Going out into the wild used to be my one sure way of centering myself. Away from people, away from all the pressures that came with them, I didn’t have to worry about anything except myself and where I was going in that moment. I didn’t have to pretend to be normal. I didn’t have any expectations to face except my own.

Tonight, too many of the people I cared about had followed me into the park, if only in my mind. I stretched out at the mouth of the cave where I was planning to spend the night, sitting in shadow so I’d see any ranger coming before they spotted me. The lichen-speckled rock was dry and warm, the evening air full of the smell of spring leaves, but my heart was still thumping as if I’d only just finished running out here.

Grace might still be talking to that Alpha Project asshole right now. Or worse, he might have picked up on some slip one of us had made and decided the time for talking was done. Lord only knew what he’d be doing to her if that was the case. I wouldn’t know whether she was okay until noon tomorrow.

I’d wanted a plan, but why had I come up with that plan? I didn’t want to wait that long. I didn’t want her having to come all the way out here. If I’d had more time to think I’d have come up with a better idea—but there’d only been seconds before she’d needed to head out the door. It’d been the first option that had popped into my head. Now I was stuck with it.

I tipped my head back against the side of the cliff, my hands clenching. There were too many things I wished I’d done differently, and too many of them conflicted with each other. I wished I’d stayed at the hotel and found some way to confront the threat myself. I wished I was a thousand miles away from the Alpha Project people and their schemes.

Any other time, I’d have headed across the country the second I’d left that hotel. That was what both Mom and Dad would have advised now, I knew that. But they’d also told me to make my own judgments. I couldn’t abandon Grace. Maybe this had started with me saving her life, but she’d been there for me in so many other ways since then.

Knowing that didn’t stop me from worrying about the other people who mattered to me. I got out my burner phone. I could at least set a few of those worries at ease.

First I texted Connor. How’s it going in Florence? Nothing’s burned down so far, I hope?

He responded a few minutes later with a snarky-looking emoji. All buildings still standing. I’ve made amazing strides with my artistic education. You’d be proud of me, bro!

A smile tugged at my lips. Knowing Connor, by his artistic education he probably meant he’d been admiring the local women, not the galleries. But whatever. As long as he stayed out of trouble—for however long he was capable of doing that—I didn’t care what else he did.

Always am, I wrote back. Even when you’re driving me up the wall.

I took a moment to text my parents too. Still fine. Staying careful as usual. I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that. If they’d known how close a call I’d just had, after the way they’d already been talking, it would only stress them out more to know I was still here.

Maybe they’d been right that I shouldn’t take this chance. Maybe I’d only made things worse for Grace by staying. I grimaced, looking out over the shadowy, tree-dotted plains around the cliff.

Decisions like this had always been so easy before. Any sign of danger, I up and left. I’d never had any reason to hang back. I’d never let myself care that much about anything or anyone outside my family.

If anyone understood that conflict, it’d be Nick. He’d built his whole life around trying to help as many people as possible, family or not.

I dialed his number and watched the tree branches drift with the breeze as his phone rang. Three rings in, I remembered that while it wasn’t strange for Connor to still be up at whatever wee hour in the morning it was over in Italy, Londoner Nick was probably asleep. Damn. I was just reaching for the End Call button when the line clicked.

“Hey,” Nick said, his voice drowsy. “Is everything okay?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about the time difference. I’ll let you go.”

“No, no.” There was a rustle as he must have sat up in bed. When he spoke again, he sounded more alert. “What’s going on? Something must be up, or you wouldn’t forget. You’re the one who usually keeps track of the rest of us.”

He made that remark affectionately, but it tugged at the twist of guilt I was already feeling. I’d made it my life’s mission to protect my brothers—what if I was the one who got them all caught now?

“Yeah,” I said, my throat constricting. “I know. Things have gotten... complicated here. I thought talking to you might help me get my head on straight.”

“Sure. What’s on your mind?”

Now that I had him on the line, I didn’t know where to start. “You use your talent—finding missing things, returning them to people—all the time. Because you want to help people. Even though you know that if you slipped up, if someone realized what you were doing, you could get the attention of the wrong people.”

“And bring them down not just on me but on all of us,” Nick said. “Yeah. Believe me, I keep that in mind every day.”

I rubbed my jaw. “So how do you decide what risks are worth it? When it’s more important that you get something back to its owner than that you keep a low profile?”

Nick paused. “I don’t know. If you were hoping I’ve got some kind of equation for it, I can’t help you there. I really just go by feeling. I always do my work in as low-key a way as possible, of course. And I just pick the circumstances where it feels like the people involved really need whatever it is. That I’d be making a significant difference... Making the world a better place in a way that matters, as cheesy as that probably sounds.”

