Well, that was fun.

Making a stuttering, blushing, tongue-tied fool of myself was fun. At least I had an untold number of days to keep going through the same discomfort.

There’s a lovely thought.

For one thing, I could breathe freely when I was in the car. Even when he was in his room, I could feel Cash nearby. It was unnerving. Beyond. There was no relaxing—not that I particularly needed to relax while I was doing my work.

He kept me on my toes, at any rate.

I had never been as acutely aware of any other person as I was when he was around. Which was all the time, while I was in the lab. Even with a wall and a door between us, I knew he was there. Watching TV. Working out. Getting sweaty.

“What is your problem?” I muttered under my breath as I left the compound, driving through the gate with its sparkling spools of barbed wire. I was a scientist. He was a specimen. My test subject. So what if he had the most perfect set of abs I’d ever seen outside of Photoshop?

He had to know what he did to me. I groaned and only half-wished I was dead. How many times had I blushed like an idiot? How many times had I stuttered and fumbled around? More times than I wanted to remember. How could I ever hope to maintain credibility with him? He knew I had the hots for him.

He was probably used to it, too. How could he not be? One look into those impossibly green eyes, at that blinding, self-assured smile, and panties would melt. Victoria’s Secret could likely attribute a portion of their profits to him. He probably had to elbow his way through his admirers just to walk down the street.

Of course, if that were true, he wouldn’t think badly of me for acting like a doofus. Not if it were an everyday occurrence. I tried to tell myself that, in an attempt to self-soothe. Like a baby sucking its thumb. It was all I had to give me the courage to go back the next day and look him in the eye.

A glance at the clock told me it was already four-thirty, and I needed to hustle if I was going to make it to Tommy’s school in time to avoid paying extra for a late pickup. I had only made that mistake once, back in the beginning, when I wasn’t yet used to building my schedule around the needs of a child and left the lab later than I should have.

It wasn’t the extra money that was a problem, of course. It was the tired, hollow-eyed look on Tommy’s face when I arrived. Like a little old man in a five-year-old body. Resigned. He knew it was coming. I would let him down. He expected it. I had wrapped him up in a tight hug and promised to never, ever be late again.

Over time—not that night, but in the weeks afterward—I’d gotten more and more of the sad, disappointing story of his life. Where had Chrissie lost her way? I remembered her pregnancy, how scared and thrilled and full of hope she was. That was before Zack left, naturally. When she was pregnant, they had big plans. She hoped they’d get married. They didn’t. He stuck around long enough to meet the baby two days after the birth, then left town without a word.

Even after that, she held on. My sister was a hard-headed girl. She was determined to be happy and threw herself into it the way she threw herself into everything. Including being a mother. When I called to ask how things were going—and admittedly, I hadn’t called nearly enough—she had always injected a smile into her voice and assured me everything was great. Super. Fantastic. Tommy was healthy and happy and smart as a whip.

How was I supposed to know about the methamphetamine if she never told me about it? How she started taking pills to keep herself awake for her second job. How the pills weren’t enough after a while. How so much of her life began to revolve around finding more. How so little of her life revolved around Tommy anymore.

She had started to neglect him. To miss school pickups. To forget to take him to school in the first place. He would go to bed hungry. He would go to school in dirty clothes or clothes that were too tight because he’d grown out of them. He always told me these stories in a matter-of-fact tone, the same tone he’d used when he told me about his friend getting an iPhone. Just the facts, nothing more. I wondered if he would ever forget those days—he was young enough that he might. He might be able to have a happy life, well-adjusted. And that was up to me. I couldn’t let him down the way my sister had.

But she had good intentions, too. At first. She hadn’t planned on falling apart. Nobody ever did. Life happened. What if life happened to me?

Thinking about it was pointless right now, since I was only blocks away from the school and wanted to be in a good mood for him. He’d want to hear about Aunt Cari’s First Day of Work, and he deserved to see and hear me at my best. I hadn’t given details. He didn’t know who I was working with. But he was proud of me. I wondered what any of us did to deserve the love of animals or small children. The purest souls.

I was smiling, thinking about that, as I jogged up the front stairs to the school. The administrators knew me, and I waved my fingers in greeting as I walked the familiar hall leading to the library, where the kids whose parents and guardians worked late waited and did their homework.

“Wait a second, Carissa! He’s not here. Why are you?”

