After a few minutes, we came to another area where the plants had been trampled. The tree trunks were far enough apart that a good pilot could navigate through them without too much trouble, but they wouldn’t have been moving at a great deal of speed.

“How long did it take you to find this after Cien was taken?”

“Four hours, but three of them were wasted because no one knew he’d been kidnapped until I returned and reviewed the backup footage. The primary surveillance system had been disabled, likely the bodyguard’s doing.”

“He didn’t know about the backup system?”

Torran shook his head. “No one did, until now. It was the last line of defense.”

I briefly wondered if Kee had us under some sort of secret backup surveillance before chuckling to myself. Of course she did. There was no question.

“So the trail was already cold by the time you arrived,” I said, returning to the conversation.

Torran dipped his head in agreement.

Four hours was certainly long enough to put the kidnappers out of sensor range, even at the slow speed navigating the forest required.

But they wouldn’t know that Cien’s absence would be undiscovered for so long.

So if they’d made their plans on the assumption that they’d be tracked within an hour, that limited their options. Still, with no idea what kind of vehicle they’d taken—or how many—tracking their return to the city was impossible.

“Was the forest searched?” I asked at last.

“Yes, from the air. Ships with sensors designed to penetrate the canopy were deployed to scan the entire area, even farther out than the kidnappers could’ve possibly made it. They found nothing.”

So that left the city or the monitoring station. “Are there other monitoring stations like the one nearby? And were they checked?”

“They were all searched,” Torran snapped, frustration evident. “We did everything right. We still failed.”

I approached him slowly, like I would a wounded animal. When I was close enough, I opened my arms and waited.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m offering you a hug, no strings attached.”

His helmet turned away. “I don’t need a hug. I’m not a child to be coddled.”

“First of all, hugs are for anyone who wants one. Second, I’m offering you comfort, not coddling. And finally, ‘no strings’ means exactly that. You don’t have to explain why you want a hug or what’s bothering you or anything else. I’m just offering one hug, freely given. Here.” I opened my visor and blinked at the resulting darkness. “Now I can’t even see who I’m hugging. Could be anyone. Maybe a bear wandered by. No one knows.”