My stomach flips at the mention of the bounty. Now that my head isn’t pounding and I can think more clearly, my anxiety over my father has increased. I exhale, trying to stay focused on the present and not jump to the what-ifs, but of course I can’t. “What do I do if he starts questioning me and I don’t have answers? Won’t he know there’s something odd about my lack of Strategia knowledge?”

“Yes,” Ash says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t play silence to your advantage. Look at Layla. She never says anything she doesn’t want to and yet you would never doubt her.”

“True,” I say, and fidget with the edge of my pink sweater, cursing my previous aversion to black clothing, which would let me blend a little better. Can I really pull off a cool and calm Layla, who is basically the exact opposite of my effusive, oversharing self?

Ash turns down a single-lane dirt road that runs between two large fields; the car bounces on the uneven surface. “Ready?” he asks, and I realize he’s slowing down.

I want to tell him no, that I may never be ready, but I don’t have the luxury of saying that, not if I have any hope of finding Dad. “Ready,” I say, trying to mask any hint of fear in my voice.

Ash drives us past a classic Tudor-style house, white with a framework of black timbers, and stops in front of a small stone barn with a wooden sign hanging in front. It reads: BLACKSMITH. The gray stones composing the walls are streaked with soot.

Ash is out of the car and to my door before I realize that I’m just staring and not moving. I would slap myself in the cheek like they do in movies, but if Logan has a view of our car right now, that would be ten kinds of stupid. So instead, I step out into the cold with feigned confidence, and Ash and I walk toward the stone barn. I try to picture the agents in the British spy movies Emily loves and channel their cool composure.

Ash opens one of the large wooden doors and the hinges whine. Inside is a scene plucked from a different century—a fire roaring in a large fireplace, old wooden workbenches, antique iron tools hanging from the walls. In the center of the room a guy with shaggy blond hair and a black apron is striking a red-hot horseshoe with a hammer. For a moment, I’m taken aback. He looks like he’s in his late twenties, not at all the swarthy old killer I pictured in my head, and the benign nature of hammering a horseshoe is disorienting.

“Shop’s closed,” he says without looking up at us, his voice rough between clangs.