Long Lost

Gone Once For years, Brad Denning wondered whether his younger brother was dead or alive. He wondered who took him, or if Petey had simply run away. Now, on a Denver street, Brad is jolted by a man calling out his name. A man claiming to be his long lost brother. Twice Burned But the reunion is short-lived. Suddenly, Petey is gone again. And so is Brad's family. This time, Brad is going after him: to find the truth, to find his family. To enter a murderous game that stretches into the past...and will culminate in one final moment of revenge.
"When I was a boy, my kid brother disappeared. Vanished off the face of the earth. His name was Petey, and he was bicycling home from an after-school baseball game. Not that he'd been playing. The game was for older guys like me, which is to say that I was all of thirteen and Petey was only nine. He thought the world of me; he always wanted to tag along. But the rest of the guys complained that he was in the way, so I told Petey to "bug off, go home." I still remember the hurt look he gave me before he got on his bike and pedaled away, a skinny little kid with a brush cut, glasses, braces on his teeth, and freckles, wearing a droopy T-shirt, baggy jeans, and sneakers the last I saw of him. That was a quarter of a century ago. Yesterday."