TSK, TSK, What to Read?: BLOG TOUR: Back Before Dark by Tim Shoemaker

Praise for Code of Silence: 'Deliberate, plausible, and gritty whodunit.' --Booklist Starred Review

Taken!

A detour through the park leads Cooper, Gordy, Hiro, and Lunk straight into a trap, and Gordy is abducted! For the kidnapper, it's all a game, a way to settle an old score, with no one getting hurt. But evil has away of escalating, and once his identity is discovered, the rules change.Despite the best of police efforts, the hours tick by without a clue or a ransom call, leaving everyone to their own fears. Gordy is gone. Cooper descends deeper into a living nightmare, imagining the worst for his best friend and cousin. Hours stretch into days, and talks of a memorial service begin to surface. But Cooper still feels his cousin is alive and develops a reckless plan, changing all the rules. Now the one who set out to rescue his friend needs to be rescued himself. Sometimes rescuing a friend from darkness means going in after them.

Chapter 2, pages21-22

A police cruiser took the corner and pulled down the alleyway—fast. His lights were on, but not the siren. The driver rolled his window down. “Did you make the 9-1-1 call?”

Cooper nodded. “Did you find him?”

The cop hustled out of the car. “All three of you witnesses to the abduction?”

“Yeah—did you find him?” Cooper searched his face.

“I need you to come to the station.” He dodged the question again. Not a good sign.

Cooper looked back toward Meadows Drive—as if the van might drive back around the corner and drop Gordy off. Like it had all been some kind of crazy mistake. Ridiculous.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Son,we need you to come to the station. We’ve got some questions for you.”

“Why aren’t you looking for him? He needs the help—not us.”

The cop hunkered his shoulders as if trying to duck out of the rain. “We’re on it.Every squad car on the street. And Arlington Heights, Barrington, Palatine, Schaumburg, County, and even the state police are being pulled into the search.”

It was dark now. So incredibly dark, it seemed.

Cooper felt himself trembling. “We can search too. We’ll ride with you. Help you look for the van.”

“The biggest help you can be to your friend right now is to give us every detail of what you saw. C’mon. I’ll slide your bikes into my trunk and drive you to the station. Get you out of this rain.”

Cooper didn’t want a ride to the station. He wanted to find Gordy. Nothing else mattered. And if they wouldn’t let him do that, he’d rather stay right where he was. When you’re out in the rain, nobody notices you’re crying.

Five minutes earlier his only concern was getting home before dark. Now none of them would. The dark had overtaken all of them—and swallowed Gordy whole.