1 post from 2008

"How did they know I was adopted - when I didn't even know?" Chip asked, his voice breaking. He bent his head down over the mail again.

"Missing doesn't necessarily mean 'adopted'" Jonah argued. "Or maybe there's some list in the school office of which kids are adopted, and somebody hacked into the computer system, and they think it's really funny to..."

He stopped because Chip didn't seem to be listening anymore. Chip's face had suddenly gone deathly pale. Slowly, he held up three letters, all of them plain envelopes without return addresses.  All of them were addressed to Chip, two of the letters had yellow forwarding labels.  One of the labels was peeled back a little, and Jonah could see the words "Winnetka, Illinois" below.

Winnetka was where Chip used to live.

"You open them," Chip said. "I can't."

Jonah took a deep breath and took the letters from Chip. He ripped them open quickly, the same way he took off bandaids.

"You are one of the missing" he read from the first letter." Then, "Beware! They're coming back to get you." And the next one, again, "Beware, they're coming back to get you."