I UNFOLDED THE MAP AND smoothed it across the steering wheel again, looking between the X Roman had marked on it and the building across the street. We’d used the burner’s limited GPS capabilities to search for the Baton Rouge address, but there must have been some glitch in the satellite feed, or he’d made a mistake in transferring the information over onto the paper. This couldn’t be it.

“I think this is right,” Roman said, shielding his eyes from the glare of sunlight to get a better look at the building. “Unfortunately.”

“It’s like I can hear the screams of ghost children from here,” Priyanka said, shuddering. “Tell me Ruby loves roller-skating so much she’d drive across multiple state lines and risk capture by the government for a fun day out.”

Riverside Rink was just outside of Baton Rouge proper, on a street yet to be touched by that magic reinvigoration we’d seen in other places. The flow of money and government-sponsored work had apparently stopped at the city’s center.

We parked across the street, behind a shuttered McDonald’s, and ate our lunch of vending-machine food on a faded rainbow play set. Roman insisted on keeping watch to see if anyone was coming or going. So far, nothing. No one.

“I don’t think she’s here,” I said, tossing the M&M’s wrapper into the restaurant’s overflowing trash can. A swarm of flies immediately descended on it. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in a good decade.”

Half the letters on the rink’s fluorescent sign were missing, plundered by neglect or thieves, I wasn’t sure. Its parking lot was empty, all of its lines faded. The windows, like all the other buildings’ in the neighborhood, were boarded up and spray-painted with warnings against trespassers.

“Well, we’re here. At least we’ll see what she found so intriguing about this place,” Priyanka said. “You good?”

Roman checked that there was a bullet in the chamber of his gun, then nodded.

The roller rink was completely locked down, and the front door had been chained for good measure. It made finding the back door open that much stranger.

“Stating for the record that I don’t like this,” Priyanka said.

“There is no record,” Roman whispered.

She gave him a look. He gave her one right back.

“Should I go first?” I suggested.

We kept our backs to the brick wall, facing the mountain of trash piled high in the nearby dumpsters. The smell was bad enough that I lifted the collar of my shirt over my nose and mouth.

Roman led us inside, sweeping his gun back and forth as he searched what once had been the rink’s kitchen. There was still a grill, but all the other machines had been taken, leaving behind only a congealed bit of orange cheese on the tile floor as a relic. The light filtering in from outside faded the farther we moved into the building. I pulled the flashlight out of my back pocket and switched it on.

Roman had stepped into the main rink area, only to whirl toward us again, the back of his hand pressed hard to his mouth.

“Don’t—” he started to say as I passed him.

Too late. I smelled it, too. The sickly sweet stench of rotting food had blended with the unmistakable reek of human waste and…something else. Something like death.

The flashlight’s thin beam illuminated the skating rink in slices of horror. Cubbies of roller skates, left untouched. Garbage and buckets were scattered haphazardly across the rink.

A body.

The girl was curled on her side, facing away from us, hugging her knees to her chest. A long dark braid stretched out on the floor behind her, the end buried beneath a stray wrapper. Her plaid shirt was a deep red, shot through with black. She wasn’t moving.

She wasn’t breathing.

My feet slowed.

Stopped.

Ruby.

The flashlight slipped out of my fingers, cracking against the hard ground. Blood roared in my ears until I thought it would tear me apart.

Two hands landed on my shoulders. Priyanka turned me toward her, saying something I couldn’t hear. I pulled back, watching as a grim-faced Roman circled the girl and crouched down in front of her.

Priyanka’s hands dug into my skin painfully, but she couldn’t look away from him either, not until he glanced up and shook his head.

I didn’t believe him. I tore myself out of Priyanka’s grip, my breath burning where it was caught inside my chest. I only needed a single look at what remained of her face.

Not her.

She was too young. Her hands and feet, bound by zip ties, were too small. From a distance, it had been an easy mistake to make, but up close…

I forced myself not to turn away. To look at the girl, alone in this dark place.

