It’s better to be captured alive. To be meek and abiding. Then maybe they won’t kill me right away.

No, they’d just torture him to try to get him to betray everyone he knew. No matter what, Trey couldn’t win.

Then he heard what the boy shouted into his walkietalkie.

“Porch all clear,” he said. “Nothing here.”

Trey stared up at the boy in amazement. He was so stunned, he couldn’t make out the words that crackled out from the walkie-talkie in response.

“Affirmative,” the boy said. “I’ll join the search in the backyard right away”.

He paused only long enough to glance at Trey one more time, and whisper, “Stay hidden.” Then he turned on his heel and left.

Gradually, Trey’s heart rate returned to normal — or at least what had passed for normal since he’d stepped out of the car, instead of the I’m-about-to-die rate his heart had reached when the boy was on the porch. He almost wondered if he’d been hallucinating. Could he have gone so insane with fear that he’d imagined the whole exchange?

Trey didn’t think he had such a strong imagination.

He could hear bits and pieces of the continuing search — someone shouting for a shovel, another man grunting as he carried a heavy trunk to a car. But no one else stepped up onto the porch. Nobody else came to look for Trey. And Trey was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t have disobeyed the boy’s order if he’d wanted to.

Then, amazingly, he began to hear doors slamming, engines starting, cars driving away. They went slower now, their engines making the same letdown hum as fire trucks driving away after a fire. Trey tried to eavesdrop— he listened so hard that his ears roared. But he couldn’t tell whether the men had found whatever they were looking for or not. They were talking about women; they were talking about smoking the cigars they’d discovered in Mr. Talbot’s closet