My breath stops. The hidden stairs. My fingers stiffen on my brow. An old familiar prickling awakens in my spine. Needles, pins. A slow question uncurling in the back of my brain, an impossible seed of possibility. The attic.

No.

Obviously no.

No for all the reasons.

No for the up-ending, blindsiding stupidity.

Aiden is not signalling me from the attic.

Aiden is not in the attic.

Neither is Kitty.

Not in the attic with six Shields and a telepath oblivious beneath because that would be too ridiculous, and impossible, and because of all the reasons.

I listen.

The static is so bad I can’t hear voices in the other room. Aiden can’t possibly be signalling me through it. I can’t even feel Jamie’s signal from here.

Shit.

Aiden.

I brace myself and reach into the bandwidth. Full-volume static screams into my head, making me gasp. The interference is agonising, disorientating, but I don’t stop reaching. Squinting through a blizzard, afraid to see, to feel, anything …

Aiden?

A strobe flash – his face in my mind – and then it’s gone. God, oh God. Was it him?

Aiden? Aiden?

Nothing, just the blizzard, deafening and all the more frightening after the moment of recognition, but I’m sure that quarter-second flash was something. I’d touched something.

I send his name like a shout into the bandwidth, Aiden!

His face – a strobe burst.

My body thrills with energy. The shock of it through my system propels me to my feet and across the room to the doorway where I freeze, eyes laser-locked on the ceiling trap.

Logic shouts against the certainty in my body. It doesn’t make any sense. There was no heat signature. Davis said so. Besides which, they were never meant to stay. They can’t have stayed. Not here. That wasn’t the plan. They were – not they, just Aiden – he was supposed to take the jeep and keep moving and the jeep’s gone … but the house wasn’t cold when we arrived … the power was on.

No. Benjamin searched the house. He must have checked the attic. The ceiling trap is obvious. Right in the middle of the hall. The cord hanging down. He wouldn’t have skipped it … would he? Tesla told him to search. Benjamin’s a protocol guy.

He destroyed the blood sample.

The idea of Aiden and Kitty hiding in the attic is alarming. The idea of Benjamin knowing and hiding the truth is worse. Maybe he tampered with the scanner in the van. Or Davis did and they’re in on it together. But why wouldn’t they say anything? What possible reason? Wouldn’t they have told Tesla?

I can’t think straight.

None of it feels right. Thunder explodes directly overhead. I’m paralysed by indecision. Do I call out? Tell them it’s safe to come down? Warn Tesla first? Just pull the ladder and go up there myself? They’d hear that in the kitchen. They’d come. Demand to know what I was doing. What if Aiden freaks out? Tries to run? Davis and Benjamin would chase him down. What if Aiden fought? They’d hurt him. What if Kitty got in the way? I don’t reach for Kitty’s signal – if Aiden’s here where else would she–?

“Evie?”

My eyes snap down from the ceiling trap and there’s Jamie at the end of the hall. Shit. How long has he been standing there? He looks up at the ceiling, his frown shifting gear with sudden hard lines, suspicion parting his lips. Three strides bring him to me, his look drilling, demanding, ready to believe. Ready to react. Ready to tear the house apart.

I grip his wrist, weld my finger to my lips and hold my breath at the exquisite surge of tingling up my arm, through my chest, to my belly. Oh boy. I check to see if anyone follows him from the living room. No one comes.

Meeting his dark gaze I give one tremulous nod.

Jamie seizes both my arms, clamping above my elbows, confronting me with his strength and urgency. “She’s here?”

Blinking rapidly at the “she”, my mouth opens and closes. Of course, that would be his question, “she” not “he”. He wants his sister. “I felt Aiden,” I barely give air to my voice. “But I think she must be.”

“Is she or not?” More growl than whisper, his grip so tight it hurts me.

I wince and try to pull away.

His expression flickers with shame and he loosens his hold a notch. “I’m sorry. Please, please try again.” He looks upwards, his chest swollen with an incomplete breath. “Use me. Use my signal.”

“Jamie, wait. Think. It doesn’t make sense. Benjamin must have checked up there. Could he have missed them?”

His expression clouds. “I don’t know.”

“If he knows, why wouldn’t he say?”

Stalled, he draws his shoulders up, impatient, searching. “Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe Davis checked up there. Davis is useless.”

“Davis emptied the van. Benjamin checked the house. Why would he not let on? It doesn’t make sense.”

Jamie’s focus draws inwards, wrestling the hard edges of the puzzle. “Nothing showed on their scanner.”

“You think they tampered with it?”

His expression grows grim. “If it’s a deliberate cover-up, it won’t be good news for your brother.”

My panic flares then I catch a shadow of movement at the end of the hall. Benjamin. It’s Benjamin! Fear slices through me – caught whispering and furtive beneath the ceiling trap. Is he on to us? I move fractionally out of his line of sight and widen my eyes at Jamie in warning, mouthing Benjamin’s name. Understanding flashes across Jamie’s face but he doesn’t turn. He gives me a hard uncertain look then pulls me against him, his lips crashing into mine. A grinding, sparks flying, hammer-to-anvil kiss with no courtesy oxygen.

It’s a cover, buying time, creating a smokescreen. I know it. I do … but still, his heat and scent and signal hit me like a stupefying sensory overload.

I’m vaguely aware he’s released my arms. They feel like they could float up over my head like that game kids play when they stand in a doorway and push outwards as hard as they can for a minute and then step forwards and their arms actually do float up. I can’t tell if mine are doing this but his arms are busy crushing my waist, ribs, back, making it their business to eradicate all pockets of air in and between us. Who needs oxygen?

He pounds me with kisses. My whole body rings.

I finally remember I should do something with my hands, contribute to the ruse, make it convincing. Trouble is my body is convinced, totally, haplessly convinced, and there’s a simultaneously joyous and agonising riot going on with all my lust-lorn hormones charging through the surface of my skin. And I wish it were real. Real and true. Unburdened. Untainted. All of him still wanting me like this.

I dig my fingers up into his soft bristling hair, greedy and reckless with my own demands. It might be a cover but I still want him. Love him. Desperate enough to take and give all I can in the seconds we have to fool Benjamin. I love you. Forgive me. Please, Jamie. I press it through my skin, press it into him with my mouth and hands and body.

He cups the back of my head, tipping my chin up to kiss beneath my jaw, making me dizzy on his path to my ear. I’m pretty sure I moan.

“Is he still there?” He sweeps one hand over my hip, the other excavates the arch of my back.

I nearly ask, who? My eyelids flutter. I catch a glimpse of blank hall. “Um …” I don’t want to tell.

He swings me around for line of sight.

“Can you see?” I inhale, mainlining the scent of his skin in the hollow beneath his ear, already grieving for the end.

“Um …” He digs his fingers up into the short layers of my hair and I want to weep for that too, my hair, but his hesitation wrecks me with hope. Is he delaying? Backing through the doorway to the bedroom, he brings me with him. Still kissing, still crushing, somehow he closes the door, and with the metallic click it ends.