“Probably a Talent you women keep to yourself. I know. You hide things. Like Megan hid things. But I can hide things too. I can. I hid things for a long time. When I realized I had Talents. That I could move things.”

“Move things?” Aylia felt another jolt of ice. The most dangerous Talent of all, the most incredibly rare Talent, and this clearly unbalanced man possessed it?

He laughed shrilly. “Makes you nervous, doesn’t it? I found out I could do that when I was a kid. When that old—when somebody was mean to me. It was stupid of him to have a gun right there, but he didn’t know what I could do with it.”

She swallowed hard. “Danny—”

“I didn’t know either, not then. I could only do it when I was really, really mad. And it’s . . . it’s harder now. Even when I’m mad. Everything’s . . . harder now. I can’t even get back to that gray place, even though I’ve tried.”

“Gray place? Danny—”

“I wanted to keep distracting them after they got here, but . . . Did you do that? Did you make it harder for me?”

“Danny, I promise you I didn’t do anything to you.”

He rubbed his forehead again and then shook his head as though trying to throw something off. “Must have been you,” he muttered. “Your fault. All your fault. First you told Megan to leave me, and then you did something to mess up my Talents.”

“Danny, I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

He laughed again, more unsteady than shrill this time. “Think I’m going to believe you? After you tried to send Megan away from me? No. No, I don’t believe you. And I’m going to fix it so you can never hurt me again.”

—

NELLIE KEPT HER eyes glued to Hollis and DeMarco, impressed both by their silence and by the ease with which they crossed that dangerously exposed space, flitting from tree to bush to tractor, barely hesitating. They had separated almost at once, each making for a different side of the house, and though she didn’t see them even look at each other, she knew they were communicating.

She hardly dared to breathe until they reached the house, and each took up a position between two windows, their backs pressed up against the house. She wasn’t sure but thought she saw them both close their eyes.

It seemed only seconds later that she obeyed a gesture from Finn and stuck close to him as he and the rest of Bishop’s team began to cross the space toward the house. Nellie had no idea what their two forward scouts had communicated, but judging by the speed and alertness with which everyone moved, time must have been short. She tried to move both quickly and quietly, keeping her eyes on Finn.

Again, it seemed like only seconds—or hours—before they were at the house, crouched low, the two of them plus Bishop on the same side as Hollis.