“How about you, Tae? Did you always want to be a doctor?” Raven finished off her s’more and reached for a napkin.

“She wanted to be a scientist,” Zoey said. “When we were seniors in high school, she won the science fair with a GPS ring.” She held up her hand. “I have one.”

Tae looked at her. “You still have it?”

“You gave it to me when I went on that hike up Mount Washington a couple years ago. I never gave it back. And after you disappeared, I don’t know. I just . . . it made me feel like you weren’t gone.”

She took it off and handed it to Tae.

Tae slipped it on her finger, turned it with her thumb. “It connects to your phone through simple software. I updated it to sync to Google Maps a few years ago.”

Colt leaned forward. “How does it work?”

“Gimme your phone.”

He pulled it out and walked it over to her, used his fingerprint to unlock it, and handed it over. Then he sat down on the arm of her chair.

She held up the phone, as if searching for bars. “I’ll need to download the software from the cloud.” Accessing his phone’s browser, she went to a site and keyed in her password. In a moment, the app had downloaded, and she turned on his Bluetooth to sync it. Pulled up the map.

“There you go.” She handed the phone back.

A red dot showed on a map, putting them smack-dab in the middle-of-nowhere Washington.

“Wow.”

“The cool part is that it runs on a rechargeable battery. You can put it on any phone charging pad.”

She pulled down the app’s menu. “The app also tracks things like your sleep time, your heart rate, and your body temperature, and it can count your steps.” The page landed on a graph. She looked at Zoey. “Looks like you haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to sleep when you know the world is about to end.”

“What?” Raven leaned forward. “Is that what this is about?”

“Calm down, Raven,” Jethro said.

“The world isn’t about to end,” Colt said. “We just— There’s a threat, and Zoey and Tae have developed a way to protect us.”

“From what?”

Silence.

“A biological weapon,” Colt said, “that we think Russia wants to deploy.”

“Seriously?” Raven turned to her father. “What is it with you that attracts international drama?”

Jethro quirked an eyebrow.

She got up. “A couple years ago, a Russian assassin tried to kill my dad. Turns out he was part of a plot to kill President White.”

Colt stared at her. Then Jethro. “What?”

“It was nothing.”

“It’s something.” He closed the app, pocketed the phone. “We should take off.”

Tae hit her feet. “Where are we going to go, Colt?”