Wes was dead, and it was as much my fault as if I’d pulled the trigger myself.

All of us but five were gathered in the kitchen now that the truck was unloaded, eating some of the perishables we’d picked up on the final shopping trip—cheese and fresh bread with milk—and listening to Jeb and Doc as they explained everything to Jared, Ian, and Kyle.

I sat a little space away from the others, my head in my hands, too numb with grief and guilt to ask questions the way they did. Jamie sat with me. He patted my back now and then.

Wes was already buried in the dark grotto beside Walter. He had died four days ago, the night that Jared and Ian and I had sat watching the family in the park. I would never see my friend again, never hear his voice…

Tears splashed on the stone beneath me, and Jamie’s pats increased in tempo.

Andy and Paige were not here.

They’d driven the truck and the van back to their hiding places. They would take the jeep from there to its usual rough garage, and then they’d have to walk the rest of the way home. They would be back before sunrise.

Lily was not here.

“She’s not… doing so well,” Jamie had murmured when he’d caught me scanning the room for her. I didn’t want to know any more. I could imagine well enough.

Aaron and Brandt were not here.

Brandt now bore a smooth, pink, circular scar in the hollow space beneath his left collarbone. The bullet had missed his heart and lungs by a hair and then burrowed halfway through his shoulder blade trying to escape. Doc had used most of the Heal getting it out of him. Brandt was fine now.

Wes’s bullet had been better aimed. It had pierced his high olive-skinned forehead and blown out the back of his head. There was nothing Doc could have done, even if he’d been right there with them, a gallon of Heal at his disposal.

Brandt, who now carried in a holster on his hip a boxy, heavy trophy from the encounter, was with Aaron. They were in the tunnel where we would have stored our spoils if it had not been occupied. If it was not being used as a prison again.

As if losing Wes was not enough.

It seemed hideously wrong to me that the numbers remained the same. Thirty-five living bodies, just like before I’d come to the caves. Wes and Walter were gone, but I was here.

And now so was the Seeker.

My Seeker.