After I dressed in warmer clothes, I hid in Wesley’s room for a few hours. He worked at his desk, quietly muttering under his breath to himself as he tapped away on his keyboard. I stretched out on my stomach across his bed with a stack of our stolen files in front of me, slowly pouring through them again, hoping to discover something that might make sense.

At one point, Caleb came in with a fresh mug of coffee for me, and I just glared at him.

“Hey, Kitty Kat… peace offering?” he cajoled, holding out the mug to me, but my temper flared and I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought of his peace offering.

“Caleb, maybe now isn’t the best time?” Wesley interjected, smoothly rescuing the mug of coffee and ushering my friend out of the door to the hallway.

“But—” Caleb started to object.

“Look. Kit’s feeling pretty hurt and betrayed right now, by all of us, so just… give her some space. I don’t think anything nice was about to come out of her mouth by the look she was giving you just then.” Wesley was speaking quietly, but the slightly open door allowed me to hear what he was saying. I couldn’t hear Caleb’s reply though, so he must have moved farther down the hall. Wesley returned inside, closing the door behind him.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and he just nodded, turning back to his work.

My eyes were just starting to blur over from looking at the files too long when my phone vibrated with an incoming video chat from Lucy. I smiled; my best friend always seemed to know when I needed to hear from her.

“Hey, girl,” I greeted her warmly as the video feed clicked in. The image showing, though, was not what I expected. I sucked in a sharp breath. It was Lucy, but she was gagged and bound to a chair, a dark, heavy-set figure standing behind her with his huge gloved hand wrapped around her throat. Her eyes were wide and pleading as she looked toward whoever held her phone, and there was already a rapidly darkening bruise along the side of her delicate face. Her eyebrow was split open, and blood was trickling past her eye. Wesley turned toward me at the sound of my gasp and must have registered the shock on my face because he yelled for the others.

“Christina.” The voice, which was definitely not Lucy, jarred me as it echoed over the speaker. “I tried to play nice. I tried to give you the opportunity to turn yourself in peacefully, but you rudely declined my offer. This, dear girl, is the price of insolence.” Dupree’s grandmotherly voice was gone and replaced with the cold ranting of a madwoman.

The boys crushed in around me to see the screen, and someone cursed.

“Now watch carefully, Christina. This is what happens when people displease me,” Dupree continued cruelly, and a second dark figure threw a brutal fist into Lucy’s stomach, causing her to cough and gag for air. “If you do not present yourself alone to my testing facility in twenty-four hours, I will go after the loved ones of your precious little boyfriends there.” The shadow man hit Lucy again, this time in the face, the crunch of her nose audible.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, dear.” I could almost hear the dangerous edge of a smile in Dupree’s cold voice. A moment before she ended the call, the big man moved from behind Lucy in order to aid in her beating, but in the space where he had stood I recognized something. I knew where they were.

I dropped my phone and scrambled off Wesley’s bed, flying down the hallway with the shouts of my name echoing behind me. I snatched River’s keys off the hook where he kept them, because I still hadn’t picked up my damn car from school, and pushed a little extra speed as I raced into the garage. Once there, I slipped into his sleek car. Tapping the steering wheel impatiently, I glared at the slow moving garage door opening. Just as it opened enough to let me escape, the passenger door flew open and Caleb landed inside. He barely got the door closed again before I accelerated down the driveway.

“Kit. Talk to me,” he panted, buckling his seat belt.

“I know where they are.” I chewed each word out through gritted teeth. “When that fucker moved, right at the end, I saw a blue unicorn spray painted on the wall behind him.”

“I don’t get it.” Why would he? He’d never been there.

“It’s a stupid picture that some kid used a few years back to mark good locations for parties. There are all sorts of abandoned or private locations in the area with them, but only one of them is blue.”

He nodded but didn’t question me further as I raced River’s baby around the tight corners of the mountain roads at a breakneck speed. His knuckles went white on the door handle, but I couldn’t slow down, I wouldn’t slow down. Not when my sister was in trouble.