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Erin continued. “See, a DOME agent was at the scene the time Peck went after Trenton. Tried to stop Peck in the act. That's why Peck couldn't finish the job. But Peck didn't run. Not right away. Went after the DOME agent first. Hit him with a chair.”

“You've gotta be kidding me.”

“I'm not.”

“No one attacks a DOME agent. You'd have to be . . .”

“That's right,” Erin said. “You'd have to be crazy.”

Logan sank to his knees beside Erin, not quite able to stand as the gravity of all this crept up on him. “But why would a DOME agent have even been there? Police, I'd understand—someone calls a disturbance, an officer shows up . . . but a DOME agent? DOME doesn't ever handle crimes not related to the Mark.”

“
Exactly
.” Erin paused so the conclusions could sink in.

“But it still doesn't make sense. Why go after his own friends?”

“Who knows? The guy's Markless. He's a criminal.”

Logan shook his head. “It isn't a crime to be Markless, no matter what age you are.”

“It's not, no. Not in itself. But to survive like that . . . no way to eat . . . nowhere to stay . . . it'd make a criminal out of you pretty quick.”

Logan thought of Slog Row. “I guess it would.”

“But you're right,” Erin admitted. “All this, by itself, is still weird. Why his own friends? Why a DOME agent?”

“Right.”

She handed him another page. “Well, turns out the DOME agent wasn't killed. Just banged up a bit. Couple months ago, he was able to testify.”

“Okay.”

“Apparently he'd had his eye on Peck for some time. They still don't know much about him, or his history, at least according to these papers. They don't even know his full name. But they know what he's been up to recently. And the incidents with Peck's friends? Those are the exceptions. Mostly, Peck doesn't kill, and mostly, Peck doesn't target those with the Mark.”

Logan had a feeling he didn't want to hear the rest of this. But he couldn't help himself from asking, “Then what does he do . . . mostly?”

“Mostly, he targets kids.”

Logan shuddered. “
Kids
? What for?”

“All DOME knows is, in the past three or four years, Peck's had a history of tracking kids while they prepped for their Pledge.

Some of them, he tracks them—then he seems to let them go.

Forgets about 'em. Lets them just get the Mark and live their lives. Many never even realize they've been watched.”

“And the others?”

Erin looked Logan in the eyes. She put a hand on his shoulder. “The others disappear.”

Logan couldn't believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, they disappear?”

“'Bout two months ago Peck kidnapped a girl named Meg Steward. Meg was twelve at the time. Your age. Would have been thirteen by now, and Marked, of course, but . . . no sign of her.”

“How do they know it was him?”

“He left a note—on paper—asking Meg to meet him at some playground. Apparently she followed the instructions.”

“Why would she have done that?”

“Beats me. She took half the note with her, and the part that remained was charred, like it'd been burned up. DOME could only make out part of it, but the rest must have made a pretty compelling argument. Anyway, that was the last anyone saw of her.”

“Did Peck kill her too?”

“Hard to say. They haven't found a body.”

Logan cursed under his breath.

“According to these documents, DOME's pretty convinced Peck's done this a few times. They've found burned notes in the past, but this is the first with any traceable evidence on it. Coupled with the DOME agent's testimony, it's launched the full-scale investigation that brought my dad here.”

Logan swallowed. “And you think I'm next?”

Erin frowned, scanning the papers she and Logan had strewn about the floor. “I dunno,” she said. “Not if we find him first.”

9

Before Logan could respond, his tablet rang and his dad appeared on the screen. “Dinner's cold, buddy. This is the second night in a row now. I look out and you and Dane are gone. You got an explanation?”

All at once Logan remembered he was still a twelve-year-old kid with twelve-year-old responsibilities, like letting his parents know where he was and being home in time for dinner. Problems very far from those he'd been worried about over the last hour.

Logan apologized, laying it on thick on account of this being strike two for him. He said he'd run into his new friend Erin on the sidewalk—which was, of course, true—and promised he'd be home in just a few minutes.

But when he ended the call, Logan was entirely back to business. “We need to go to your dad,” he told Erin.

“And tell him what? You have no evidence.”

“I have my testimony. It's consistent with what's known about Peck—”

“Logan, what's known about Peck is
confidential
. I could be
arrested
for showing these papers to you. I could be arrested just for having looked at them myself!”

“I would think they'd make an exception if it led to the capture of—”

“And how exactly would it do that, Logan? How exactly would it lead to anything other than two kids with wild imaginations and a treasonous curiosity? DOME doesn't mess around with this stuff. I'm not even allowed to know what my dad
does
every day.”

“Yeah, but under the circumstances—”

“The circumstances are speculative. Do you know where Peck lives? Could you pick him out in a lineup? Do you have fingerprints? DNA evidence?”

“Well, no—”

“No, that's right. You have nothing.
We
have nothing. But that's going to change. We're going to make sure of it. And when it does, you have my word, we'll go to my dad.”

