It occurred to him that the last thing they needed was for her to go into oracle mode. Her dream voice would carry in the woods. He gestured toward the pocket of her jacket. She took out her phone and held it up to show him a blank notepad screen and the keyboard. She was prepared to input any inconvenient prophecies. Of course, by the time he was able to interpret the words, it might be too late, but he would have to take the risk. There was no other way to make sure she didn’t accidentally draw the attention of whoever was in the clearing.

He made it to the cover of a large fir and studied what he could see through the trees. Two badass SUVs were parked in the driveway of the demolished house. Four armed men were moving around in a random manner, evidently not sure how to conduct a search in the nearby woods. They were dressed in black from caps to boots and wearing gear belts. At first glance they could have been mistaken for members of an official SWAT team, but there were a lot of subtle signs that marked them as private security.

“Forget it, Ink,” one man shouted. “No one got out of that house alive.”

“Trev is right,” his companion said. “Their vehicle is still here. They didn’t make it out. Shit, what the hell happened?”

“Fuck if I know,” Ink said. “The Piper told us we would be able to grab them here.”

Harlan took out his phone and started snapping photos. Faces. License plates. The logo on the uniforms. All male. All surprisingly young—late teens, early twenties—including Ink, the one who appeared to be in charge.

“Now what?” one of the men said. “The Piper isn’t going to be happy about this. He says we need the woman. When he finds out she’s dead—”

He sounded on the verge of panic.

“Shut up, Ash,” Ink said. He loped down the drive to Olivia’s SUV. “We don’t know for certain that either of them is dead. We’re dealing with a couple of talents. We need to assume they made it out of the house.”

Ink was saying the right words, Harlan decided, but he sounded scared, too.

The other three men regarded the remains of the house. The flames were no longer flaring, but the heat was still intense.

“Gonna be a while before anyone can search for bodies,” the one who had to be Ox said. “We can’t hang around. We gotta get out of here before the cops or the fire trucks get here.”

“Give me a minute.” Ink opened the driver’s side door of Olivia’s SUV and looked inside. “This explosion is too fucking convenient.”

“How do you figure that?” Trev asked.