Nightrise

the house was some sort of mind control."
    Jamie had finished the Sprite. He was holding the can in his hand and suddenly he closed his fingers, crumpling it. 'You don't understand," he said. "I never talk about this stuff. Not with anyone. Except Scott." He looked up at her and she saw that his eyes were filled with anger, challenging her to argue with him. 'You don't know what it's like. You have no idea. And I'm not going to tell you."
    "All right. I'm sorry." Alicia drank some beer straight out of the bottle. She thought for a moment.
    "Look, I know this is difficult for you. But we're not going to get anywhere fighting each other. Maybe it would help if I told you my story. Right now I'm a complete stranger to you. But it wasn't just a coincidence, my being in the theatre last night. I was there for a reason."
    "Something to do with that photograph. Daniel…"
    Alicia put down the beer. "Exactly," she said. "Daniel. That's what this is all about."
    She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Then she began.
    "The boy in the photograph, Daniel, is my son. Last week should have been his birthday. He turned eleven on June ninth. But I don't know where he is. I don't even know if he's alive. He disappeared seven months ago and I've been looking for him ever since.
    ''You don't need to know very much about me, Jamie.
    I'm thirty-two. I have a sister. My parents are from New Jersey. A year ago, I was living in Washington, D.C., working for Senator John Trelawny. Maybe you've heard of him. You should have. Right now he's trying to become the next president of the United States and people say there's a good chance he's going to win. Anyway, I was with him for five years, sorting his mail, managing his schedule…that sort of thing. He's a good man, and I liked my job.
    "The other thing I need to tell you is that I was married for a time. My husband got sick and died two years after Danny was born, so I had to bring Danny up on my own. But in a way I was lucky. I had a little house around the corner from a really nice school. And I had a wonderful home helper — Maria —
    who looked after Danny every afternoon until I got home."
    She drew a breath.
    "And then, toward the end of last year — it was the first week in November — I got a call from Maria. It was about six o'clock in the evening and I was working late. Anyway, she said that Danny hadn't come home from school. She'd tried his cell phone and she wasn't getting any answer and she didn't know what to do. I remember telling her to call around to some of his friends and to call me if he hadn't shown up by seven. Looking back, I can't believe how calm I was. But Danny often went home with one or another of his friends. He was in a band. He played drums. And he was rehearsing for a Christmas show.
    It never occurred to me that anything could be wrong.
    "Well, Maria did ring back at seven o'clock. Danny still hadn't shown up and nobody had any idea where he was. It was dark by then, and that was when I really began to worry. I called the police. The fact that I was connected to Senator Trelawny helped. They were around in about ten seconds and they put him straight onto the NCIC Missing Persons File. They also put out an Amber Alert, which meant that all the local businesses and shops had his description and his picture and it was like they were building a network of people who would look out for him. And I still thought he was going to show up. I could actually hear myself scolding him for being late!"
    She stopped. There was a long pause.
    "He never did show up," she went on. "Nobody had seen anything. Nobody knew anything. It was as if he'd vanished into thin air. I searched all over the house, trying to find some clue as to where he might have gone. I drove out to all the places he used to hang out. I went on the TV and the radio. His picture was in store windows all over town and on the back of trucks too. But nothing…"
    "Scott saw him," Jamie muttered. "When you showed him the photograph. He said Danny was waiting for you."

    Alicia nodded. "I know. It's the first news I've had of him since it happened.'' She swallowed hard. "It's the first time anyone's even suggested he's still alive."
    She forced herself to go on.
    "Two weeks before Christmas, I made a decision. The police didn't know where to look for him. Nobody knew where he was. But I wasn't going to give up. So I resigned my job and set out to find him myself.
    There are plenty of