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Anson paused, then kept walking up the concrete driveway as if she hadn’t spoken.

Maybe her heart-to-heart didn’t have the effect she was hoping for.

She sighed then followed him up the driveway, wiping at the sweat beading on her forehead from the afternoon sun.

The closer they were to August, the hotter it felt.

Days like today, she loved to soar in the cloudless sky, her eyes seeing for miles as she drifted on the hot air currents.

The wind moving across her wings was intoxicating.

But with her job, she couldn’t do whatever she wanted when she wanted. Those days were long behind her.

She perched her sunglasses on the crown of her head as Anson pulled a spare key from a plastic rock in the garden.

“People actually buy those things?” she asked, eying up the other rocks in the garden for hidden surprises. The rest seemed real to her. She never thought she’d be tricked by a plastic rock. Maybe she was onto something when she’d been eyeing up the gnomes.

“The best place to hide things is in plain sight.”

She shrugged. As an eagle shifter, she felt that was the best place to find things.

She could spot a mouse in a grassy field from a mile up.

Nari felt the same way about her ability as an agent to notice clues.

If she had a motto, it would be, “Pay attention to detail.” Since she was trying to build a relationship, she decided not to argue.

Anson stomped his feet on the concrete a few times before easing the key in.

Odd. He did that at the hotel, too, before walking through the door.

Maybe he didn’t like tracking dirt in if he wore his shoes through the house.

None of that mattered anyway. She was more interested in finding Ariel and the other shifters than analyzing Anson’s strange habits or type-A cleanliness.

Nari considered herself a neat person, but she looked like a slob compared to Anson.

Nari half expected a bomb to go off when the door opened, but nothing happened.

The hinges could have used a little grease, but that was it.

So far, so good. Nothing lit on fire or blew up.

Maybe he had a point about there not being any booby traps, though Nari remained on edge.

Her second motto was, “Better safe than sorry.” Besides, ASS and FUC were trusting her with their witness.

If he came back a little crispy, she would probably be in trouble.

Big trouble. And Anson was trying to trust her to help him get his sister back.

She shared that goal as well. Nari couldn’t let him down.

Nari followed Anson as he stepped inside.

The kitchen next to the entranceway was as she expected, having observed Anson for some time now.

Shrews weren’t known for their cleanliness, but Anson—at least in his human form—made up for it.

He changed his clothes when they were dirty and washed his hands after touching anything that someone else might have touched.

Sometimes he washed his hands more than necessary in her opinion, but Nari would rather he be too neat than too messy.

And here in his house, what she saw reflected that.

Spotless countertops with everything in its place.

The kitchen looked like it belonged in a cooking show.

Labeled canisters sat in neat rows, letters facing out.

A few stainless-steel hooks next to the sparkling stove held pots and pans.

White linens rolled and held in place by napkin rings sat on the yellow placemats of the small wooden table pushed against the wall.

Did Anson love to cook? Or did he just love neatness and order?

“My office is in the back,” he explained, leading Nari down a hallway to a small room lined with filing cabinets and a corner desk.

She noted the pens on the desk were perpendicular to the wall.

All of the orderliness was starting to unnerve her, and she fought the urge to knock things about.

Anson sat at the desk and opened the blue laptop.

Without an invitation, Nari started rifling through the file cabinets.

“By all means, help yourself,” he said dryly, typing away on the keyboard.

“Sorry. I was just curious if Grimm emptied this place out or not.” She was about to close the drawer when she noticed something odd.

“I told you he doesn’t know about this place.” Anson sounded a little defensive.

“Can you say that for a fact?”

“Yeah, why?” He turned to look at her, anger starting to paint his face.

“No reason,” Nari said as she pointed to a device she found in the drawer taped to the back of a hanging file folder. Not knowing if it was made for listening, she put a finger to her lips, urging Anson to stay quiet. He stood, raising an eyebrow as he looked at the bug.

“I told you he didn’t know about this place.

Now just give me a few minutes and we can leave.

” He returned to his computer, and Nari looked back, peering over his shoulder, but realized she couldn’t read anything due to a screen that blocked the view of what was on the monitor from anyone not looking directly through it. All she could see was a grey blur.

After a few minutes of typing, Anson closed the laptop before sliding it into a bookbag. He opened a drawer in the desk, pulling some gadgets out and plopping them into the bag as well. Assuming they were leaving, Nari shut the filing cabinet, returning the room to how she’d found it.

Anson whirled around at the sound of the drawer clicking. “Why did you do that?”

“What? Shut the drawer? What’s wrong with that?” She’d assumed that his tidy nature would have appreciated her attempt at fastidiousness.

He grabbed his bookbag and practically shoved Nari out of the room. “Run. Now!”

Her inner alarm system finally clicked on at his sense of urgency.

Oh no! Did I activate a bomb? Nari ran like her life depended on it.

Her heart hammered in her chest as her feet slapped the floor beneath her.

