She smiles and nods. “I did. Weirdest thing, I’d put that tracker away when you left, but today I found it on my nightstand. And turned on, too. But here you are. And who is this?” She asks turning to Ethan. “What a cutie,” she says, pinching his cheek.

I blink, processing. “Wait a minute, someone set the tracker on your nightstand?” The hairs on my arms rise.

Betsy nods. “Anyway, you’re here. What’re you doing back? Couldn’t take it out there, right? Awful, I heard.” She turns to Ethan and sticks her bottom lip out in a mock pouty face. “Awful, wight?”

“Betsy,” I say, grabbing her arm, “we got no time. We need to get my mom and get the hell out.”

“That’s, uh, that’s going to be exceedingly difficult,” says a voice behind us.

Stepping through the shadows, a masculine form emerges in dark slacks and too-large lab coat. His smudgy glasses reflect a ray of light.

“Rayburn,” I say, grabbing onto Ethan. “What’re you doing here?”

“Well, how’d you think I got down here, silly?” Betsy says, putting her hands on her hips.

Rayburn and Betsy. They’re both here, willing to stick their necks out for me. Yet something about this whole thing seems off. If I had time, I could puzzle it out. I don’t. I turn to Rayburn. “I don’t care how tough it is. What we gotta do to get her out?”

Rayburn shrugs and peers at me behind the film of his glasses. “I can get you into the plan B room. Unplugging your mother—well, uh, that’s another story.”

I reach out and put my hand on his arm. He stiffens at the touch. “You’ll figure it out. I know you can do it.”

He clears his throat and blinks at me.

“Come on,” I say. “We don’t have time.”

We slip through the shadowed storage room that smells of old garbage, past the shelves of cleaning supplies, the yellow mop buckets, the industrial sink. Then we gather in front of the door that leads into the hospital.

I give Rayburn a little nudge to make sure he’s listening. “We go quiet and fast to plan B. Rayburn, can you take us on a route to avoid the guards? If we see someone, we’ll have to try to hide, which could be—”

“I can get you past the guards,” Rayburn says with more conviction than I’ve ever heard him.

“Okay,” I say. I look around at the faces before me in the dim light: Betsy’s round, expectant one; Ethan’s slim, worried one; Rayburn’s jowly nervous one. “Everyone ready?” They nod. “Okay,” I say again. “Let’s go.”