“It does,” I muttered, and Nick laughed.

“It’s not as if I always had the balance perfect. You’ve had to extract me from a couple of jams, as I’m sure you remember. I just couldn’t live with myself having this talent and never doing anything useful with it, so I kept working at it. It’s taken a while for me to find a way of weighing those priorities that I feel good about.”

I guessed that was the problem. I didn’t have any practice at dealing with this kind of dilemma at all. No experience to guide my instincts.

“I don’t feel good about any of this,” I said. “It seems like I’ve got a narrow thread of a path I could walk where no one gets hurt, but chances are the situation’s going to sway one way or the other and someone is. And I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself either way.”

“Jer...” Nick was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know if any of us say this to you enough, but you’re a fucking hero, you know? You’ve always been there for all of us, any time, any trouble we get into... If you’ve found something else that you really care about, something that’s making you reevaluate your priorities, I don’t think any of us is going to blame you if the situation goes a little sideways. Why should we all get to make mistakes and be forgiven, but never you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. My voice came out hoarse. My chest had tightened around my lungs. Suddenly the thought of talking about this in any more depth pained me. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, anyway. Now go back to sleep, Nick. And thank you.”

After I’d hung up, I reached into my pocket and took out the worn shard of glass I’d been carrying for almost twenty years. It shone faintly in the fading sunlight. I ran my thumb over the jagged edges, hard but too dulled to break the skin.

I had made mistakes. I’d made a big one, all those years ago. We’d been walking down the street in some new city—I couldn’t even remember which one now. Mom, Dad, and the five of us kids, Liam just a toddler Mom had on her back in a wearable carrier. I’d been nine.

Something had caught my eye. I can’t remember that either. A treat in a bakery, or a toy in a store window...

I’d asked Dad, and he’d said no. To keep walking. But I’d been so tired of all the walking and the moving and never knowing where we’d be living next week, let alone next month or next year, that I’d kept arguing. I could still remember the hot flush of anger that had spread through my body, with a jitter of energy I’d never felt before.

I hadn’t really understood how important it was that we keep moving, keep our heads down, until that moment when I almost destroyed everything.

Dad had ordered me to quiet down, and I’d yelled something back at him—and a crate of apples sitting out front of a grocery shop had leapt into the air. Leapt and flung itself across the sidewalk to smash into a car window.

The alarm had started blaring. For a second I hadn’t been able to do anything but stand there staring, the energy still thrumming through me. Knowing that it was my mind that had smashed that window. Thrilled and sickened by the power at the same time.

All the other pedestrians had stopped to stare. Someone had pointed at our family. Dad’s hand had closed around mine with a yank, and I hadn’t argued with him then.

When we’d made it to the apartment we were supposed to be staying in, I’d found that shard of glass wedged behind the tongue of my running shoe. Mom and Dad had sat me down for another talk about our powers, about responsibility and control, with panicked looks at each other and my brothers. I’d held onto the shard through the whole thing. By the end my palm was bleeding.

We’d moved again the next day. My fault. For weeks Mom had gone a little pale every time I raised my voice even slightly, until I learned to keep it steady. I could have ruined everything in an instant. I nearly had.

I turned the shard over in my hand now as I turned over Nick’s words in my head. A nine-year-old’s mistake with a power I hadn’t even realized I had. Suddenly all the guilt I’d carried seemed a little ridiculous. How many times had Connor screwed up? Liam? Ethan? Even Nick?

My parents had wanted to keep us safe, sure, but they’d also wanted us to be happy. Had I left any room in my life for that, before now?

The answer was painfully obvious. I dragged in a shaky breath. I wanted to keep Grace safe too—and I flat out wanted her. While there was still a chance, just this once I wasn’t letting it go. I’d sacrificed far too much already.

As that certainty settled over me, another idea popped into my head. I needed the Alpha Project people out of here—and there were ways of speeding them along, weren’t there?

It’d be a decent hour of the morning in Tokyo now. I picked up my phone one more time.

“Jeremy!” Liam answered. “More car trouble?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But I was hoping to get your help with something else. I’d like to leave a trail of breadcrumbs... but I’d like it to still look like I was trying to hide my trail. A credit card charge under a specific name—let’s say in Las Vegas. Is that something you could see setting up?”

I could hear Liam’s grin over the phone. There was nothing he liked better than a problem to crack. “Oh, yeah, we can manage that. A little scavenger hunt for the bad guys. It’ll be fun. Just tell me what and when.”