“You’re excremental at following orders.” Al spat to one side and swiped at the dust clinging to her lips. “Ugh. Spiderwebs. So gross. If I eat a spider, I am charging you extra.”

Ewan, breath tight in his throat, shook his head. Jordie had told Al that Nina was being held in this place, in the basement. His team had confirmed it as the last location where Nina’s personal comm had registered. This was where she’d been supposedly meeting her sister.

“She has to be in there. She has to.”

“I’m sorry.” Allegra’s gaze went soft. “I know how much you were hoping to find her.”

“Not just hoping. This is where the kid said she’s supposed to be.” Ewan pounded a fist into his palm and sagged against the basement’s cracked brick wall. He let his forehead rest against the dust and cobwebs, his eyes closed. He cursed low, under his breath, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

Beside him, Al sneezed. Once, then twice, and a third time. The white arc from her flashlight swung wildly, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the basement’s darkness. “I should have let you beat on him as much as you wanted. I think he thought he was telling you the truth, if that makes you feel better. I know it doesn’t.”

Ewan turned. “It doesn’t, no. Damn it. I thought . . . damn it.”

He sagged for a moment. His team had led him to Jordie. Jordie had sent them here. After this, where would they go? They had no more leads.

“Let’s get out of here. Wait.” Al grabbed at his sleeve when he meant to move. “I’ll go first. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

Ewan followed her through the basement’s narrow lower doorway, then up the stairs to the door at the top. Nobody waited for them in the kitchen. A battered kitchen table had been pushed onto its side. There were no chairs.

A clear space in the built-up dirt on the floor stopped him from following Al through the back door and out into the yard. “Wait.”

She turned, pale eyebrows arching. “Huh?”

“There.” He pointed at the scrape marks on the floor. “Someone was here recently.”

“Look, I know you want to think it could be her, but . . .” Al shrugged but studied the spot he was pointing at. “We searched every house, Ewan. None of them had anything close to a clue that she might have been here.”

“We have to keep looking.”

“Shiny fine, I mean, I’m here to help. Do you want to look around the rest of the house?”

“He said the basement? You’re sure?” Ewan asked.

Allegra’s mouth twisted as she shifted to cock one hip. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean much. It’s obvious nobody else is here. We can look, though. Maybe we’ll find something that will help. You said this was the address where she told you she was meeting her sister. Why do you think they’d bring her back here when it’s so easily traceable?”

“I don’t know.” Ewan shook his head, studying the marks on the floor. “Maybe they didn’t have any other place to take her.”

“I’m guessing this isn’t really her sister’s house.”

“No. I mean, I’ve never met her sister and I’ve never been here before. But none of the houses on this street are occupied. This kitchen looks like it might have been staged the way the hospital room in the warehouse was. I think Nina was here. They’d have tied her to a chair, maybe. Right?” He gestured and dragged the toe of his boot along the bare spots of the floor. “She’d have fought them.”

“They couldn’t keep her tied to a chair for very long. Not unless she was totally unconscious. And you know they couldn’t keep her knocked out for more than a few minutes before her system would start clearing that right out.”

He knew it. He closed his eyes to think. “They had her here. She fought. She fell over . . . they dragged her? She fought them. She would have fought them.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Can you see any blood?” He couldn’t, but Al should be able to discern even the faintest splatters using her enhanced vision.

“A drop or two. Looks old. Could be anything, really.” She swept a hand around the kitchen. “Might not even be human, who knows, someone could’ve cut up a chicken in here once. Look, Donahue, we really need to get out of here in case someone comes back for you. She’s not here.”

Ewan didn’t move. He listened. Beyond what his ears could sense, he listened with . . . everything he had.

“Please,” he said, not to Al but to the Onegod or whatever deity in the universe might be able to hear him.

He didn’t hear the sound of his name as much as he felt it. He felt her. Nina. “Upstairs.”

Al went first again, a few steps ahead of him, kicking open each closed door and checking inside before she let him look. He wasn’t going to leave this house until he’d looked in every nook, every cranny. He was going to find her, his love.

“They’re empty,” Al said when they reached the end of the hall.

“She’s here,” he insisted.

The room next to the bathroom had once belonged to a child. Pale blue walls. Ratty fabric balloons clung to the ceiling in one corner, and the shredded curtains featured cartoon characters. The room had the same kind of closet all the others did, but the doors on this one had been removed to leave an open nook strung with more cobwebs and dust. Inside, the shelves had been taken down.

Ewan went inside it. Pressed the wall with his fingers. Found the seam of what had been a painted door without a handle. He shoved it harder until it gave way.

Al gave a warning shout from behind him, but he ignored it and pushed through the makeshift door into the tiny space beyond. It reeked of sweat and desperation. The only light came from behind him, and the ceiling was so low he immediately hit his head hard enough to shoot painstars through his vision. It didn’t matter.

She was there.

Ewan pushed forward along a floor laid with some kind of soft, lumpy material that tried but failed to trip him. Nina lay on her side, hands bound behind her. The dark fall of her hair spread out all around her, tangled and knotted. One side of it had been shaved away, leaving her scalp beneath studded with scabs.

He gathered her into his arms. “Baby. Wake up. I’m here. I found you.”

Nina gave a low groan and stirred, shifting in his embrace as her eyelids fluttered. She cried out in pain when she sat up. She didn’t struggle away from him or fight. Her eyes opened, wide and dark . . . and blank.

“Where am I?”

“You’re safe now. I got you.”

Now she recoiled, pushing with her feet across the floor until she landed with her back against a wall padded with the same material as the floor. She bared her teeth. When he reached for her, she kicked at him.

“Who are you?”

“Nina . . . baby, it’s me. Ewan.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

From behind him, he heard Al mutter a curse. Everything inside him went cold. He reached for Nina again, but stopped himself from touching her when it became clear she would fight him off, and that she would pull no punches. She would fight him, and she could kill him, if she wanted.

The worst had happened.

Nina had been reset.