“Don’t be,” Derek said. “There are days when I’d hand her over for free. I’m not looking forward to telling her she was the special one here.”

“Perhaps we’ll skip that part,” Sean said. “If she does learn the truth, I can point out that she was the backup choice. My sister, Savannah, was targeted when the group was still active. I’m not surprised this group aimed for Tori rather than tangle with Savannah. But they did go to an awful lot of trouble to get Tori, which may mean there was more to their plot.”

“I suspect there was,” I said. “You can talk to Jacinda and Rae later. They might know more, but if these were the same people who convinced them not to move to Badger Lake, that suggests they had more in mind than taking Tori.”

“It does. You can leave that with me. You guys have done your share. More than your share. There was some concern that you weren’t ready to go away to college next year, but this should squelch it.”

“Gold star?” Maya said.

Sean smiled. “Gold star. And we’ll need to figure out a way to make up for your lost weekend.”

“Actually, I do have an idea,” she said. “We were thinking of a rec center…”

The others returned that evening. Derek and I went to meet Tori, Simon and Kit.

“You missed nothing,” Simon said as he climbed from the van. “Next time, I’m staying home with you guys. I showed up for my art lesson, and my instructor was drunk, again. He spent the entire hour moaning about the harsh life of the tortured artist. Dude, you draw comics. If you aren’t having fun, quit. Which I am. Him, at least. Not art.”

“He had a rough weekend,” Kit said coming up behind Simon. “He missed you guys.”

“So did I,” Tori said. “Because, without you there, he bitched and moaned to me.”

Simon turned on her. “Uh, who had to sit beside you on the helicopter and listen to the great and tragic story of the lost blue jeans.”

I looked at her. “You lost your jeans?”

“I lost the jeans. The perfect pair, on the sales rack, no less. They fit exactly. Then, I took in more clothes to try on, and Haley bought them.” She raised her voice. “So we are not talking until she returns them.”

“Then, we’re not talking for a long time,” Haley called from where she stood with Maya. “Because you put them in your discard pile.”

“Accidentally.” She looked back at us. “Also, I lost two hours work on my MIT application project, because someone borrowed my computer and shut off my backups.”

Haley flipped her the finger.

“So, we’re hanging out tonight,” Tori said to me.

“Speaking of backups…” I said.