“We are sisters in the eyes of God.”

Amy dropped her gaze again. With her thumb, she stroked the fabric of the rabbit.

“He brought him to me. In the sick room. I remember his voice, telling me to wake up. But I couldn’t answer him.”

Lacey was aware of Peter’s eyes, intently watching.

“Who did, Amy?” she asked.

“Wolgast.” Her voice was distant, lost in the past. “He told me about Eva.”

“Eva?”

“She died. He would have given her his heart.” The girl met Lacey’s gaze again, squinting intently. “You were there, too. I remember now.”

“Yes. I was.”

“And another man.”

Lacey nodded. “Agent Doyle.”

Amy frowned sharply. “I didn’t like him. He thought I did, but I didn’t.” She closed her eyes, remembering. “We were in the car. We were in the car, but then we stopped.” She opened her eyes. “You were bleeding. Why were you bleeding?”

Lacey had almost forgotten; after everything else, it had come to seem so small, this part of the story. “To tell you the truth, I did not know myself! But I think that one of the soldiers must have shot me.”

“You got out of the car. Why did you do that?”

“To be here for you, Amy,” she answered. “So someone would be here when you came back.”

Another silence passed, the girl worrying the rabbit with her fingers like a talisman.

“They’re so sad. They have such terrible dreams. I hear them all the time.”

“What do you hear, Amy?”

“Who am I, who am I, who am I? They ask and ask, but I can’t tell them.”

Lacey cupped the girl’s chin. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “You will. When the time is right.”

“They’re dying, Lacey. They’re dying and can’t stop. Why can’t they stop, Lacey?”

“I think that they are waiting for you, to show them the way.”

They stayed that way a long moment. In the place where Lacey’s mind met Amy’s, she felt her sorrow and her loneliness, but even more: she felt her courage.

She turned to Peter then. He did not love Amy, as Wolgast had. She could see that there was another, someone he had left behind. But he was the one who had answered the beacon. Whoever heard it and brought Amy back—he would be the one to stand with her.

She bent to the second locker on the floor. Stacked inside were manila folders of yellowed paper—still, after so many years, exuding a faint odor of smoke. It was the doctor who had retrieved them, along with Amy’s backpack, as the fires had moved down through the underground levels of the Chalet. Someone should know, he had said.

She withdrew the first file and placed it on the table before him. The label read:

EX ORD 13292 TS1 EYES ONLY

VIA WOLGAST, BRADFORD J.

INTAKE PROFILE CT3