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Nate took a slow look around. “I’d guess a long time.”

“Years?”

“Yes.”

Leo nodded.

The boy had gone. Whatever had happened after that conversation, whatever he’d been about to say, he wasn’t sitting on the cot anymore.

Neither was anybody else.

Leo looked through the opening at the place where he’d stood that morning. Where he’d stood so many times, certain that nobody could be allowed past him.

“I’ve been guarding the furniture.”

Nate turned toward him.

“Two beds. Three cups. A blanket.” Leo tried to smile. “It’d be very dangerous if these things fell into the wrong hands.”

Nate didn’t smile back. “You thought there was still someone to protect here.”

Leo shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking anything. I was acting on instinct.” He hadn’t known who he was protecting, or why, or whether anybody still needed him to do it.

Before Nate, the question hadn’t even entered his mind.

He’d just done it because it was what he did. Running on a pre-programmed schedule.

He was no better than the stupid robot vacuum.

“How long do you think I would have haunted this basement?” Leo asked. “If you hadn’t come?”

Nate’s mouth tightened.

Leo wished he hadn’t asked. There wasn’t a good answer, and Nate wasn’t going to invent one.

He turned back to the cot.

The boy’s face was still there when he closed his eyes. Blond hair. Blue eyes. A few freckles across his nose.

At least he had that.

“Nate.”

“Yeah?”

“Write it down.”

“What you remembered?”

“Yes. I don’t want to lose him again.”

The words came out before Leo could make them sound like something else.

Nate stayed beside him for another moment, almost holding his hand.

Then he said, “Let’s get the notebook.”

Chapter