But I was all out of brilliant and I’d never been very funny, so with a frustrated growl, I clutched Elle’s notebook to my chest, pushed memories of both her and Sera from my mind, and stomped down the stairs to where the only arms waiting to hold me belonged to the cold, lumpy couch.

Nine

Sera

I slept like crap in the unfamiliar bed, and twice I woke up to the sound of someone crying, but I was too tired and disoriented to tell who it was.

Several hours later, I woke to find myself immersed in some kind of twisted Rockwellian family portrait. The kitchen table was crowded with stacks of pancakes, piles of bacon and three different kinds of syrup—none of them sugar-free. While Gran refilled mugs of coffee with a grease-stained apron tied around her waist, my new, heavily armed acquaintances loaded plates with fat and processed carbs, then headed into the living room to seats that seemed to have been assigned long before I’d joined the gang.

They spoke around full mouths, tossing out ideas about where to look for Kenley, speaking over one another, traipsing in and out of the kitchen to refill plates the whole time. I gave up trying to follow the conversation after a few minutes, and the second time a strip of bacon was snatched from the platter an instant before I would have taken it, I started guarding my breakfast with my elbow, like a basketball player.

“You have to be quick around here, if you wanna eat.” Gran patted my shoulder, then tossed a grease-soaked paper plate into the trash. “A little aggression doesn’t hurt, either. I swear, it’s a miracle Kenley never starved to death, timid little thing. Not that they’d’ve let that happen. Kori always fixed her plate first, then ran her out of the kitchen so she wouldn’t get trampled.”

My family had been smaller. Quieter. Healthier eaters. Yet despite the differences, being surrounded by someone else’s family made me miss mine desperately.

After breakfast, I helped wash the dishes, then settled into a chair at the deserted table with my ruined computer bag. I’d been sorting through the remains of my memories—my mother’s photographs—for about ten minutes when Gran put a fresh mug of coffee on the table in front of me and asked me how long I’d known her daughter Nikki. Vanessa came to my rescue by distracting her, and I retreated back into my shell. Remembering. Mourning. Staring into the faces of my past around the bullet holes shot through several of the irreplaceable photographs and into my computer.

Vaguely, I heard life going on around me. Kris and Kori argued as if they were still in middle school and Ian played peacemaker as though he’d been born for the job. Vanessa alternately fretted over Kenley and raged at the bastards who would dare lay a hand on her, swearing vengeance with a furor I could never have imagined from the delicately grieving girlfriend the day before.

Olivia, the Tracker, stopped in for a bit to plot with the others, but then she was called away, either by Ruben Cavazos, her mafia-boss employer, or Cam Caballero, her mafia-employed boyfriend. I wasn’t sure which. I didn’t really care. All I could think about was that my vengeance had been put on hold while I sat there with nothing to do but remember, passively shielding the motely gang of violent do-gooders who’d promised to do violent good for me. Eventually.

My coffee had long since grown cold when Kris pulled out the chair next to mine and sat without asking or waiting for a welcome. “You okay? You don’t have to sit in here by yourself, you know.”

But I wasn’t alone. I was with my family, the only way I could be now. When I didn’t answer, he watched me in silence for a few minutes, and several times he took a deep breath, as if he might actually say whatever he’d come to say. But then he’d glance at the photographs and seem reluctant to invade my mourning ritual.

Then, after several more minutes and another glance at his watch, he started talking.

“Hey. I know this may not be a good time, but I have to ask you a couple of questions.”

“I’m done answering questions.” I sorted a picture of Nadia in her third-grade Halloween costume into a stack of others from that year.

“These aren’t personal, I swear. They’re work-related. Since you’re working with us now.”

I exhaled and picked up a picture of my dad playing his guitar. My eyes watered. “Fine.”

“What’s your range, approximately?”

“My range?” I looked up from my pictures to meet his gaze and discovered, now that the major light source was the incandescent bulb overhead, that his eyes were more blue than gray—the sun had long since stopped shining through the east windows. I’d been staring at pictures for half the day.

“Yeah. How far away from a person do you have to be to...jam him? His signal, I mean.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, then started over. “His psychic signal. How close do you have to be to a guy to make sure no one can Track him?”

I glanced at the single foot of space separating us. “Not this close.”

Kris’s cheeks actually flushed. Across the kitchen Kori laughed out loud and her brother glared at her. “I mean, assuming you’re at the center of a vaguely spherical psychic dead zone, for lack of a better term, what’s the diameter of your influence? How far can you spread your wings, so to speak?”

“I have no idea.”

“Seriously?” Kori took the first bite of a candy bar, then spoke around it. “You seriously don’t know the extent of your own abilities?”

“How is that possible?” Kris asked, and when I noticed Ian and Vanessa watching us from the kitchen doorway, I realized story-hour had commenced.