Page 85 of The Chain

The Google map making its own zodiac.

Pawtucket.

Providence.

The Brown University exit. Lovecraft country. An old coach road to East Providence. Big houses. Even bigger houses.

Maple Avenue. Bluff Street. Narragansett Avenue.

“Here,” Mike says.

“Is this it?”

“Yeah.”

The house is a large, ugly, mock-Tudor job, an early 2000s McMansion on a street filled with similar properties.

They drive past it and park a little way up the road.

“Front or back entrance?” Rachel asks Pete.

“Hard to say,” Pete mutters. “We don’t know about dogs, alarms, that kind of thing.”

“Back, then,” Rachel decides.

The three of them exit the BMW, walk around the block to the Hoggs’ backyard, and climb a metal fence at the rear of the property. No dog comes tearing toward them. No floodlights come on. No shotgun blast comes roaring out of the night.

The back door is a solid-looking thing but there’s another door attached to a kind of mudroom on the side of the house. It has only a latch lock on the other side of a piece of glass. Pete turns on his EM-pulse kit and breaks the glass.

They wait for a response. A yell. A light coming on.

There’s no reaction.

Pete puts his hand through the broken window and undoes the latch on the external door.

They go inside the mudroom, which is a small, narrow wooden chamber filled with coats and boots.

Flashlights on.

Mudroom to kitchen to dining room.

A dining room with pictures on the wall.

Rachel’s flashlight catches a family portrait. Two boys, a man, and his wife. Tall man with jet-black hair. Small, doughy, attractive wife who looks like she’s nice. The kids areabout the same age, early teens. One of the boys is in a wheelchair. Why did the Dunleavys kidnap the one in the wheelchair? Why make it so difficult?

What kind of a person kidnaps a disabled child?

Then again, what kind of person kidnaps a kid who might die of an anaphylactic reaction to nuts?

What kind of person kidnaps a child?

They walk into a games room that has a full-length pool table, a dartboard, and a Nintendo Wii console. At least the Hoggs appear to have money.

“I guess you better take this,” Pete says absently, giving Mike a nine-millimeter pistol.

Rachel looks at him, amazed. Why would he give—

Mike turns and points the nine-millimeter at Rachel’s head.

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