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can see them.”
    He settles himself on the couch. “Are we going to get past this at some point? I’m on your side, and I was hoping you could be on mine. Uncle Angus left in a hurry after Uncle George disappeared, and I—”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘George disappeared’?” I ask.
    â€œAbout three days ago. Right after the board meeting. Angus lost touch with him. No one knows where he went.”
    Christina bites her lip and comes to stand next to me, looking down at Leo with curiosity. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye and then say, “George is dead, too, Leo. He was killed by the Core yesterday morning.”
    All the blood drains from Leo’s face. “What?” he whispers, his eyes going shiny.
    When she registers the pain on his face, Christina shoves her weapon at me and then goes to sit next to Leo on the couch. She takes his hand as tears streak down his face. “It was quick,” she says quietly. “He probably didn’t have time to be scared or in pain.” Leo curls in on himself, and she pats his back while my own eyes burn. I miss George, too. I was depending on him to help me. He was a good man, and—
    â€œWait. He was missing for three days?” I ask. He was killed only twenty-four hours ago. “Angus didn’t know he was coming to Charlottesville?”
    Leo wipes his face with his sleeve and peers up at me. “What’s in Charlottesville?” he asks in a raspy voice.
    Christina’s brow furrows as she meets my eyes. “Maybe your mom asked him to keep it secret?”
    â€œShe didn’t ask him to go to Charlottesville until Tuesday morning at the earliest.”
    â€œBut today’s Friday, and the last time anyone heard from him was Monday night,” Leo says, sniffling. “He was supposed to come to headquarters for a meeting on Tuesday, but he never showed.”
    â€œIt could fit,” Christina says. “By that time, your mom had called him.”
    â€œAngus and a few of George’s family members went to his hotel room in the afternoon, and it was a mess.” He grimaces, and his voice cracks as he says, “They said it looked like there had been a struggle. They thought maybe the Core had taken him away. But I hoped he’d escaped and come here.”
    His face crumples again, and he covers it with his hands, his shoulders shaking. Christina puts her arm around him and scoots closer, whispering comforting words to this stranger, this boy who understands my world better than I do. The last ten minutes has added yet another dimension of mystery to this whole thing, and I can’t take it. “I’m going back down to the lab,” I say, clicking off the television to suppress my urge to throw it across the room. “You’re going to come so I can keep an eye on you. And if you turn on us, Leo, please believe that I’ll kill you, okay?”
    Christina shoots me a look that says
Is the asshole act really necessary?
I clench my teeth. Enough people have violated my trust in the last few days to make me permanently wary, and I’d think she would understand that. This kid is playing on her sympathies, and that’s pissing me off, too. Not to mention the fact that my dad is being framed as a freaking
terrorist.
Leo’s lucky I don’t kick his ass right now just to work off the sheer, blinding frustration of it all.
    The three of us head down to the lab, and I hunch over the keypad and enter my code, not wanting him to see it. Once we’re in, I grab a stool and settle Leo in the corner by the door. “Are those vibracoustic probes?” he asks, pointing at a set of wands on a rack across the room. “Uncle Fred let me help him on that design, and—”
    â€œWe’re not here to reminisce,” I snap, not wanting to hear how this kid had a better relationship with my dad than I did. “Just . . . be quiet, okay? I