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“I know, and there is blood in the dirt,” I tell him.

Brawley crouches to look at the blood as I stand and pull out my radio. Khodi responds fast, and I tell him I need all eyes open for Vero and Cave, though I don’t get too specific, just that I need it done.

“On it,” Khodi says. “I will have everyone alert on the island.”

We spend the next two hours covering as much ground as possible, searching every place we think Vero may have gone, yet we come up empty-handed.

We double back in case we missed something, and two hours becomes three—wherever Vero is, he doesn’t want to be found. Brawley hasn’t mentioned the microchip or why it shows he is here when he isn’t.

“We should head back and check on Kayla. See if he showed up there while we were out here,” I suggest.

Brawley nods, looking tired and defeated. I know this must be hard for him; Vero doesn’t normally have episodes this close together. I pull up my radio again and tell Khodi the alert stands until I say otherwise, and ask him to send me all the surveillance footage from the last twenty-four hours.

Brawley stops and looks out at the water once we are near the residential side of the island. “He could have gone in there,” he murmurs.

“He didn’t.”

Brawley sighs. “You can’t know that.”

“He has Cave with him, and drowning is not Vero’s style. Vero is loud and in your face. When he shows up again, he will make a spectacle of the situation. We just have to figure out where he is before Vero kills Cave.”

We walk back to the house in silence, finding the lights off when we get there. I open the front door and Ares is waiting, which means he hasn’t slept. He stares at us, and as Brawley closes the door, I shake my head. Ares runs his hand through his hair.

“I sent out an alert, and everyone is on the lookout for him. Khodi is sending me the surveillance footage.”

“The cameras on the east side were out earlier,” Ares reminds me.

“I’m hoping Vero went to the other side, otherwise he could be anywhere.”

“You didn’t find him?” We all turn and see Kayla coming down the stairs in one of Ares’s shirts. Even amidst this chaos, the possessive side of me wants her in my clothes.

“Not yet.”

She comes the rest of the way down the stairs and sits on the arm of the lounge. She bites her lip as if trying to hold herself together. I want her to break down, knowing that we’re all here for her.

“He must have cut out his microchip,” Brawley admits. “It still says he’s in the cornfield, but we checked there twice.”

My phone buzzes with a message from Khodi. A file link is attached.

Footage from last night. East cameras are dead, but I pulled everything else. Flagged a few things you will want to see.

“Khodi sent the footage.”

I connect my phone to the television and pull up the file. The footage is split into four angles and time-stamped from earlier today. I fast-forward until after we found Kayla, and Vero took off.

The east cameras are blank, but the others cover the west side, the path along the back of the residential area, and the circus tent. We scan through the footage, and most of it is nothing out of the ordinary.

“There,” Ares says, pointing toward the screen.

I stop and go back a little.

The west path, four hours ago.

The footage is grainy, and the lighting is terrible, but the figure is unmistakably Vero. He’s skipping along the path. Brawley leans forward. “Stop it there,” he says.

I pause the footage.

“His back,” Brawley says.