“Yeah, @lady10456 does seem like a Russian bot.” He gives me a smile this time, a brief flash of teeth.

I release Caesar and take a step back, fully taking him in for the first time. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and chinos, like he’s an engineer at Google. “How’d you know that was me?”

He shrugs. “Someone starts arguing on Twitter about how Voyager was a horrible Star Trek show except for the half-Klingon chief engineer, it’s probably you.”

“It’s true! Torres was the only decent character—wait, you found me because of a tweet?”

“Couple dozen of them. Went through the metadata, narrowed your location down to San Antonio …” He shrugs again, as if he had found a book on a library shelf instead of locating a single person in a nation of three hundred and thirty million people—a single person who didn’t particularly want to be found.

I drop into the one chair next to the dresser, my initial relief now withdrawing in the face of exhaustion, an exhaustion that is not entirely due to the fact that I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours. “Why are you here, Caesar?”

He sits on the bed, even that simple movement an exercise in grace and balance, like most everything Caesar does. Watching him walk across a room is a lesson in the physics of movement. “That’s my girl. Right to the point.”

I roll my eyes. “Keep calling me your girl and Frankie’ll get jealous. Is he all right?”

Caesar nods. “He’s fine.”

My mouth is dry and tastes foul. “My uncle?” I hope my voice sounds more neutral than I feel. To say my relationship with my uncle is complicated would be a gigantic understatement.

“Mr. Lester has some … challenges,” Caesar says. “But nothing he can’t handle.” His eyes are on mine, dark and deep and sober.

“So it’s Ethan.” Something shifts in my gut, a lazy rotation, like a whale coming to the surface and then, with a roll of its fins, disappearing again. I lean my head back and close my eyes, fatigue settling on me like summer smog in Atlanta. “I told him not to look for me.”

“Your brother needs your help,” Caesar says.

“I tried to help him last year. And that turned out well.”

Caesar says nothing, but I keep my eyes closed. Last year a woman tried to hurt my brother and used me to get to him. I reacted poorly and people died. Caesar very nearly died himself while trying to protect me. When it was all over, I left Atlanta. It was the right call then and it’s the right call now. Ethan’s better off without me fucking up his life.

“He says it’s about your father,” Caesar says.