“I will,” I said, able to think of nothing to comfort her better.

“We will,” Jace corrected, and I glanced up to find him watching us from the doorway. “And we should get going. Dan’s waiting in the car.”

“Are you okay?” Kaci asked him, her hazel eyes narrowed in concern, and I was impressed all over again by her perceptive nature and occasional moments of true maturity and empathy. She was quite a kid.

“I will be.” Jace smiled softly at her, and when his gaze flicked to mine, I was staggered by the range of emotions swimming behind his eyes. “We all will be, because we have no other choice. We’ll find Marc, then mourn Ethan and avenge his death.”

Kaci frowned, and fear flitted across her face momentarily. She didn’t want to think about vengeance or violence of any kind, and I couldn’t blame her. But what she didn’t understand was that if we let Malone run all over us this time, he wouldn’t stop, and she was bound to lose as much because of that as any of us. Maybe more.

I stood and retrieved my bag, then wrapped my free arm around the tabby. “I need you to go let the doc give you a once-over. Then you can ask if Manx needs any help with the baby while I see if Mom can come up with anything for you to eat. ‘Kay?”

Though her face didn’t lighten, a spark of interest flashed behind her eyes. Kaci loved Des. He was the first baby she’d ever held, and she treasured rare opportunities to help with him. Now she’d find her services more in demand than ever.

I escorted her to her room, where the doctor waited with two packed bags, while Jace stopped in the kitchen to fill my mother in on what we’d told the tabby. Five minutes later, after another round of goodbye hugs, we were on the road, and after another five-and-a-half-hour drive, I didn’t care if I never saw another highway. We didn’t stop for food at all, and only made one bathroom break, so by the time Jace pulled into Marc’s driveway, I really had to use the restroom, thanks to the three twenty-ounce Cokes I’d had on the drive.

Unfortunately, when I paused in my mad dash through the front yard to dig my ringing cell phone from my pocket, Jace gained the lead and beat me to the bathroom, though he’d never been in Marc’s house.

Growling in frustration, I glanced at the display on my phone, then flipped it open on my way back out the front door to help Dan and Carver with the bags. “Michael? What’s up?”

“You owe me so badly you may as well just hand over your firstborn.” The satisfaction in his voice sounded almost foreign to me; I hadn’t expected to feel anything even remotely related to joy until Marc was safe and sound.

“What’d you find?” I smiled at Dan in thanks and took my duffel from him, then made my way back inside.

“After five solid hours of hunting and nothing stronger to drink than coffee, I not only found the manufacturer of the microchips, I cracked their database and got you the electronic invoice.”

“Seriously?” My heart thumped painfully as I dropped my bag on the bare living room floor, and Carver’s eyebrows shot up as he listened in on my call.

“Yeah. I’m sending it now. Go check Marc’s e-mail.”

“I’m on it.” I rushed down the hall, pausing to bang on the bathroom door to hurry Jace up, then plopped into Marc’s rolling desk chair and punched the power button on his computer. “It’ll take a while to boot up, though, so fill me in while I wait.”

My father’s desk chair squealed over the line, and I pictured my oldest brother leaning back, his hands crossed over his stomach as he demonstrated his own brilliance. “Basically, Ben Feldman was right. This kind of technology isn’t commercially available in the U.S. yet, though the military evidently has something similar in the works. The microchips come from a security company in Mexico that started out designing GPS systems to track down stolen cars. But now they’re into some truly next-level shit.”

“So I gathered.” With Marc’s desktop loaded, I opened his browser, then cringed when the crappy phone modem dialed and squealed repeatedly, struggling to connect to the Internet. Each page took at least half a minute to load, but evidently there was no better connection available in Middle-of-Nowhere, Mississippi.

No wonder it took him so long to reply to my e-mails.

The irony of that did not escape me. How odd was it that Marc’s sidekick had been implanted with a microchip capable of tracking him all over the world and transmitting a remote signal, while Marc’s computer could barely access the Internet?

When the screen prompted me, I typed in Marc’s e-mail password. It was my first name: Katherine. Not exactly secure, but definitely flattering. “So these chips were actually designed to track humans? Not find lost pets?”

“Yeah. Originally they were supposed to help find millionaires kidnapped for ransom.”

“Won’t Feldman be thrilled to find out he actually has more in common with Bill Gates than Benji?” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, but Michael didn’t notice. He was on a roll, as excited as if he’d invented the microchips, rather than merely researching them online.

“You pay a small fortune up front for installation and service, then, if you’re snatched off the street a few years later, the cops can find you with no trouble. In theory. But the battery is only guaranteed for five years. I have no idea what Mitchell—it’s his name on the invoice—was planning to do after that. Maybe he plans to have eliminated all the strays by then.”