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A guy who would do anything for his friends. Now he was gone. His family was shattered. Cooper and his family were too.
    Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A stranger in a van cruising slowly along a park? She should have seen the trap sooner. Should have never egged Gordy on to chase the van down.
    When a cop messes up, somebody gets hurt.
She’d always understood what that meant. But she had no idea how bad the hurt could be. Until now.

CHAPTER 6
    G ordy held the note up to the flashlight.
    I took you to prove a point to RMPD. Water and food in bag. Ration it. Don’t do anything stupid and I’ll let you go in two days.
    Don’t do anything stupid? A little late for that advice. Chasing down that van was the dumbest thing he’d ever done in his life. Gordy read the note again. RMPD. Rolling Meadows Police Department? It had to be.
    But what kind of point was the creep trying to prove to them? That he had serious psycho issues? Gordy could testify to that.
    Was the guy really going to let him go? As much as Gordy wanted to believe that, he couldn’t. More likely the guy was just keeping him from trying to break out.
    Gordy did a slow sweep of the room with the flashlight. He didn’t see one sign of those babysitter cams, either. Which meant the guy really hid them well, or else it was just another tactic to keep Gordy from escaping.
    Not that the guy had left any possible getaway routes. Not even sound could find a way out of this place. Pink sheets of Styrofoam insulation covered the foundation walls. Like the owner intended to finish the basement but never got beyond the first step.
    The space between every overhead floor joist was filled withthick R-30 insulation. The place was soundproof. What kind of guy soundproofs an empty basement? And
why
? That thought creeped him out even more.
    The guy chained Gordy in the corner farthest from the stairs. A concrete double-slop-sink on heavy metal legs, hot-water heater, furnace, sump pump, washer, and dryer also joined him at this end of the basement. None of them looked like they’d been used in a long time.
    And nothing kicked on. Not once. Not even the sump pump. The thing was only a few feet away. He’d have heard it, especially with all the rain they’d been getting the last few days. It was like the house itself was dead.
    The metal shackle padlocked to his ankle connected him to a hefty chain. Thick enough to be an anchor chain. Long enough too. The chain snaked through the legs of the sink and around the furnace, and he still had enough slack to walk maybe twelve or fifteen feet into the basement. But not enough to get halfway to the stairs. He couldn’t budge the furnace. No chance of ambushing the guy when he came back. Not that Gordy would try to jump him. Besides the taser, the guy was built. He could definitely handle himself.
    He’d only turned the flashlight off once. Just long enough to remember how much he hated the dark. That didn’t take ten seconds.
    “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” People were always quoting that dumb phrase. But they were wrong. He couldn’t see a thing when the darkness closed in, and he wouldn’t know if something was creeping up on him. But he could
feel
the evil present in this dead house. What you can’t see
can
hurt you. You just don’t see it coming.
    A single mattress lay on the floor next to the furnace. Like he was really going to sleep. The ratty thing looked like it’d been found on the side of the road on garbage day.
    Was he the first person to be locked in this soundproof prison?Gordy trained the beam of the flashlight on the mattress. Stains formed weird patterns on the surface.
    A nasty looking toilet sat next to the mattress. It wasn’t connected to anything. There wasn’t even any water in the bowl. Just another piece of junk this sick-o picked up on the side of the road. A roll of toilet paper sat on the tank lid. Gee, the guy thought of everything.
    Even after getting as close to the stairs as the