Two days later a man I’d never seen approached the fence at Cody’s school and told him his “Uncle Dax” had sent him to bring him home early for a surprise.

Thank God for the stranger-safety drills Porter and I had drummed into him for years.

Cody knew the shape of the lie at once, shouted, and ran straight into the principal’s office, and the man was gone before anyone reached the fence.

The school’s cameras caught him leaving in a vehicle registered to one of the very shell companies Porter had named in his journals.

Porter had been almost stubborn about those drills.