The secretary’s voice stopped me in my tracks and turned my blood to ice.

I turned slowly, oh, so slowly. A million scenarios flew through my brain at warp speed, one more terrible than the other. Zack had come back for him. He was sick and had to go to the hospital. Or injured. Or there was an emergency, and the kids had to be evacuated.

Or a stranger had…

“Where is he?” I whispered, glaring at her.

She frowned, pointing to the door. “He’s gone. For the day. I thought you…”

“What?” I rushed at her and had her by the shoulders before I knew my feet were moving. “What are you saying? He’s gone? Somebody came and got him? They signed him out?” My desperation grew with every word, just like the volume of my voice. By the time I finished, I was screaming.

“Let’s see who it was.” The old woman was shaking as she rushed to the office.

I pushed past her and spun the clipboard to face me, eyes searching frantically for his name.

Thomas Lomax. Signed out at 3:00 by a scribble. A fucking scribble.

“Did you see them?” I shouted, shoving the clipboard at her chest. Useless damn thing. “Man or woman? Old? Young? Who was it?”

“We can check the security footage,” she babbled. “I’m sure we have them on camera, whoever they are.” She turned to ask somebody a question, but I didn’t know who she asked or what she asked because I was falling into a deep, dark hole I would never climb my way out of.

Every breath I took, I fell deeper. I would never stop falling.

When my cell buzzed with a text message, snug in the pocket of my jacket, I barely noticed.

“Maybe that’s the person who picked him up for you,” the secretary suggested, like she was clinging to any last shred of hope. Just like I was.

“What?” I fumbled for it, pulled it out so fast I almost dropped it on the floor. There was a message, all right. From an unknown number.

Aunt Cari. If you’re as smart as your nephew says, you’ll act like this was a misunderstanding. You won’t say a word to the cops or the administrators at the school. Just go home and wait for our call.

I had barely finished reading those horrifying words before a second message came through.

We’re watching the school, so don’t even think about calling the cops. Leave. Now.

I kept reading, over and over. The painful truth loomed large. Somebody took him away from me. Somebody might be hurting him. And they were watching me, or so they said. I wasn’t in any position to second guess them.

“Carissa? Who is it?”

I managed to find my voice. “It was a misunderstanding. I forgot that I’d secured a pickup for today—I wasn’t sure what time I’d get out of work.”

Amazing how easy it was to lie. I didn’t have to think about the words before they spilled out. The only way to get my hands to stop visibly shaking and giving me away was to jam them into my pockets.

“Oh. What a relief.” The old woman let out a nervous, fluttery laugh, but her smile never reached her eyes. She was disgusted with me. I had nearly given her a heart attack and had probably upset the handful of kids who were still waiting to be picked up. I had disrupted her day.

She had no idea what it meant to have things disrupted.

“I’m very sorry,” I whispered. I couldn’t hear myself speak. My heart was pounding too hard, my blood rushing too fast and too loud. I stumbled out of the office, down the hall. Past the rows of student artwork lining the wall. One of those pictures was Tommy’s. I had seen it at the Back to School night only a few weeks earlier. He had been so excited to get started, and so proud to show me what he did in art class.

I couldn’t breathe. Something was sitting on my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I had to get home. They were going to call me. Tommy. What did they want for him? What had I done to get their attention? Images of drug dealers raced through my mind, dealers my sister had stolen from, who wanted their payment through any means necessary. Who wouldn’t stop at anything, even stealing and hurting an innocent little boy? A scream tried to force its way out of my throat as I threw myself behind the wheel of the car.

How was I supposed to get home? I couldn’t remember how to get there. I couldn’t even get my key in the ignition—it kept missing, skittering off to the side. You have to do this. You have to get home and wait for their call, like they said. It was bad enough traffic would be terrible, as it always was anywhere remotely near D.C. I couldn’t afford to lose any more time.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then inserted the key into the ignition and turned. One step out of the way. Now, foot on the brake. Put the car in Drive. I talked myself through every step of pulling out from in front of the school, then driving home. My empty home where Tommy’s bed waited. Would he be in it later? I had no idea.

My cell rang the moment I stumbled in the front door. I didn’t even have time to close and lock it behind me before I answered the call. “Yes? Yes? Who is this?”

“The people who have your nephew in their care.” Robotic, like they used one of those modifiers to disguise their voice.

