“But you and Jasper need to stay put in the house, Wylie.” Rachel is already onto me. “I mean it. I don’t want you deciding to try to get the girls out on your own or something. Besides, I’ve already talked to my friend at the Justice Department and his contact at the NIH should be getting back to him by tomorrow morning. It is a Sunday, so we have to be a little patient. We can talk more about it when I get home. I will help the girls and find your dad. I’m on it. I promise. You need to sit tight.”

“Okay, yeah. Yes,” I say quickly. Hesitation will be fatal. “Sure.”

But I stop short of actually promising we will stay put. Because that would be an outright lie.

“I’ll call you if I hear anything else,” Rachel says. “And you can call me here, on my cell, whenever you need.”

“Okay,” I say, wanting to get off the phone before I say anything incriminating.

“This is going to be okay, Wylie. I’m here and I’m going to help you. Everything will be fine.”

WHEN I HANG up, I go in search of a computer to track down Leo Berkowitz. He is a place to start. He is the path to Kelsey’s sister, and she is my way back to Kelsey, one of the other original three Outliers. I feel a weird flutter—part nerves, part excitement—thinking of talking to her again. I wonder if Kelsey knows?

There is Jasper’s phone, which we could use to find Leo. But turning it on is unwise unless we absolutely need to. Those are instructions from Rachel that I will listen to. Luckily, it doesn’t take long anyway to find a slim laptop—elegant and expensive-looking in a leather case—in the corner of Rachel’s kitchen.

“What are you looking up?” Jasper asks as he makes his way over behind me. I should come clean. Leave it up to him to make his own choices. The farther we get into this the higher the stakes are rising. I’m in this until we get the girls out. Jasper doesn’t have to be.

“Kelsey’s sister has or had a boyfriend named Leo Berkowitz,” I say. “He’s on the crew team at Harvard. I want to see if I can find him. Where he lives or a phone number or something.” I look up at Jasper. “To be clear, Rachel told me that she wanted us to stay here, that she would look into what’s happening with my dad and the girls at the hospital. But she can’t do both, and I need her looking for my dad.”

“Which leaves you to go back for the girls.”