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while.”
    Miles was silent, trying to think of something to say that would ward them off, but no such thing existed, or else he was not smart enough to think of it. And these people were his good friends, even though he couldn’t feel the connection. He was looking at them through a tunnel that was light years long.
    A racking shiver went through him. Surrender. He opened his mouth, and the miserable truth fell out, heavily.
    “I was thinking about trying the meds again,” he said.
    An appalled silence greeted that statement.
    “You said the meds made you feel half-dead,” Sean said. “You barely recognized your own family when you were on that shit. You think you’re crazy? Really? It’s that bad? Has it gotten worse?”
    Nina tugged her chair over until she was sitting directly in front of him. Forcing him to meet her eyes. “What’s going on, Miles?”
    “I’ve done time on antipsychotic drugs,” Edie said. “I don’t recommend it. I don’t think you’re there, Miles. None of us do.”
    “But the voices,” he blurted. “I . . . well, I don’t exactly hear her.”
    “Her? Who’s her?” Aaro snarled. “Make some sense, damn it!”
    “Her?” Nina’s eyes went huge. “Lara? You’re talking about Lara? You hear her?”
    “Well, no. I don’t exactly hear her,” he said again. “It’s, uh, text messages. She, ah . . . she texts me.”
    They all glanced around at each other, utterly perplexed.
    “You mean, on your phone?” Davy said, his voice tentative.
    “No,” Miles forced out. “No, I mean, in my head.”
    It took them an interminable, silent interval to process that. He waited, teeth clenched. Braced for it.
    “Weird,” Connor commented, finally.
    “Yeah,” Miles agreed. “I never even met this girl. I’ve been assuming she was dead. And even if she isn’t dead, how would she ever have learned my password?”
    “What the fuck?” Aaro sounded angry. “Password? I could wrap my head around voices. But texts? You’re a machine, with circuitry?”
    “That’s what’s happening to me, so eat it,” Miles growled.
    Aaro gave him the stony mafiya stare. “Don’t give me attitude.”
    “You’re the one with the attitude. If you can’t shove it around or bully it, you don’t want to deal with it at all,” Miles retorted.
    “Shut up, both of you,” Nina scolded. “We’re getting off track.”
    “It’s his hero complex,” Aaro said. “He needs a damsel in distress to save. Cindy’s out of the picture, so he’s creating a new one.”
    Miles snorted. “When the damsel starts texting my brain directly, it’s time for the fucking meds.”
    “You think she’s a psychotic delusion?” Nina asked.
    “Matilda wouldn’t have thought so,” he replied, and then he had to explain all about Matilda, her cryptic voicemail, and her subsequent murder. Those grim details quelled even Edie’s scribbling for a while.
    “This is creeping me out,” Aaro muttered.
    “You’re not the only one obsessing about Lara,” Nina said. “She was like my little sister. Aaro and I have turned this thing inside out.”
    “Me, too,” Miles said bleakly. “I followed them—every clue. Roy Lester’s dead. Dimitri Arbatov, too. Anabel’s disappeared. Rudd got splattered. There’s no such place as Karstow, as far as I can tell. And Thaddeus Greaves is a dead end.”
    Flat silence followed this litany of dead leads. After Nina and Aaro’s adventure, no one was left alive to ask where Lara Kirk might be, except of course for Greaves himself, Rudd’s billionaire boss. Who had insisted that he was as innocent as the dawn. According to Greaves, his minions had gone tragically rogue. So shocking. And embarrassing.
    “I couldn’t read him, when I was close to him,” Nina mused. “His shield was like a force field that swallowed anything it touched. Yours feels kind of like that, too. Remember when you came up with the encrypted computer as your analog for a shield? And I made you write