Remy ran a hand through his dark hair, then realized what he was doing and slapped it onto the table before anyone could make a crack about it. “This seems like as good a time as any to tell you my update,” he said quickly. “There’s a reason I’m not grounded anymore. Something happened early this morning. There was another big power surge, this time out by the steel mill.”

“The steel mill?” I repeated. “There’s nothing out there.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “It makes perfect sense—no one goes out there, ever. It’s the perfect place for the alien to hide.”

“Yeah, maybe it was,” Remy allowed. “But it isn’t now. My dad went to check it out this morning, and they’ll probably patrol for a couple of days. The good news is, though, they’re pretty much convinced there’s something wrong with the electrical system that’s causing the blackouts and caused the burns.

“I guess now that the blame’s getting turned back on them, Crane Utilities is pretty much shutting up, paying St. James for the damages to his property, and doing their own review of their systems. My dad thinks they’re afraid any more police involvement could turn up some big mistake, and they could get sued, or something. They don’t even seem to care about the missing parts anymore.”

“So he’s just done investigating?” Sofía said, bristling at the thought. “If he suspects a cover-up, he shouldn’t give up.”

Remy shrugged. “I doubt he’ll just let it go, but officially, the investigation’s over. I’m sure he’ll keep an eye on things, but the security won’t be as tight on Jenkins Lane from now on.”

Art rubbed his chin. “Perfect. Then Operation Franny starts tonight.”

A tremor went through me, and Remy’s knee pressed into mine again, this time a promise: It will be okay.

“What about my piano?” Nick cried.

“Sure,” Arthur said. “That too.”

* * *

     *

We headed over just before dark. It was raining, so Remy drove, but we left his car parked on the cross street that ran parallel to Jenkins Lane and made our way through the misty woods to the cave.

“Who’s going to get the camera down?” Remy asked.

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks for volunteering.”

“Nice try.” Remy slipped out from under his grip, and followed me and Sofía toward the cave.

“It’s a two-person job,” Levi insisted. “I wouldn’t want to drop it.”

“Why not?” Arthur called, jogging after us. “You’ll just order a new one.”

“But—”

“Keep your pants on, Levi,” Nick said as the rest of us headed for the cave’s low mouth. “You don’t have to be alone for five seconds: I’m not going in no alien hidey-hole.”

He’d been visibly anxious all day, tapping his head and thigh and chin in that obsessive rhythm, and I’d half expected him to back out. Instead he’d been the reason we’d headed over before the sun even set.

“If this piano bomb is gonna kill me,” he’d said, “I’d rather just get it over with.”

As he and Levi argued about who was going to climb the tree, Arthur dropped into a crouch and crawled into the cave, followed by Sofía, and then me, and finally Remy.

Nick’s squawking voice faded along with the soft taptaptap of rain and everything else as we followed Sofía’s flashlight beam deeper into the cave’s antechamber, until finally the ceiling lifted and we could stand.

“Pretty creepy,” Remy whispered behind me, his voice echoing as we started down the stone path toward the steady drip-drip-drip.

“I wish we’d found this place sooner,” Arthur murmured. “Would’ve made a great hideout.”

“For what?” Sofía asked.

“For anything,” Arthur said.

Ahead, the cave curved in on itself, and as I moved around the bend, I felt a little bit like a piece of food being sucked down an esophagus, passed along by the muscles of an intestine.

Arthur stopped so abruptly he caused a pileup, Sofía plowing into him, me slamming into her, Remy colliding with me.

“What?” Remy asked, stepping out to get a look at the rounded-out hollow where the cave ended, the trickling waterfall that formed a shallow pool in the corner.

Arthur laughed. “It’s gone.” He patted the stone wall like it was a very good horse. “That means E.T. came back for it! That means the video caught it!”

“Or whoever else might have taken it,” Sofía amended. She seemed every bit as optimistic as my brother did that this would prove what she expected it to, though it was no longer clear to me just what she thought that might be.

Hope swelled in my chest, a light, shaky feeling like I’d swallowed a bunch of helium.

“We’ll know who dropped the bullet,” I said. “Whether that was . . . an alien, or just a person who saw what happened to us, we’ll know.”

And once we knew if we had a human observer, and who they were, I could figure out what I had to do to make sure our secret was safe, to protect against the people Bill had warned me about.