“I don’t have a brother!”

Wally was so scared he felt a drop of pee drip out. He dropped his snow cone. The wild woman released him and ran toward the concession stand screaming her daughter’s name.

“Gra-cie!”

Police Chief Paul Ryan’s voice mixed with the other voices coming from all around him in the dark, the voices of cops and civilians searching the woods bordering the park for the missing girl, and he thought, Kids don’t get abducted in Post Oak, Texas!

“Gra-cie!”

When he had gotten the call, Ryan figured a rich Briarwyck Farms soccer mom was throwing another conniption fit, as they often did over their very special children. His wife, a teacher over at the elementary school, called it the Baby Jesus Syndrome, every rich mom thinking her spoiled little brat’s the second coming. He had no doubt the mom would get a call on her cell phone and learn the girl had gone home with a friend, and the mom wouldn’t say “I’m sorry” or nothing, she’d just wave and climb into her SUV and drive off for the post-game pizza party over at Angelo’s, figuring the police department was her private security force to call out anytime she wanted. But when he had arrived on scene and talked to the girl’s coach, Paul Ryan knew immediately that this was a real abduction: a blond man in a black cap had asked for the girl by name.

“Gra-cie!”

All Ryan could see were the five feet of trees and ground cover in front of him illuminated by his Mag flashlight as he advanced deeper into the dark woods.

He hears the others around him, but all he sees now is a vague vision of trees and vines and undergrowth, dense and impenetrable-a jungle. He’s fighting his way through a jungle on a dark night. He hears a child’s distant cry. He picks up his pace, but it’s like trying to run through molasses.