a tree, right there. Right outside a second-story balcony. The one Sarah had contemplated using to escape the fire before she realized her parents might be trapped inside.
No mature trees on the lot, anywhere. Only freshly planted fledging ones, their trunks slender and frail.
Like a sudden power surge, reality struck.
The fire. Of course. They’d had to rebuild everything. I’d just expected the house to look the same, the way it had in Sarah’s memory . . . but just like Sarah, that house was gone.
Something sank inside of me, a weight that could pin me to the passenger seat forever. This wasn’t my home, never had been, and yet I couldn’t deny the connection I felt the moment we’d first driven the Caprice through the neighborhood.
Or the relief Lucas and I had felt when my sensors didn’t sound an alarm, warning me of a bomb detonation countdown.
“We don’t have to do this now. If it’s too much,” Lucas said, pulling the keys out of the ignition. He’d just parked the car in front of a beautifully kept Tudor a few hundred yards down, so onlookers wouldn’t remember it sitting outside Sarah’s house.
He didn’t say anything else, just sat there while I collected myself. Which was taking much longer than I anticipated. So many of Sarah’s memories were being triggered right now, I could barely think. Part of me wondered if this avalanche could be due to what Lucas suggested on the mountain—maybe there was some kind of shift going on with my cellular material.
But what did that mean for me? It would never change who I really was. And wasn’t.
“No, I’m not chickening out,” I said. “Not after everything we’ve been through.”
Lucas inclined his head. “Before we go in, I just wanted to say—I think you’re incredibly brave.”
His hand squeeze was part accolade, part encouragement. And it worked.
At least for a few seconds.
As we got out and stared up at Margaret Applebaum’s house, I remembered when Hunter and I had made a similar stop, back in Tennessee. I’d felt the same sense of anticipation, of hope, that answers might be waiting behind the closed door. Of course, that hope had been tainted by fear. The fear that Hunter would discover who—what—I really was.
This time, at least, I wasn’t worried that some skeleton would come tumbling out of the closet.
“Let’s hope Maggie doesn’t have a granddaughter living with her,” I muttered. One who knew judo.
“What’s that?”
“Um, nothing. Long story.”
No need to burden Lucas needlessly. A snippet of Hunter’s and my crazy escape from Grady’s house played in my head—just missing the armed military helicopter, headed straight for us as we raced away—and my android senses reacted to my increased tension.
High alert?
Yes.
A barrage of information streamed through my head—
Potential human threats in a 100-yard radius: 7.
Weapons analysis: 3 firearms detected.
Aircraft: Boeing 737, 1.6 mi. northwest. Commercial.
Threat level: Low.
It wasn’t as much information as I’d be able to get with my full range of capabilities, but still way more than I needed. The data was a welcome distraction from Sarah’s recollections of playing tag in the streets and riding her bike along the sidewalk.
I continued to scan our surroundings. Maggie’s yard was extremely well tended and tidy, but not that professionally landscaped kind of immaculate. A mower had obviously just hit the lawn, but a bit of brown speckled the green here and there. The white fence that surrounded the property was cheerful, but could use an extra coat of paint.
A pair of sneakers sat to the left of the blue-and-gold welcome mat. White with splashes of orange, small enough that they probably belonged to a woman.
Estimated size: Women’s US size 6.5.
A half-empty bag of potting soil was tucked into the corner, along with a small metal trowel. To the right, the porch extended, the edge bordered with a wrought-iron railing. A small metal-and-plastic table with four chairs sat there, with a blooming red plant in the middle.
Lucas was inspecting the porch as well, and nodded toward the plant. “We used to have some of those outside our house when I was growing up. They were my mom’s favorites.”
A gold Nissan Maxima was parked in the driveway, so I didn’t have any reason to believe she wasn’t home. Still, my sensors insisted on confirmation.
Human presence: Detected.
We walked up the three steps to the porch together, then I leaned forward, drew on that courage Lucas claimed I had, and rang the bell. We could hear the sound reverberate on the inside, followed by a