She slitted her eyes at him. “If you’re only here to investigate the disturbance—”
“I’m not,” Theo insisted. “I swear it.”
The glass doors swung open to heavy-footed bustle. Theo anxiously studied the large cadre of men who’d just arrived. They wore the same navy blue windbreaker with a golden eagle logo on the breast. Giant yellow letters were stitched on the back.
DP-9.
Theo froze in place as the Deps moved his way. Four of them lugged tall metal towers on dollies—ominous black obelisks that could have come straight from the Death Star.
Ghost drills, Theo realized. Shit.
He took his new room key and joined the line at the security checkpoint, lowering his gaze as the agents brushed past him. His heart jumped when he noticed the lone female in the group—dark skinned, with finger-thick dreadlocks that sprouted from her head like fireworks. Though Theo could only glimpse her from a rear angle, he knew she was the woman he’d seen on lumivision last night, the one who’d filled him with a prophetic sense of familiarity, a préjà vu.
Now she passed close enough for him to hear her strong voice and exotic accent. His recognition was so powerful that he could practically taste her name. It rolled around his thoughts like childspeak. Missah Massah. Missah Massah.
Theo swallowed his panic as it became his turn to pass them. He pulled down the lip of his baseball cap and made a sharp left at the elevators, all the while battling his urge to peek at this woman, this Missah Massah. For all his strange new intimacy, he had yet to see her face.
It was extreme luck on Theo’s part that Melissa had yet to see his.
She sighed patiently into her handphone. “Sir, I understand your concerns, but if you limit our ghosting area, we’ll have a much more difficult . . . Yes, sir. I’ll hold.”
Howard Hairston watched her scowl. He was a young and freckly redhead, one of the few agents on the team who didn’t resent Melissa for her recently announced promotion. If anything, she’d make a better boss than Andy Cahill, who treated everyone under thirty like a high school intern.
“No luck with the judge?” he asked her.
She covered the phone. “No. He doesn’t want us scanning outside the crime scene.”
“Lovely. Why not make us wear blindfolds too?”
Melissa did a double take at the fast-moving Asian who slipped into the stairwell. She’d lived and breathed the fugitives for two weeks now, studying their ghosts from every angle. She knew their bodies, their postures, their gaits. That man moved a hell of a lot like Theo Maranan.
Can’t be, she thought. The fugitives should have been three states away by now. They certainly weren’t crazy enough to linger here at the crime scene. Were they?
She shelved the debate when the judge returned to the line. While Melissa continued her plea for a more expansive ghost warrant, she bandied Theo’s name in her thoughts. She never guessed for a moment that he was doing the same with her.
—
David barely had time to answer the coded knock at the door before Theo swept past him in a flushed and winded huff.
“We have to go.”
“Why? What did you see?”
“Exactly what you were afraid of.”
David closed the door. “Ghost drills. Marvelous. I knew it wouldn’t take forty-eight hours.”
“We can’t wait for Hannah to wake up. We’ll have to move her somehow.”
“Move me where?”
Theo nearly dropped his bag at the unexpected sight of Hannah. She looked so spry and healthy that for a moment he thought he was hallucinating.
“Hannah. Wow. You’re up. When did . . . ?”
She eyed him through a cool squint. For all her miraculous recovery, Theo could see that she had yet to forgive him.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Why are you freaking out? What did you see?”
“The Deps. They’re going to start ghosting any minute now. We can’t—”
A bedroom door creaked open. Zack stepped outside. His skin was pallid. His face was racked with grief. Now Hannah knew exactly why Mia was worried about him.
He offered her a feeble hint of his old smirk. “Hey. Welcome back.”
Hannah rushed toward him in gushing empathy. Amanda raised a palm. “Don’t hug him. He has broken ribs.”
She took his hands instead. “Oh God, Zack . . .”
“I appreciate the pity, but I’m all right.”
“It’s not pity, you schmuck. I know what you did. I know you tried to reason with that psycho.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t work.”
“I didn’t think it would. But I love you for trying.”
Unnerved by Theo’s urgency, Mia looked to the door. “I really think we should go.”