What had that guy Tim done to her? Where was she? Was she even still alive? My stomach was in knots.

When I got home, the house was quiet. Orlando was at a friend’s. My mom was curled up on the couch reading a book, so it was easy to walk past her while only exchanging a few words. Easier than explaining what was really happening. I was starting to see why my dad never shared things.

But once I was in my room, I couldn’t stand being alone with my thoughts. I started texting friends, asking if they knew of any other girls who had been followed.

I also started thinking about what had happened in that extra hour before Savannah showed up on the camera. It seemed like a clue, if only I could figure out what it meant. And what about the van? If we could find it, could we find Savannah?

I was pretty sure the first three digits on the license had been SVT. Oregon license plates were a series of three numbers followed by a space and then three letters. Years ago, it had been the reverse—three letters followed by three numbers. So while the surveillance camera had shown just the SVT, a space, and only part of what came next, I knew they would have been numbers.

Which meant there were 999 possible vehicles. A thousand, because there must have also been a SVT 000. But the next digit had looked like it had a straight line at the top. Tracing numbers in the air, I realized that only a five and a seven had that line.

That left only two hundred possibilities. Maybe even a lot less. First of all, how many vehicles were white vans? And second, a plate that started with SVT had to be really old. My mom’s car was seven years old, and even it started with three numbers and ended with three letters. It had been a long time since plates had started with letters. So how many white vans were still on the road after fifteen or twenty years?

A couple of hours later, when I heard my dad’s car pull into the driveway, I pushed myself off the bed. Part of me was afraid to hear whatever he would say. I started toward the living room, but he met me in the hall. His face was etched with weariness.

“What happened?” I asked before he said anything. “Did you find Savannah?”

He raised one hand. “If I tell you, it’s for your ears only. Not to be shared with anyone.”

I nodded. “I understand. I won’t.” Did my dad think I was a little kid?

“Myself and another officer went to speak to Hixon at work. He claimed he didn’t know what happened to Savannah and that he didn’t have a white van. He also became belligerent and threw a wild punch.” My dad pinched the bridge of his nose. “But the most important thing is that he was wearing coveralls and work boots.”

Just like the guy in the video. “What happened to him?”

“He’s been charged with assault. He was previously arrested for domestic violence, but the charges were dropped after the victim moved away. After he was taken to jail, I showed Ms. Taylor the video. She was pretty sure it was Tim. Then she gave us permission to search the house.” My dad paused, then looked me straight in the eye. “We found three guns he’d hidden.”

A picture of Savannah shot to death sprang into my head, but I pushed it away.

“Did you find the Taser?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe if we could figure out where Savannah was for that hour-long gap on the surveillance footage, it would help us figure out what happened to her,” I suggested.

He waved a hand. “Oh, it’s not really a gap. I checked. It’s just that the camera was still set on daylight savings time.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that? “So that white van in the video was his?” I asked.

“Hixon’s only car is a 1968 Camaro, which is currently out of commission. So he doesn’t own a white van, but he does have access to any vehicle left at the shop overnight or longer. We’re checking the shop’s records, but it’s going to take some time. It’s even possible that he’s secretly had keys made for vehicles. But if that’s his MO, it explains why Courtney and Sara reported being followed by different cars.”

I held out my phone. “I’ve been texting people today. It’s happened to more than just Courtney and Sara. There were a couple of girls at the middle school, too. There’s, like, a total of five. But the cars sound like they’re all different. They only had one thing in common. They were all old beaters.”

“Old beaters have to get fixed, too,” my dad said. “And eyewitness testimony is notoriously wrong. I’ve had people swear up and down that white is black. Literally.”

“But what if this Tim guy is telling the truth? What if it was a different person in that van? Either way, couldn’t you figure out who it belongs to if you worked from the license plate backward through the DMV’s records? It started with either SVT five or SVT seven. How many white vans could there be with that plate sequence still on the road? Can’t you look it up?”

My dad shrugged. “Color’s a nonissue, Daniel. Records never include the color of the vehicle, since cars can get repainted and there isn’t even a standard set of colors. One manufacturer’s ‘beige’ is another’s ‘champagne.’ A license plate is associated with both an owner and a vehicle, and either one of those could change. The car could be sold and the license plate transferred to a new owner. Or, as I believe happened in this case, the plate itself could be transferred to a different vehicle. Because I did do some checking. And way back when, there was a ninety-eight Chevy van that had a plate that started with Sierra Victor Tango seven.”

“Really?” I felt a spark of hope.

He shook his head. “But it was salvaged six years ago.”

“Salvaged?” I echoed. “What does that mean?”

“It was in an accident, and insurance declared it a total loss. It ended up at All Autos junkyard. People have probably been picking it clean ever since. Ms. Taylor said Mr. Hixon went to junkyards looking for parts for his Camaro. He must have taken the plates at the same time. And then he switched them out on a customer’s van. He was probably worried about what did end up happening—the plates being caught by a random surveillance camera.” He sighed. “Maybe Hixon will fill us in on how it all worked. But first we need him to tell us what he did with Savannah. And right now, he’s refusing to even admit he’s involved.”

The attitude, “You can win if you want to badly enough,” means that the will to win is constant. No amount of punishment, no amount of effort, no condition is too tough to take in order to win.

—BRUCE LEE

SAVANNAH TAYLOR

Jenny and I were sitting on the edge of the rectangle we had opened up. The lights from the other rooms did not reach very far into the area we had just uncovered under the hall floor. I leaned down and squinted into the shadows. The space between the main floor and the bottom of the RV was about two feet tall. It seemed mostly empty, holding just a few scattered boxes as well as some wiring and pipes.

“I’m going to see if we can get out through there,” I told Jenny.

“Be careful! What if you open up a luggage door and Rex is on the other side?”

I got up and took a wooden spoon from the junk drawer. “Then I’ll poke him in the eye with this.” I tucked it into the back of my pants, stuck my legs over the side of the hole, and wriggled underneath the floor, which was now my ceiling. There wasn’t even enough room to get to my hands and knees. Ignoring the grating of my broken wrist and the ceiling scraping along my back, I started to army crawl on my forearms toward the side of the RV.