I felt a growing unease. I hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. “Abby?” No one was there. I strode down the hall, looking into the master bedroom and bath. They were empty. I walked to the top of the stairs and shouted. “Abby!”

“Yes?” She rounded the corner from the foyer and stood at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m right here.”

I let out a huge sigh. “Abby.” I walked down the stairs. “Where were you?”

“I went for another walk around the lake. I know…” She held up her hand in self-defense. “I know what you’re going to say. You were worried about me. But there was no one out there—I only saw two people the whole time. Oh, and one was Britta, the woman I talked to yesterday. We chatted for quite a while.”

“Abby, you have to be more careful. Please, at least let me know if you’re going somewhere. Can you do that?”

She looked exasperated. “In the jungle we went to visit other villages and didn’t tell anyone when we’d be back. We could be gone for three days before they’d send someone looking for us.”

“Well, a lot can happen here in three days.” Or three hours.

She perched on a stool in my kitchen and related to me her conversation with Britta. I ordered Chinese food, after which I told her about the tap from Theodore Brandt. She was disappointed, I could tell.

“What do you think that means?” she asked.

“Given Nichols’s association with the center, I assumed Ray was doing testing there for the brain transplant technology. Now…”

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” asked Abby.

“Brandt? I think Theodore Brandt probably says what Bryson Nichols wants him to.”

“I have a surprise for you tonight,” I said after dinner.

Abby’s eyes brightened. “What is it?”

“I finished your evangelism message.”

“You did?” She gave me a quick hug, her soft ponytail brushing my cheek. “Can we see it now?”

“Absolutely.”

We sat down on the couch next to each other. Abby watched in fascination as she presented the gospel of Jesus from four different Alistair-generated locales: Bethlehem, beside the Sea of Galilee, at the place of Jesus’s crucifixion, and at his tomb.

“I can’t believe how I’m moving around and pointing to things,” she said a couple of minutes into it. “I was just sitting on your couch when we recorded this.”

It was an amateur production at best—not even Alistair could make Abby look like a professional speaker. But it included what she wanted to communicate. The message ended, and she turned toward me, beaming. “What do you think?”

“No, what do you think?” I didn’t want to color her mood with an honest review.