A BRUISED LITTLE GIRL HID UNDER THE DINER COUNTER—THEN HER STEPFATHER WALKED IN WITH PERFECT PAPERS, AND THE NOTE SHE GAVE ME EXPOSED WHAT WAS BURIED BENEATH HIS BARN

Lauren behaved as though she had already moved into my house. The moment we arrived, she opened kitchen cabinets without asking. She knew where the…

Nomi knew trouble had entered the restaurant before she ever saw his face. The room did not simply grow quiet. It died. One second, forks…

“Don’t miss her heart.” The sentence came from the darkness behind Victoria Hale. Seventeen-year-old Noah Bennett heard it from the narrow space between a grease…

“Please don’t make them stamp the other hand.” Eight-year-old Ellie Calloway said it so softly that her uncle almost mistook the words for the scrape…

The frozen image changed from Harrison’s basement chair to a live view of our apartment building taken from across the street. The camera zoomed toward…

The elevator doors met in the center, cutting off Clara’s father’s frantic pounding. Marcus handed me a tablet as we descended. Photographs from beneath the…