She pumped her legs until she flew out the side door, launching herself into a nearby garden bed, scraping her knees on the concrete driveway.

With her elbows digging into the dirt, she looked to the back door for Anson.

He emerged from the house, though less dramatically. Glancing down at her in the dirt, he cocked his head sideways and asked, “Did you trip?” He raised an eyebrow at her as if her reaction was bizarre. Or he thought that she’d lost her mind.

“You told me to run. I thought…” Nari brushed the web of her ponytail out of her face. Even the bobbing flowers next to her seemed to be laughing at her dramatics. The crooked garden gnome by her left hand definitely was.

“Well, yeah. He probably had an EMP programmed to go off or something that will wipe my computer and our phones.” Anson shrugged as if they were discussing something mundane, like the weather.

“Oh, wait. Did you think a physical bomb was about to go off?” he asked with a chuckle before crossing his arms across his chest.

“Of course I thought a bomb was about to go off! That tends to be what people think when someone tells them to run after potentially triggering a strange device!” Nari got up, dusting off her jeans, noting the rip in the knee.

She tried not to grimace as the pressure of her hand hurt the stinging flesh below.

Her knee was throbbing. Hopefully the damage was superficial.

She’d be able to heal that overnight while sleeping.

“Well, an electromagnetic pulse is basically that to our devices. It kills all electronics in the vicinity,” he explained, setting down the bag to pull out his laptop. He jabbed at the power button, but the screen stayed black. “Shit.”

“Is it dead?” she asked, still feeling the sting of embarrassment from throwing herself onto the ground for apparently no reason. Hopefully none of the neighbors witnessed her making a fool of herself. It was bad enough that Anson—and the shifted FUC and ASSes observing them—saw it unfold.

“Yup. There was an EMP, and it wiped the hard drive.” He walked to the garbage can at the back corner of the house and chucked the laptop inside.

“Our phones will be dead too.” Anson’s face crumpled as if the world was ending.

In a way, it was, as it seemed his sister meant everything to him.

The EMP may have wiped anything useful from his devices.

“Not mine. I left it in the car,” she stated, hoping it would raise his spirits.

He raised an eyebrow at her in disbelief.

“What?” She shrugged. “I don’t need it on me at all times.

” Besides, she didn’t like the way it felt in the pocket of her jeans.

It was too bulky and uncomfortable when she sat down.

And in wanting to be prepared for anything, she kept it in a fanny pack looped over the gear stick in the middle of the car.

That way, if she needed to shift to make an escape, she could easily loop it around her neck and fly with it so she’d have her smartphone and wallet with her and be able to communicate with her superiors rather than be caught unawares and unprepared.

Trying to change the subject to offer him some hope, she asked, “Were the other gadgets you took affected?” Maybe they couldn’t use the laptop, but Anson had packed up more than that.

“They’re all dead.” He dropped them into the garbage can for emphasis. “If the pulse was big enough, the car, and anything in it, may be too.”

That sent a ball of anxiety to Nari’s stomach.

She was certain Cass would string her up by her talons if she rendered her precious sports car inoperable.

“I guess we’ll find that out soon. Is there anything else in the house that was non-digital that could help us find your sister?

” Nari didn’t want to give up yet. Something about this trip had to be useful, or it was all for nothing.

Anson scoffed. “What year do you think this is? Nineteen-ninety-something? No one leaves an actual paper trail anymore.”

“Tin-foil-hat-wearing people do.” She fought the urge to tell Anson she was born in nineteen-ninety-something and was only a few years older than he was.

How was she supposed to know Dr. Grimm operated digitally?

“A lot of these baddies are too paranoid to operate digitally. They know ASS and FUC can hack them.” She couldn’t help but state it, wanting badly to wipe that smug look off Anson’s face.

He was so arrogant at times, and it drove her nuts.

“Well, this is my place, and I kept everything digital.” He crossed his arms.

“If Dr. Grimm was here and set that trap, maybe he left something else behind. Something that could help us.” Nari couldn’t give up.

In the time Anson had been in FUC custody, he’d given them nothing to go on that would help with tracking down Grimm.

This had been the first and only lead he’d given.

What if there wasn’t anything else he could lead them to?

“If you’re expecting a treasure map with an X where Ariel is, forget it.” He sculked back off toward the car, dragging his feet on the concrete driveway. He picked up the not-empty backpack, sculking toward the car.

Nari followed Anson, shuffling her feet a little, too, and not because her knee was throbbing.

Guilt was a boa constrictor wrapped around her guts.

She was the one who triggered that trap.

If they couldn’t find Ariel, that would be on her.

With any luck, the FUC agents who would comb the house later for other clues would find something useful.

Maybe they could turn something up since Anson was reluctant to go back inside.

Somehow, they would have to find Dr. Grimm’s trail.

Until then, she couldn’t give up on working Anson, in the hopes that he might lead her somewhere useful.