He felt the line again, sliding just barely under his toes. His expression blanked. He couldn’t stop it although he knew the effect was startling to people. Jonathan turned and walked away before he made it any worse. “My mistake,” he called over his shoulder.

•  •  •

Walking into the house again, the feeling of last chance clung to him as if it had been a web spun across the doorframe. He didn’t know what it would take to get this back under his control, but it felt very much as if it had to happen here.

Donna’s face would tell him a lot.

She was at the dining room table on her computer. She looked up as he walked in. “Hi.” She looked tired, stressed, lovely, and not at all on high alert.

“Hi.” His chest ached. “Carly here?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. Honestly, I thought she was with you. Everyone disappears and no one leaves me a note. Real nice family I’ve got here.”

His thoughts were that dream-running-in-deep-sand kind of slow.

She pulled back in her seat to see him better. “What’s wrong?”

“I need you to call Carly for me. I need you to find out where she is.”

“Why? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Yes and no. No. I mean, Carly is physically okay. She’s been under a lot of stress lately. Obviously, we all have. But she’s in a little bit of trouble. She took something that doesn’t belong to her.”

“Carly stole something? What? Like shoplifting? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Can you just call her please?” He nodded at her phone beside her computer. “Let’s just give her a chance to make this right. I don’t want to say too much.”

Donna’s own line of too far was coming for her. John knew she’d outpaced disaster by five steps, always. Her whole life, she’d been faster and stronger than anything that had pursued her. Her competence had been both a shield and a weapon. But since meeting him, more—way more—had been rolling toward her that she hadn’t known to outrun.

Jonathan rubbed her arm as she called Carly. “Let’s just find her and hear what she has to say.”

“She’s not answering,” Donna said, worried and shaking her head.

Jonathan thought his teeth might break from grinding.

“Let me just see where she is.” Donna took her reading glasses from the table and swiped and tapped at the screen of her phone.

“You can see where she is?”

Donna waved him off, ignoring his question. She tilted her head at what she was looking at. He swiveled around to see it with her. A map. Carly’s face in a circle above a blue arrow on the loose grid of streets.

“She’s over by the library,” Donna said.