Chapter 12: The Mortgage

I took Piper home because I could think of nowhere else that was ours.

We walked the last four streets with her cap pulled down and my arm through hers.

At the front door of my building I lifted the key box and turned it the way I had been taught.

It opened on the first try.

Owen was on the stairs.

I don't know how long he had been there.

He stood on the third step from the bottom with a dish towel in one hand and his phone in the other, and he stared at Piper.

"Owie," she said.

He dropped the towel.

He crossed the hall in two strides, and she let go of me and walked into him, and he held on to her with his chin on the top of her cap.

His shoulders shook once.

I looked at the mailboxes and gave them privacy.

"You got so tall," he said into her hair.

"I'm exactly the same height."

"You got so tall in my head."

She laughed and cried at once.

I held the door and was glad I had been asked to.

Then the buzzer went.

All three of us flinched.

Owen's eyes met mine, and I knew.

"They found her in under an hour," I said.

"They tracked me," Piper whispered. "I should have known. There's a chip sewn into the lining of this sweatshirt."

"Take it off," said Owen.

She pulled the sweatshirt over her head and handed it to me.

I put it in the empty umbrella stand.

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