“I always am….” He smiled and pulled back his jacket to show me the gun in his custom holster.

“Well, now you’re extra prepared.” I leaned over the back of the couch and picked up the backpack I’d dropped on the center cushion and tossed it to him. He caught it with an “oof,” unzipped it, then “oohed” at the contents.

“Okay, this one’s mine,” he said, pulling his own .45 out, along with a box half-full of the corresponding shells. “But if the rest of these are yours, I have to admit my manhood is slightly threatened here.”

“Yeah, but you’re a little turned on, too, right?” I sat on his lap to start lining the weapons up on the table. Three extra 9mm guns, a .38—I’d brought that one for Anne—and one truly badass, guaranteed-to-blow-a-hole-right-through-you .50-caliber monster.

“More than a little…” Cam muttered, gripping my hips from behind. Then he spotted the .50 caliber and I was all but forgotten. “Christmas, already?” He reached for it, and I slapped his fingers.

“Hands off, little boy. That’s a very grown-up piece of equipment.” Overkill, probably, but you never know when you’re going to need a really big gun.

Cam laughed. “Are we hunting bears? You got an elephantcket to shn there, too?”

I twisted to grin down at him, feeling guilty for the moment of levity, even as I seized it. “I like power—when I’m wielding it.”

“Mmm… I like it when you’re wielding it, too.” His lips found my neck, and I indulged in one more moment of pleasure before pulling away to bring us both down to earth.

“Okaaaay, back to work.” I slid out of his lap and onto my own chair while he started loading extra clips. “I assume you’ve actually been to Tower’s house. Or…estate, or whatever…?”

“Yeah. It’s not as…overdone as Cavazos’s address, but it’s a good-size property.”

“Big enough to hide an operation like this Skilled transfusion thing?”

“I honestly don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s not like they let you just wander around the grounds. Well, not like they let me wander. Kori might have wandering privileges.”

“Speaking of which…” I jogged into the bathroom, where I turned off the light and pulled the door halfway closed, leaving more than enough darkness for Kori—and hopefully Hadley—to make a triumphant return.

In the kitchen again, I grabbed two sodas from the fridge—no telling how long they’d been there—and set one in front of Cam. “The way I see it, we can sit here and wait for Kori to bring her back—” which wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard we wished or how many happy thoughts we threw out into the universe “—or we can track Hadley ourselves.”

We could have tracked Kori—I’d certainly done it before—but we had no way of knowing that Hadley was still with her. For all we knew, she’d turned over the child, then been reassigned. If she heard Anne’s message, she’d have to respond, but we couldn’t afford to sit back and wait for that. What if she never checked her voice mail, or had been ordered not to listen to messages from us?

Cam popped the top on his can and took a long chug. “The real question isn’t whether or not we can find Hadley, but how do we get her back, once we’ve found her. We can’t just go ring the doorbell.”

“You’re crossing bridges we haven’t come to yet. First, let’s find her. We’ll worry about the rest of it then.” I kicked out the chair between us and propped up my feet. “For the moment, at least, we don’t have a blood sample for Hadley, so we’ll have to start with name-tracking.”

“For the moment?”

“Anne may have one.” I’d been thinking about that for the past hour. Some Skilled parents kept blood samples of their children—under lock and key, of course—like normal parents kept their kids’ fingerprints and current picture. As a precaution, for the worst-case scenario. “But if she does, we can’t get to it until she wakes up. Fortunately, we have Hadley’s name, and that should be enough, right?”

“Assuming they haven’t put her on a plane? Yeah.” Cam took another drink from his can, then set it aside. “Do we have her middle names?” he asked, and I sook my head. Anne hadn’t mentioned them, and it would have been rude to ask. Though now that we officially needed it, she would be more than willing to divulge the necessary information—once she woke up. “Okay, then, we’ll start with first and last.” He closed his eyes, blocking everything else out to aid his concentration.

“Hadley Liang.” Cam whispered her name, and I couldn’t help wondering if he felt anything, beyond the normal tracking senses. Would he know it, if he were tracking his own daughter? Would saying her name aloud trigger some kind of primal response deep inside him, even if she did carry some other man’s surname?

After a long couple of minutes and lots of slow, careful breathing, he opened his eyes and frowned. “Nothing. It’s like she doesn’t even exist.”

No. I closed my eyes, fighting down nausea at the thought. “Tower needs her. He wouldn’t kill her as long as he can use her, right?”

Cam shrugged miserably. “I like to think he wouldn’t kill her anyway. She’s just a kid. So…I’m thinking we don’t have her real name. Not all of it, anyway.” Which wasn’t unusual, for Skilled adults. Most of us took on fake names or obscure nicknames once we were old enough to have to sign official documents, like drivers’ licenses and tax forms. But few children had reason to use a fake name.