“And I'll be safe again?”

Erin nodded.
And I'll be on my way back to Beacon
. “In the meantime, this is our secret. We tell no one, right? Not a soul.”

“Okay,” Logan said, a little uneasy about it.

“And if you notice anything—call me.” She gave Logan her phone number, which he keyed into his tablet and stared at reverently. Too bad he couldn't tell Dane.

“Get out of here,” Erin said. “And be careful.”

She gave him a hug just before he left, and Logan tried to be casual about it.

It was the first time he'd ever been hugged by a girl.

10

Ten minutes later Logan ran up the spiraling staircase outside his house, not willing to wait for the elevator's street door to open. He raced up the first flight of it and pounded directly on the door to his kitchen. “Mom, Dad!” he called. “Let me in!”

Nothing had happened on the way home. The night was cool and peaceful. But Logan's heart had not slowed since he'd found the tin can.

“Hello, Logan,” Mrs. Langly said.

In the five years since his sister's Marking accident, Logan had never once heard his mother raise her voice. She spoke exclusively in slow, breathy whispers, often with great pauses between them, which complemented the delicate pace of her steps. Each movement of an arm or hand was small and distracted, and she even blinked with a speed that suggested an infinite, drowsy calm. In the past few years she'd aged quickly, with deep wrinkles sketching the years on her face. She opened the door now as if in slow motion and said, “Your dinner is cold. I was worried sick.”

“Hey, buddy!” Mr. Langly said, bounding over from the kitchen table with enough energy and volume for Mom and him both. “Logan Langly, big man on campus, can't keep the ladies off him! Come on over, tell us what's new!” His enthusiasm seemed forced, somehow, striking Logan as oddly overpowering. Was his father angry with him? Ashamed? As he spoke, Mr. Langly took his wife's arm and guided her gently back to her seat. For a moment, Logan stood, thinking he would confess the events of the last two nights, thinking he would explain what he'd learned about Peck. But Erin was right. This was their secret. So instead Logan followed, quiet, playing his part in the familiar scene.

After dinner, Logan excused himself and took the elevator to his room on the seventh floor, feeling guilty and scared, if glad, to be home.

He wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep for as long as he could.

But something wasn't right.

That smell—what was it? Smoke?

The elevator door opened to a horrifying scene.

There, on his desk in the darkness of his room, glowing orange and yellow and sporadic and awful, was a fire.

Logan ran to it swiftly. A paper note, burning. Logan read what remained of it through the smoke.

Logan
. . .
Spokie Playground
. . .
. . .
Midnight
. . .
. . .
Or Else
. . .

No sooner had he finished reading than the paper turned to ash, burning up completely before him on his desktop, which had been wetted carefully with a protective coating of water from Logan's nearby glass. The flame went out and fizzled in the puddle beneath it, and nothing remained of the note but a couple of charred, disintegrating tatters.

Logan was scared beyond the capacity to scream or run or defend himself or even breathe. And when finally his heart snapped back to life it pumped white-hot fear into his brain, and the only thing that registered with any sort of clarity was:
Right now, someone is here
.

Upon thinking this, Logan spun around. And the face in his window fled from view.

FIVE
SPY VS. SPY

1

B
LAKE JUMPED FROM THE SPIRALING STAIR
way, hitting the ground hard and looking for a place to hide. The sidewalk in front of Logan's house was well lit, but he fell in among what shadows he could find and ran through their darkness.

At the speed he was running and at this time of night, it was impossible to see, so Blake oriented himself by Logan's shouting behind him. “I know you're there!” it went. “I know you're out there!”

But Blake was long gone.

He strained to listen for footsteps or sirens behind him. Nothing. Logan hadn't followed.

The settlement was across town, on the outskirts of Spokie, among gutted apartments and abandoned buildings isolated from the sparkle and disinfectant of the rest . . . the neighborhood on the wrong side of the expressway, where Spokie residents knew never to go, where cops turned the other way, where the dust settled and was never stirred . . . on Slog Row, Blake's home among the Markless.

Still winded from his run, Blake stepped over shards of glass, between boards of wood nailed clumsily over the broken storefront window, and into the abandoned Fulmart that once anchored the neighborhood. There was a time when everything you could want rested inside these cavernous walls—clothes, hardware, food . . . but those days were long gone.

It started with the old firehouse, which had been abandoned for years, too far outside what had become central Spokie to be of any use. The Markless, unable to pay rent and quietly kicked out of their homes one by one, took refuge in that old building. At first, cops would make sweeps and clean the place up each night, since residents along the Row would complain. But with nowhere else to go, the Markless always returned, and as crime on the block steadily rose, residents saved up and moved out, one family at a time, to the better parts of town. In just this way, over the years, poverty on the long block spread all the way from the firehouse to the Fulmart at its other end nearly a quarter mile away, and Slog Row earned its name.