“God, she can’t be more than twelve, thirteen,” Priyanka said, her voice strained. “What was she doing here?”

Roman stood slowly, picking up the flashlight from where it had rolled to a stop beside the girl’s legs. The light passed over the rink again, this time sweeping over sticky footprints in the grime and dust. I followed one trail of small footprints until it intersected with another one, and another, and another.

There weren’t just a few tracks. There were dozens and dozens of them. Some smaller than the length of my hand.

“Whatever it was,” Roman said, “she wasn’t alone. And she didn’t come here by choice.”

“I want to leave,” Priyanka said, all humor gone from her voice. The air was like someone’s damp breath against my skin, but she rubbed her arms as if she needed to warm some feeling back into them. “Right now.”

“No,” I said. “We can’t just leave her here.”

Roman’s eyes softened as he looked to me. “We’re not going to. We’ll use the pay phone across the street to call it in to the Baton Rouge police. They need to see this—whatever this is.”

“I don’t…” Trust them to take care of her.

That single truth burned in me. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust the FBI, or Cruz, or anyone in her orbit. I only trusted us.

“I understand,” he said. “I don’t like it either. But she deserves to be identified and returned to her family for a real burial. That’s not something we can give her.”

My throat ached.

“Right?” he said softly.

I nodded.

You must remember this, I thought. That was my responsibility now. But it wasn’t enough.

“I need the burner,” I told Priyanka.

She handed it over with a questioning look. The camera wouldn’t record this in excruciating high definition, but all that mattered was capturing this scene, this moment, and refusing to let anyone look away.

If I were going to put together a narrative from all these pieces—the drone footage, this rink, and whatever we found next—I needed to actually begin to document what was happening.

I flipped the camera view so that it was on me. My face glowed in the dark rink.

“It’s…” I began, doing the math in my head. “August seventeenth. About four o’clock in the afternoon, at Riverside Rink, just outside of Baton Rouge.” I flipped the camera view again, walking the length of the rink, sweeping it over the shadowed evidence of the people—the kids—who had been kept here. “We discovered this place while following a lead on the real culprits behind the bombing at Penn State. From what I can tell, it looks as if children, possibly Psi, were held here against their will, likely because they were being trafficked.”

I moved back over to the girl. Roman and Priyanka stepped out of the frame.

“But they left someone behind.” I knelt down beside her, bringing the camera closer to her face. “She’s been here, forgotten, waiting for someone to care enough to find her.”

I stopped recording, looking back at the others.

“I think it’s obvious who’s behind this,” Roman said, his voice pitching deeper with anger. “Mercer must be back in the trafficking business. This has his fingerprints all over it—we’re near a reopened shipping port, close enough to the compound in New Orleans. Even using an abandoned facility to hold them until transport could be arranged…”

“I really wish I could believe he’s the only one trafficking kids,” Priyanka said. “If anything, this feels messy. That’s not his way. He would have sent someone to clean up.”

“He doesn’t let rivals in on his game,” Roman said. “It’s exactly what he did before. Keep the Psi kids he wants for experimenting, sell the rest to other countries or organizations he doesn’t think will challenge him.”

I clutched the phone tighter in my hand. “If Ruby really was here, then this is what she was chasing. Maybe Mercer does have her, after all. It would have brought her right into his path.”

She’d been following the lines of a web that stretched between states, between one dark criminal element and the next. Unwinding clues and, hopefully, collecting evidence.

And now…

“Zu,” Roman said, taking my hand. He repeated my name again, and again, until I finally looked at him. “If Mercer has her, we can start looking in his various real estate holdings. It’s a place to start.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. And it didn’t stop the swelling tide of pressure as it rose up in my chest. Overhead, the fluorescent light fixture hummed, buzzing like a trapped fly.

“And how long will that take? He could have her somewhere neither of you know about,” I said. “He could be hurting her right now.”

“There’s only one way to pinpoint her location for sure,” Priyanka said, looking to Roman. “You’re going to have to call in your favor.”