She relaxed. No one. An older guy muttering about a parking ticket wedged under his windshield, a group of women—two of them she recognized as her mom’s yoga friends—standing outside Mama Dip’s. Patti Winters, the mother of a hideous girl in Gemma’s grade whose endless bids for popularity meant she treated Gemma like the weakling who had to be eaten so the tribe could flourish, looked up and caught sight of Gemma. She waved and started to cross the street to come over.

Quickly, Gemma turned around, pretending not to have seen, and hurried across the gas station parking lot. She tied Rufus up to the sign that indicated a handicapped parking space and slipped inside the Quick-Mart, darting behind a display of cheap plastic sunglasses. Pete Rogers, aka Perv Rogers (a nickname assigned to him in third grade, when on a class trip he’d been caught stealing a pair of underwear from Chloe’s overnight bag), eyed her from behind the register.

After fifteen seconds, Gemma felt like an idiot, and once again, missed April badly. She was still in school mode, prey mode. A rabbit on the run. But her mom’s friends weren’t going to track her and pin her down with conversation about why she was home on spring break and where-were-all-her-friends. She bought a heart-shaped pair of red sunglasses, because she didn’t want to seem like she was hiding, which of course she was.

“I like your style,” Perv said, in a pervy way. Gemma frowned at him.

No one was waiting for her in the parking lot. Patti Winters was long gone. Rufus was lying on the pavement, tongue out in the heat.

Still, as she began crossing with him back toward the street, she got that nervous, alert feeling again, as if someone were whispering something mean just a little too softly for her to hear. The guy who’d gotten the parking ticket was now refueling, his shitty old Chevrolet pulled haphazardly up to the pump. Their eyes met briefly, and he opened his mouth, as if to say something to her.

She was almost passing him, and that was when her brain click-clicked into motion, and gears slotted together, and she realized all at once that he wasn’t getting gas—his car wasn’t even connected to the pump—and he hadn’t just randomly looked at her. He’d been watching her.

He was following her.

But by the time she understood this, they had drawn level. He grabbed her wrist and pulled, a motion seamless and small and effective, so she dropped Rufus’s leash. Rufus just stood there patiently, wagging his tail. Gemma was too shocked to cry out, but then she was pinned to the man, temporarily so close she could see the wide black expanse of pores freckled across his nose, the sweat beading on his upper lip.

“Gem,” he said. His breath smelled like coffee and like old, moldy closets. His hair was long and looked unwashed. “Listen to me. I don’t want any trouble.”

Her mind moved in short, explosive bursts, sending up disconnected images and ideas. She must know him. How else would he know her name? She searched his face, lean and cavernous, pitted with old acne scars and covered all over with stubble, and the taste of acid burned her throat as her brain made a final winding click-click.

Abducted. She was being abducted.

More lightning flashes in her brain: ransom demands; a cold, wet basement fitted with chains and old torture devices.

He fumbled the door open with one hand, keeping a grip on her wrist with the other. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” He was panting hard. “You gotta trust me. We’re gonna be okay.” As if they were on the same side.

She got a quick glimpse of a backseat littered with empty soda cans and crumpled receipts, a baseball hat, plastic bags from Party City, a dark thatch of something that looked like a huge, furry spider, and at that moment she found her voice and screamed. Or she tried to scream. What came out was more of a hoarse shout. Even her vocal cords were shaking, petrified. Only then did Rufus begin to bark.

The man instantly released her, springing backward, pressing himself against the car as if she’d just whipped out a weapon.

“Jesus.” He was shouting now too, angrily. “Jesus. Why’d you go and do that, huh?”

She turned, snatched up Rufus’s leash, and ran. It had been so long since she’d run—since she was allowed to run—she was worried her legs wouldn’t work. But they did. She careened back toward the Quick-Mart, her heart exploding through her ribs, nearly toppling an old woman who’d just emerged, holding a fistful of lottery tickets. She didn’t bother tying Rufus up. She wanted him next to her, anyway, even though he was evidently the world’s worst guard dog.

“What do you know about heaven?” the man shouted to her, or at least she thought he did. By the time she was inside, taking deep, hiccuping breaths of air standing beside the windows papered over with flyers advertising deals on milk and Bud Light and cigarettes, he was gone.

“You’re not supposed to have dogs in here,” Perv said. “Sorry. State law.”

Gemma ignored that. “Can I borrow your phone?” No way was she getting back on the bus. She had an itchy, exposed feeling, even standing in the warm, familiar must of the Quick-Mart. She wanted to go to the bathroom and scrub off her wrist, where the man had grabbed her.

“Are you okay?” he asked, squinting at her. “You look really—”

She glared at him. Fortunately, he shut up. She punched in her mother’s number, her fingers shaking so badly she fumbled it the first time.

“Gemma? Gemma, what’s the matter?” she said, as soon as Gemma choked out a hello. “Where are you? Whose number is this?”