It added another layer to my horror.

“Where is he? Is he all right? Let me talk to him.”

“You’ll speak with him once we’re on the same page, Carissa.”

“Who are you?” I whimpered, leaning against the wall and sliding down until my butt touched the floor. “Please, please, I’ll do anything I can. I just want him back, unharmed. That’s all.”

“You’re asking for quite a lot, Aunt Cari.” The teasing, mocking tone. The gentle laughter. “And don’t worry. You’ll have to do something to get him back.”

“What? What do you want? Money?” I closed my eyes and tried to think of everything I had. If I sold the car and liquidated my 401k…

“No, no. Nothing like that. We’re not barbarians, Carissa.”

My eyes flew open. “What, then?”

“You have something far more valuable than money. I wonder if you know it yet.”

What else did I have? I searched wildly, imagines flying back and forth in my head. I came up blank.

“You started a new job today. Didn’t you?”

I covered my mouth with my hand. No way. How did they know that? How long had they been following me? Did they know Cash? Damn it, I should’ve known better than to get myself mixed up with a shifter. I should’ve turned Mary down, turned Harrison down. I would be cooking spaghetti for my nephew right now if I had, and he’d be finishing up his homework at the table and absentmindedly kicking the legs of his chair until he scuffed them up.

“I’ll take your silence as understanding. You’re starting to understand what it is we’re after.”

“You want him?” I whispered.

“No, no—well, maybe. If that would make things more convenient. What we really want is his blood.”

I thought back to the tubes I had drawn earlier. I had only used a couple of them for analysis and was planning to use the rest for testing once I started devising early antidotes. “I can go get it right now. I have two tubes full. Please, don’t hurt my nephew.”

Silence. I held my breath, waiting. When a soft chuckle reached my ears, I whimpered in dismay.

“You think two tubes is going to do it?” the robot-voiced man asked before chuckling again. “We need a lot more than that.”

“How much?” I could draw it when I got there. He wouldn’t even have to know why I was doing it.

“Much more,” he snapped. “As much as you can get your hands on. We realize it’ll take a little time, since draining him all at once would look… obvious… but we trust you’ll expedite the process as much as possible. You have plenty of motivation.”

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered. I didn’t expect an answer. It didn’t matter why they were doing it, anyway. They had my boy.

Another soft, sinister chuckle. “Do you really want to know?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“How do I know Tommy’s still safe?” I asked.

Tears threatened to choke me. I swallowed them back, swallowed hard, determined not to lose control of myself until I was off the phone. Of course, I’d be heartbroken and devastated and panicked. They had to expect that. But they didn’t need to hear it.

“Would you like to talk to him?”

“Yes! Yes, please, let me hear his voice. Oh, God.” I covered my eyes, weeping openly no matter how hard I tried to hold it in.

My poor little guy. What were they doing to him? I couldn’t let him stay long. They might get impatient, start forcing my hand.

“Aunt Cari?” He sounded doubtful, but healthy. Strong.

“Hey, big guy. How ya doin’?” Keep it light. Keep it normal. Make sure he doesn’t know you’re falling apart.

“I thought you were going to come to get me today,” he murmured.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I wanted to.” Tears streamed down my cheeks. Another promise broken.

“Where are you?”

What should I say? “Still at work, honey. I couldn’t leave you at school forever. I had to have somebody else pick you up. Are you comfortable there?”

“Yeah. They’re nice. How do you know them?”

Just like that, he was gone. “Tommy? Tommy!”

“No, no,” Robot Voice chided. “Sorry, pal, Aunt Cari has to go now.”

I heard Tommy’s disappointed voice in the background, and my heart nearly broke for him. My poor boy.

“Do we understand each other, Aunt Cari?”

I gulped. “What am I supposed to do when I get his blood together? How do I know when enough is enough?”

“We’ll call you and monitor your progress, and let you know when you’ve collected enough for our purposes. Sound fair?”

“And Tommy? I want to be sure he’s all right through all of this. You have to take care of him. Please.”

“We will. And to answer your question, he’s very comfortable here.”

A series of beeps indicated the call was over. All I could do was pull the phone from my ear and stare at it, like I’d never seen a phone before. Tears blurred my vision again, and I dropped the thing on the floor before curling up in a ball on my side and screaming behind my hands.