Two PD officers were at the house when Jay arrived. One prowled around the perimeter while the other sat inside with Madelaine. As soon as Jay walked in, Madelaine jumped up and rushed straight into his arms.

"Gene has the entire force on alert," she said, cleaving to him as tightly as he held her. "And he's stopping by later unless we give him a good enough reason not to."

Jay wasn't inclined to give him one. New Tech City's police chief was a good friend of the family and Jay wanted the chance to thank him personally for throwing the full weight of the department into the search. "All of SPD's on alert too."

"Is there someone trying to get back at you? Someone who might be involved in this?"

"No," he reassured her quickly. "At least, no one we know of. I promise I don't have any mortal enemies I'm hiding." He gave his wife another squeeze, then asked, "Can you show me what happened?"

Madelaine spared a look for the officer still sitting at the table, who said it was fine and busied himself with his notes, before taking Jay's hand firmly in hers and leading him up the stairs to Sky's room. She stopped in the doorway, however, as if she were afraid to go in.

"We got home from his swim class around three and I put him down pretty much right away because he was tired. Of course he fought it for a while before finally knocking out. Around five-thirty, I pulled out a snack for him, then started making dinner, figuring he would be up any minute and hungry. When I didn't hear a peep, I came up to check on him and he wasn't here. I looked in all the rooms, then in all the closets, thinking maybe he was hiding even though he's never done that before. I started getting scared when I realized I didn't hear any sound at all, no muffled scrapes or giggles, not even him breathing. That's when I really started turning everything over. I even looked in the laundry hampers and the washing machine. Both the front and back doors were locked, but even if he'd gotten outside, he wouldn't just run off."

Madelaine pressed a fist to her mouth as if trying to stop the rush of words, and Jay rubbed her shoulder soothingly. He looked around the room, trying to spot anything that seemed out of place even as he wondered at the same time whether he'd be able to tell if something was. He generally took for granted that anything in a three-year-old's room wouldn't be in the same place twice.

Against the far wall, in direct view of the door, was Sky's toddler bed with the solar system-print bedclothes he loved. Extra pillows and blankets were piled on the floor beside it because despite the railing guarding two-thirds of its length, Sky still somehow managed to roll out of bed sometimes when he slept.

"Did you move Sky's blankets?" Jay asked.

"No." Madelaine quickly glanced at the bed, then back at him worriedly. "Did I miss something?"

He wasn't sure. Keeping hold of his wife's hand like she'd done earlier, he went for a closer look. The space-themed blanket, covered with the same smiling planets and suns as the bedsheets, was spread over the lower half of the mattress as if there were still a child there to keep warm. Normally it got kicked into the corner or onto the floor not long after Sky fell asleep.

It really did seem like his son had simply vanished into thin air, and the thought sent an icy chill down Jay's spine.

The boy was clearly capable of communicating, but he had an utterly unique language filled with muddled or nonsensical words that Mirloc could not comprehend. The child nearly soiled himself before he figured out "potty" was a word for eliminating waste. During that harrowing endeavor to the washroom, Mirloc made an interesting discovery—a thin belt around the boy's middle that he had initially dismissed as part of his clothing. On closer inspection, he realized it was a shielding device, a sophisticated one that was light and sturdy but seemingly inactive. The fastening mechanism, in contrast, was a simple one that even an idiot—or a child—could unlock. What good was such a thing if it could be so easily removed?

"Boy." Mirloc gestured at the belt. "Why do you have this?"

The child looked confused. "I have to. When I sleeping."

"Why?"

"So I safe."

"Safe from what?"

"Falling things."

Mirloc wondered if this was another one of the child's lingual eccentricities. "What sorts of things?" The boy shrugged as if such details were unimportant. "If you do not tell me, you cannot go home."

Blue eyes widened and that little bow mouth quivered as the boy spoke. "Things in my room." He could not pronounce the letter 'r' properly.

The look on his face was as much fear as it was a plea, and Mirloc reconsidered his earlier thought. Perhaps this was not a lingual eccentricity, but a deficiency. The child was afraid because he did not know how to answer.

"Why do they fall?" Mirloc asked more patiently.

The boy held up an arm and Mirloc was startled when a rippling blue energy field sprang to life from his fist to his elbow. Immediately the device around the boy's waist activated and the field dispersed as quickly as it had appeared.

The shielding device was not for keeping things out, the mercenary realized. It was meant to keep something in.

When he first agreed to this job, he had only a name and an assurance from his old acquaintance that it would be short work, a quick nab and dash that should be no trouble for a creature with his peculiar talent. Then he discovered the name belonged to a very small boy whose father was a Ranger, and Mirloc figured the motive must have had something to do with that. It was dishonorable work at best, cowardice at worst, to exact one's grievances using a baby instead of facing the aggrieving party directly.

Now, however, he wasn't so sure the boy's father had anything to do with it at all.

Jay awoke in the middle of the night alone. He and Madelaine had eventually drifted off separately on the couch after puttering around downstairs uselessly, too afraid to go to bed because then morning would come too soon. They couldn't bring themselves to concede the end of the day with their son still missing, but exhaustion set in and did it for them anyway.

What Jay had really wanted to do was hit the streets, follow every possible lead no matter how tenuous, and if those were lacking, he would physically comb the city, block by block, inch by inch, as many times as it took to bring Sky home. Neither plan was even remotely practical, but at least he would be doing something. The longer he sat here idle, the more suffocating the walls of his own house felt.

But he'd stayed because leaving Madelaine alone right now would have been horribly selfish. Plus, the other Rangers had already set up a 24-hour rotation in which two of them would be actively working on the search at any given time. Nate and Carmen had the current shift, and the morning one had been reserved for Jay because Nate knew that was the only thing he'd be doing come daybreak anyway.

Nate hadn't mentioned Cruger at all, which Jay took to mean the commander hadn't exactly approved of this diversion of the Rangers, but even if he'd explicitly forbade it, Jay knew his team would not have done anything less. For the ten thousandth time, he felt more grateful than he could ever say for whatever forces had brought his team together.

Jay staggered wearily off the couch and went in search of his wife. He found her in Sky's room, asleep beside the little bed, her head pillowed on the mattress and Sky's blanket gathered to her face. Despite how uncomfortable she looked, he hesitated to disturb her. This might be the only respite she'd had in hours, and the only peace she would know until their son was found.

He crept quietly across the room, thinking he might just lay down on the floor beside her, but when he knelt, he discovered she wasn't as asleep as he'd supposed. Her eyes opened and looked at him, red-rimmed and tired.

"He's never been away from us at night before," she murmured, as much to the blanket as to him. "Not once since he was born. Every time I looked, he was right here where he belonged. He was supposed to be safe here." She gripped the blanket harder. "What child isn't safe in their own bed?"

Jay reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers to ease their wringing.

"I'm going out there," he said, which he honestly hadn't planned, but now seemed inevitable. Maybe he didn't know where Sky was, but their house was the one place his son definitely was not, and so he didn't belong there either. Wherever he went in the night, he would be closer to Sky no matter what.

Madelaine nodded and sat up. She pulled him closer, slid her fingers into his hair, and kissed him hard. She always thought Sky looked just like him even though their son had yet to grow out of his baby blondness.

"I know," she whispered.