would be. He loosened his grip on the steering wheel. His fingers were cramping, he’d been holding on so tight. He forced a long exhale and tried to relax.

Just keep moving.

But his mind kept returning to the same question over and over.

How had the Ghostman found him in Demming?

The car jerked in response as a new realization shocked his system.

Jamie. He hadn’t given Jamie his new phone number.

He’d been in the process of setting up a new number for her to reach him when the news of the found children had started filling the Internet. He changed the number every few months, and he’d immediately changed it after Jamie had called to tell him the children’s bodies had been found.