For some reason I will never understand, I waved to them. A few rustled their wings. One opened its beak to give a call, but if any sound came out, I didn’t hear it. And so I turned away, feeling uneasy. Maybe I should start reading limericks instead.

Ghost ranged ahead, and every time he encountered an obstacle, he stopped and waited for me to catch up. The first time was—of all things—a kid’s red tricycle that looked like it had been rusting there for thirty years. That made no sense, because until Mitrović bought the island, there had been no habitation here. No resorts or even a small family home. Ghost looked from the bike to me and endeavored to cock an eyebrow.

“Beats me, furball,” I said, and we moved on.

And almost immediately jolted to a stop. I quickly dropped to one knee. Up ahead, to the left of where Ghost was sniffing, I saw a figure. A man. Tall, slender, fit-looking. Standing in the woods with his back to me. He was silhouetted against the faint glow of lights from the mansion, which was over a series of low hills.

I murmured into my mic, “Hostile spotted.” I gave the approximate location and details but ordered my team to stop and hold positions.

Ghost, for some reason, did not seem to see the figure, although they weren’t more than a dozen yards apart. Ghost is trained for exactly this, but he kept moving.

I tapped the Scout glasses to bring up the zoom function, but the figure was too dark and at a bad angle. So I rose, silent as the shadows around me, and moved in the direction of the man. He was unmoving, apparently looking down at something I couldn’t see. Ghost has his own coms unit, and I shifted to that channel and ordered him to do a lateral search. I could see him lift his head, suddenly tensing as he stretched out with his canine senses. Then he moved to his left so that he and I were heading in roughly converging lines.

And then Ghost walked right past the man.

Not a pause, not a flicker. It almost looked like he walked through him, but that was clearly a distortion of bad light and dense foliage. I raised my rifle and followed the barrel to the spot.

A bat suddenly broke from a hole in a tree and fluttered straight at me in its panic. I shifted to avoid it, and when I looked again—the man was gone.

The spot where he was standing was empty.

I hurried up, signaling Ghost to close on me. He did, looking expectant but not troubled. I moved through the whole area, using the Scout glasses on the thermal imaging setting.

But there was nothing.