Chapter One

      It was too quiet.

      The thought struck Ryan McCall halfway up the stairs, and he paused, his expression puzzled. Normally by that point he could hear rock music rattling the walls of his apartment. Or, at the very least, the television blaring. His son rarely did anything in moderation.

      Ryan trotted up the remaining steps, curious but not particularly alarmed.

      The first vestige of the latter feeling came a moment later when he unlocked his door and opened it to a dark apartment. Stepping inside, Ryan flipped on the living room lights and checked his watch. It was only nine—too early for Mike to be in bed. Maybe he had fallen asleep watching television in his room.

      “Mike! You here?”

      There was no answer. Frowning, Ryan tossed the mail onto the coffee table and strode across the room, heading for the door that led into the bedroom hallway. “Hey, Mike! Where are you?”

      His son’s room was empty. The bed, on which the boy wallowed periodically throughout the day, was made up in Mike’s usual haphazard manner but it showed no sign of having been touched.

      The room was crammed with a thirteen-year-old boy’s clutter. A catcher’s mitt and a bat and ball lay on the desk, along with dozens of baseball cards, two crushed soft drink cans, a deflated football, a pair of dirty socks, a pocket electronic game, and an assortment of candy wrappers, rocks and scraps of paper. A squadron of model airplanes hung from the ceiling and another half-finished aircraft sat on a sheet of newspaper in the middle of the floor. In a pile in the corner, where Mike had tossed them, were a torn kite, a Frisbee and a skateboard. A ratty sneaker with a hole in the toe lay on its side beside the bed. Yet, for all its messiness,