Stopped.
Ruby.
The flashlight slipped out of my fingers, cracking against the hard ground. Blood roared in my ears until I thought it would tear me apart.
Two hands landed on my shoulders. Priyanka turned me toward her, saying something I couldn’t hear. I pulled back, watching as a grim-faced Roman circled the girl and crouched down in front of her.
Priyanka’s hands dug into my skin painfully, but she couldn’t look away from him either, not until he glanced up and shook his head.
I didn’t believe him. I tore myself out of Priyanka’s grip, my breath burning where it was caught inside my chest. I only needed a single look at what remained of her face.
Not her.
She was too young. Her hands and feet, bound by zip ties, were too small. From a distance, it had been an easy mistake to make, but up close…
I forced myself not to turn away. To look at the girl, alone in this dark place.
“God, she can’t be more than twelve, thirteen,” Priyanka said, her voice strained. “What was she doing here?”
Roman stood slowly, picking up the flashlight from where it had rolled to a stop beside the girl’s legs. The light passed over the rink again, this time sweeping over sticky footprints in the grime and dust. I followed one trail of small footprints until it intersected with another one, and another, and another.
There weren’t just a few tracks. There were dozens and dozens of them. Some smaller than the length of my hand.
“Whatever it was,” Roman said, “she wasn’t alone. And she didn’t come here by choice.”
“I want to leave,” Priyanka said, all humor gone from her voice. The air was like someone’s damp breath against my skin, but she rubbed her arms as if she needed to warm some feeling back into them. “Right now.”
“No,” I said. “We can’t just leave her here.”
Roman’s eyes softened as he looked to me. “We’re not going to. We’ll use the pay phone across the street to call it in to the Baton Rouge police. They need to see this—whatever this is.”
“I don’t…” Trust them to take care of her.
That single truth burned in me. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust the FBI, or Cruz, or anyone in her orbit. I only trusted us.
“I understand,” he said. “I don’t like it either. But she deserves to be identified and returned to her family for a real burial. That’s not something we can give her.”
My throat ached.
“Right?” he said softly.
I nodded.
You must remember this, I thought. That was my responsibility now. But it wasn’t enough.
“I need the burner,” I told Priyanka.
She handed it over with a questioning look. The camera wouldn’t record this in excruciating high definition, but all that mattered was capturing this scene, this moment, and refusing to let anyone look away.
If I were going to put together a narrative from all these pieces—the drone footage, this rink, and whatever we found next—I needed to actually begin to document what was happening.
I flipped the camera view so that it was on me. My face glowed in the dark rink.
“It’s…” I began, doing the math in my head. “August seventeenth. About four o’clock in the afternoon, at Riverside Rink, just outside of Baton Rouge.” I flipped the camera view again, walking the length of the rink, sweeping it over the shadowed evidence of the people—the kids—who had been kept here. “We discovered this place while following a lead on the real culprits behind the bombing at Penn State. From what I can tell, it looks as if children, possibly Psi, were held here against their will, likely because they were being trafficked.”
I moved back over to the girl. Roman and Priyanka stepped out of the frame.
“But they left someone behind.” I knelt down beside her, bringing the camera closer to her face. “She’s been here, forgotten, waiting for someone to care enough to find her.”
I stopped recording, looking back at the others.
“I think it’s obvious who’s behind this,” Roman said, his voice pitching deeper with anger. “Mercer must be back in the trafficking business. This has his fingerprints all over it—we’re near a reopened shipping port, close enough to the compound in New Orleans. Even using an abandoned facility to hold them until transport could be arranged…”
“I really wish I could believe he’s the only one trafficking kids,” Priyanka said. “If anything, this feels messy. That’s not his way. He would have sent someone to clean up.”
“He doesn’t let rivals in on his game,” Roman said. “It’s exactly what he did before. Keep the Psi kids he wants for experimenting, sell the rest to other countries or organizations he doesn’t think will challenge him.”
I clutched the phone tighter in my hand. “If Ruby really was here, then this is what she was chasing. Maybe Mercer does have her, after all. It would have brought her right into his path.”
She’d been following the lines of a web that stretched between states, between one dark criminal element and the next. Unwinding clues and, hopefully, collecting evidence.
And now…
“Zu,” Roman said, taking my hand. He repeated my name again, and again, until I finally looked at him. “If Mercer has her, we can start looking in his various real estate holdings. It’s a place to start.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. And it didn’t stop the swelling tide of pressure as it rose up in my chest.
Overhead, the fluorescent light fixture hummed, buzzing like a trapped fly.
“And how long will that take? He could have her somewhere neither of you know about,” I said. “He could be hurting her right now.”
“There’s only one way to pinpoint her location for sure,” Priyanka said, looking to Roman. “You’re going to have to call in your favor.”
NO WAS THE ONLY WORD Roman would say as we left the rink and crossed the street back to the car. No, and no, and no.
“But—” Priyanka began, gripping the front passenger door.
“No.” The word held no anger, just finality. Roman shook his head. “I’m calling this in to the police, then we can reassess the available options as we head out.”
“You’re being an idiot,” Priyanka told him as he walked toward the pay phone at the edge of the McDonald’s parking lot. “You know I’m right! We should have done it in the first place!”
Roman’s body stiffened, but he didn’t turn back to us. “Maybe. Or maybe we’d all be dead now.”
“Argh,” Priyanka said. She climbed into the backseat and slammed the door behind her. “He’s being ridiculous. Of course it’s a risk. What isn’t a risk?”
“I’d love to sympathize, but I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her as I buckled myself back into the driver’s seat.
Priyanka let her head fall back against the seat, taking a deep breath. “Did Roman tell you that four of us survived Wendall’s experiments?”
I nodded.
“I want us to go find the fourth member of our Sad Squad,” she explained. “He’s a Fisher. He can locate a person telepathically. It’s like he casts out a mental line and hooks onto an image of that person, wherever they might be.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “How is that even possible?”
“You’d have to ask Wendall,” Priyanka said. “He might have some insights, considering Max is his son.”
My mouth fell open. “How does this story manage to get worse each time you add something to it?”
“I’ve learned to break up the bad bits because it’s too soul-crushing to absorb all at once,” Priyanka said. “But you can see how an ability like that would be very useful to Mercer, right? He could find almost anyone he wanted: spies in his organization, his enemies and competitors…Mercer took Lana into his security detail, but the three of us formed our own team. Max would locate the person, I would break through their security systems, and Roman…”