My side was sore. And cold. Especially right at my hip and my shoulder. It felt like my head was going to fall off my shoulders. I reached for the seatbelt buckle, and touched something cold and hard. Definitely not car upholstery. I opened my eyes. I was in a house. A hallway? It looked familiar, but it seemed like the lights were out. Slowly, slowly, I pushed myself up into a seat and looked around.

  Was I… Was this Mr. Left’s house? I stood up and looked over my left shoulder. Sure enough, the front door, and Stenway’s study door next to it.

  My head still felt like it was about to fall off. I poked it with my fingers as I walked over and flipped on the lights. There was a HUGE knot on the back of my head.

  What had happened? The last thing I remembered was sipping tea in the back of Mr. Left’s car. Stenway’s door was cracked and I went inside to sit at the desk. Still a little shaky, I picked up the phone and dialed home.

  Before I punched in the last number, there was a huge banging at the door. The phone crashed out of my hand and onto the desk. I hung the phone back on its cradle (after a few misses) and crept forward to look out the window that faced the door.

  “T.J.? Tyler? Hello? Are you in there?”

  Sydney?

  I rushed to the door and slung it open, slamming it back into the hall. Sydney knocked me over as she rushed into the hall, but hands caught us and pulled us back up. I shoved Sydney’s hair out of my eyes to see Stenway holding us steady. “Tyler, what happened?”

  “What… I don’t… How did you guys find me here? How did I even get here?”

  “What do you mean? Where have you been?” Sydney held me by my shoulders and looked at me. “Where have you been?”

  “I was…” I shook my head.

  Stenway reached out and touched my arm, getting me to look at him. “We were at your parent’s house and there was a phone call.” He paused. “It was from Mr. Left.”

  “What did he say?” My voice scraped out of my throat, sounding nothing like me.

  “He said he’d stopped in the house for ‘an item’,” Stenway made air quotes with his fingers, “and he said he thought he’d seen you run into the kitchen when he made a loud noise. That true?”

  “I don’t… I don’t remember it. I don’t remember going to the house. How did I get to the house?” I started rubbing at the knot on the back of my head.

  “Where… where had you been before that, Tyler?” Stenway touched my arm again, and I stopped rubbing.

  “I don’t know. What I say, you’re going to think it’s made up.”

  “Come on, Tyler.” Sydney grabbed my arm and led us all into the kitchen. She found a god-knows-how-old bag of frozen peas in the back of the freezer, and Stenway put a kettle on. He flicked the gas on and turned back to the table, chuckling.

  “What?”

  He grinned at me. “I think in all this time, I don’t know for certain where Ms. H. kept the loose leaf tea.” I pointed to a cabinet and he pulled out a few options, sniffing them.

  Sydney held the bag of peas against my head. “Ok. Now tell us where you were.”

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  “I was in a… in like a… you know how you guys lied to me and took me to that Super place? I went to the villain version of that.”

  “What?”

  “T.J., you gotta…”

  “See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” I knocked Sydney’s hand away and started to stand up.

  The kettle shrieked and Stenway shut the burner off. “Start at the beginning, T.J. Sit back down and start from when you left the house. Sydney, we should call your parents and let them know she’s been found. Tell them about the call from Left, and finding her here. She got scared from hearing someone in the house and so she hid.” I started to say something but Stenway’s glare was pointed. I closed my mouth. “She was freaked out, and we’re helping her calm down in the kitchen with some tea. We’ll be home in a little bit.” Sydney hurried off to the phone.

  Stenway piled teeny black-brown leaves into the pot and poured the water over them, the steam bursting up into his face. I shivered, and he filled a mug with hot water and stuck it between my hands. I could feel him looking down at me. Finally he spoke. “I’m glad you’re ok. She was really, really scared.”

  “I know.” I shivered. “You didn’t seem too bothered though?”

  “Me?” He pointed at his chest, a funny look on his face. “What do you mean?” The timer on the stove top dinged and he turned back around to shut it off. He pulled the strainer thing with the tea in it out of the pot and put it in the sink. I pushed the mug of hot water in my hands back across the table at him, and waited while he dumped it and filled it with tea. By the time he had three mugs full and a few sheets of paper and a pen on the table, Sydney was back.

  “Mom and dad are on their way. They were at the police station downtown. Somebody remembered seeing a girl running to the park while it was storming and they reported it there.” She looked at me, then Stenway.

  He shrugged. “Couldn't have been Tyler, she’s been here all day. Right?” He glared at me until I nodded. “Good. Now tell us what happened.”

  Since I just told you what happened, I’m not going to tell it all over again. I will say that the look on Stenway’s face when I told him that I got into the car with Mr. Left and Mrs. H was almost scarier than actually getting in the car with them. I got to the part when I was strapped into the experiment table thing, and Stenway made me slow down. He was scribbling notes like crazy.

  “Can you tell me more about this headset they put on you?”

  “I couldn’t really see it. It hurt my head though.”

  Sydney got up and took away the ice pack, then started combing through my hair. “I don’t see any cuts or anything. Does your head hurt now?”

  “Just from the knot. I guess whatever Mrs. H knocked me out with maybe helped with the images because I haven’t seen anything since.”

  Stenway stared down at his notes, very much trying not to look up at me. “What images did you see?”

  “I saw Sydney. Our house. When mom called, and you asked if the police had any news.” I glanced at Sydney. “Then you started crying and I… you,” I pointed at Stenway, “hugged her and told her it was going to be ok.” Sydney had gone pale, and now Stenway WAS looking at me. “Whatever that head thing was, it made me able to connect with you somehow.” I shoved my fist into my pocket automatically, but came out empty. “Not somehow. I had your hat in my pocket. And I had been holding on to it. And so instead of seeing what was in Mr. Left’s head, I saw what was in your head. What you were seeing.”

  “That’s crazy.” Sydney was still all white in the face. Like she’d put on too much sunscreen.

  Stenway stood up, shoving his chair back and pushing his fingers up through his hair. “I need to call the doctor.”

  “I’m fine, I think. I think.”

  “Not a doctor doctor, THE doctor. Dr. Tellivar.”

  “Absolutely not.” Sydney stepped between me and Stenway. “I do not like that man. He’s not trustworthy.”

  “Sydney, he can get protection for your family. For whatever is going on with Tyler. This is a lot bigger than us now.” He sat down, flopping into his chair like all of a sudden his legs had been stuck to the floor. “I’m… I’m kind of scared.”

  Sydney and I stared at him. I felt my heart start pounding against my chest, and my fingers went numb and tingly at the same time. I giggled. “We should probably start by getting out of the house of the man that kidnapped me.”

  Stenway grabbed the mugs and dumped them in the sink, then shuffled up his papers into a stack while I got on my coat. We were both halfway to the door when I heard Sydney. “But mom and dad are coming here. And they’ll really be freaked out if we’re gone.” Stenway and I stopped. I turned to look at Sydney. She had her arms wrapped around her chest. “I don’t like it either. But we said we were going to be here, so we should stay till they get here.”