Chapter 2

They found me days later, or what was left of me.

Urban explorers, they called them, poking around an abandoned industrial building on the edge of town.

The summer heat had done its work. Bloater stage, I heard someone say later.

My father, David Miller, FBI profiler, was called to the scene.

High-profile, brutal. His specialty.

My mother, Dr. Sarah Miller, County Medical Examiner, was there too.

Her job.

I watched them, a detached, floating thing.

They looked at the mess on the floor, the thing that used to be me.

Professionally appalled, their faces grim.

No flicker of recognition.

How could there be? I was barely human anymore.

"Male, late teens, severe trauma," Dad said, his voice all business.

Mom knelt, her expression clinical.

"Significant decomposition. This will be difficult."

She began her initial examination, her gloved hands methodical.

She found it, tucked in the pocket of my ruined jeans.

The keychain.

I' d made it myself, a small leather rectangle, hand-stitched.

It had a tiny, almost invisible family insignia I' d designed, a stylized "M" intertwined with a tree.

I' d made one for each of them.

Dad' s was on his car keys, I thought. Mom' s, I wasn' t sure where she kept it.

Kyle had complained his was "too clunky" for his designer backpack.

Dad had yelled at me then, "Why are you always trying to upset Kyle, Ethan? Can' t you just be normal?"

I just wanted them to have something from me.

Mom picked up my keychain, the one I always carried.

She looked at it for a second.

"Some kind of token," she murmured, more to herself.

Then she dropped it into an evidence bag.

No connection.

Just another piece of evidence from another dead kid.

I wanted to scream, "It's me! Mom, it's Ethan!"

But I was just air, just a cold spot in that decaying room.

She didn' t see me. She saw a case.