The Boy Next Door

Retired detective Harold Bennett notices the boy noticing everything — and slowly realizes Eloy isn't just documenting his street. He's building a case file on his own life.

When Eloy vanishes without a struggle, Harold and Detective Sofia Navarro uncover something far stranger than an abduction: a twenty-one-year-old cold case, a quiet network built to disappear children the system can't save, and a choice no nine-year-old should have to make alone. What they find will force Harold to answer a question he's spent his whole career avoiding — sometimes the legal answer and the right answer aren't the same thing, and somebody has to live with knowing it.

A slow-burn procedural with a gut-punch ending, for readers of intense, morally complicated crime fiction.