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“Wait.” Lynn steps closer and puts herself between Jake and me. My five-foot-two protector. “Let’s see how Ava feels after she’s done with the car. This stuff drains her.”

Jake’s head snaps up. He looks at me over Lynn’s messy bun. “It drains you. Why? How?” He frowns. I can hear the worry in his voice.

Lynn puts her hands on her hips. “No free rides in the universe, buddy. There has to be an even exchange of energy. Ava uses her energy to read the object’s energy. The more juice an object has, the more it drains her.” Lynn’s shoulders pull back. She speaks with the authority of someone who has watched me do this hundreds of times. And the one who cares for me during many of my brain dumps, as I like to call the completely drained and empty feeling I get sometimes.

“It’s okay. The key doesn’t have much of anything to it. And if I start feeling drained, eating something usually helps ground me.”

His brows scrunch behind the mirrored lenses. “Helps ground you?”

“Yes. It’s a little like having a sugar low. And I rarely eat much before I do a reading. Being a little hungry makes for a stronger connection.”

He tilts his head. “Why is that?”

“Because food is grounding, and it helps restore my energy.” I inhale deeply and release my breath. “I’m ready for the car.”

He holds his phone out. “Okay, go ahead.”

I walk to the car, press the fob to unlock it, and open the driver’s door. “Can I sit inside?”

“Yes, it’s been scrubbed for evidence and will be released to the family once someone comes to pick it up.” He stands at the door.

I sit behind the wheel but don’t touch anything yet. The car is spotless. I close my eyes and open my senses. “Whatever happened to her, it was not in the car. I detect no violence here.”

With eyes still closed, I touch the steering wheel. Images flood my mind. “She was a careful driver. The kind you hate to be stuck behind because they always do the speed limit.”

“Like someone I know,” Lynn interjects and gets shushed by Jake.

I filter through the myriad of impressions, searching for something—anything—that will give me a clue. Nothing. “I’m not getting anything of value.”

I blindly trace my hands across the dashboard but stop when my fingers brush against the air vent. Wait. Something is off. “This feels different.” An undefinable feeling of wrongness takes over me, like sweat-sticky skin on a frigid day. It doesn’t belong.

Gravel crunches under a heavy foot, and Jake’s loud breath rushes past me.

I search for what’s different. For what doesn’t belong, instead of searching for clues about Alice. Then I see it. “A male hand reaches for the vents and turns them all off. He’s wearing disposable gloves. Like the ones you see at a doctor’s office.” I mimic the phantom hand tracing his movements. “He turned off the AC, cleaned the car, and removed everything from it.”

More crunching sounds. “That’s correct. The car was clean when we found it. Not a spec of dirt, no prints.” His voice is closer.

The images flash in an almost organized manner. “I think he was wearing a hazmat suit or something like that. I see an arm in some kind of white papery sleeve and a gloved hand.” I wait, but I get nothing else. Opening my eyes, I blink against the bright morning light.

Jake is squatting just inside the open door. Phone in hand, still recording.

With his face so close to mine, I resist the urge to remove his sunglasses like I did in the park. “When did you say she went missing? June fifteenth?”

“Yes.”

I trace the steering wheel. “Lynn, look up the weather for that day in this area.”

She taps her phone. “It was eighty-two degrees that day and pretty much the same for the days before and after.”

I touch the car’s dash again and meet my reflection in his glasses. “Was the AC turned off and all the air vents closed when the car was found?”

His head tilts. “I can double-check when I get back to my office, but I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Interesting . . . why would anyone drive with the AC off and all the vents closed on a hot day?” I ask, more to myself than him.

He turns off the recording. “You think whoever took Alice messed around with the car vents?”

“I think he moved the car from its original location and cleaned it up. He turned the air off and closed the vents to prevent it from blowing any stray hairs, fibers, etc. He wore gloves and a protective suit over his clothes for the same reason. Bet he also wore a hair net or cap. And then he cleaned the entire car to make sure there was nothing linking the car to him. This guy is careful and methodical.” My chest tightens like a wind-up toy under too much pressure. Faint energy vestiges linger like an invisible scuff mark. I have never encountered anything like this. “This man is almost robotic in the way he acts, yet underlying every action is a sadistic anger.”