She still sat at the table, which had him letting out a whoosh of relief. “Mom’s coming. I’m going to get the first-aid kit out of the pantry. Then she’ll know what to do. You can eat that drumstick if you want.” He gestured to the one he’d dropped on the table. “I only had one bite.”

But she hunched her shoulders together as someone came down the stairs.

“It’s just Mom.”

“Dillon James Cooper, I swear if you . . .” She stopped when she saw the girl, and the sleepy irritation dropped away from her face. Like her son, Julia knew how to approach the hurt and frightened.

“I’m Julia, honey, Dillon’s mom. I need to take a look at you. Dillon, get the first aid kit.”

“I am already,” he muttered, and took it from a shelf in the big pantry.

“Now a clean cloth and a bowl of warm water. And a blanket. Light the fire in the kitchen hearth.”

He rolled his eyes behind her back, but obeyed.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Caitlyn.”

“Caitlyn, that’s pretty. I’m going to clean this cut on your arm first. I don’t think it needs stitches.” She smiled as she spoke.

Her eyes had a lot of gold in them, but there was green, too, like the boy’s. Like Dillon’s, Cate remembered.

“While I’m fixing you up, why don’t you tell me what happened. Dillon, pour Caitlyn a glass of that milk before you put it away.”

“I don’t want milk. They tried to give me milk but it was wrong. I don’t want milk.”

“All right. How about—”

She broke off as Cate jolted. And Maggie Hudson came down the stairs. Maggie took one look at Cate, tipped her head. “I wondered what all this noise was. Looks like we’ve got company.”

She had blond hair, too, but lighter than Dillon’s and his mom’s. Blue streaked through it on its way to her shoulders.

She wore a T-shirt with a picture of a woman with lots and lots of curly hair that said JANIS under it and a pair of flowered pajama pants.

“This is my mom,” Julia told her as she cleaned the slices on Cate’s arm. “Put the blanket over Caitlyn’s shoulders, Dillon. She’s cold.”

“Let’s get a fire going in here, too.”

“I’m working on it, Gram.” The aggrieved boy came through, but she only gave his hair a stroke as she stepped toward the table. “I’m Maggie Hudson, but you can call me Gram. You look like a girl in need of hot chocolate. I’ve got my own secret recipe.”

She reached in a cupboard, took out a package of Swiss Miss, then sent Cate a wink.

“This is Caitlyn, Mom. She was about to tell us what happened. Can you do that, Caitlyn?”

“We were playing hide-and-seek after the life celebration for my great-grandda, and I went to the tree beside the garage to climb it and hide, and there was a man and he stuck me with something and I woke up somewhere else.”

The words tumbled out as Maggie put a big mug in the microwave, as Julia dabbed ointment on the cuts, as Dillon, crouched down to light the kitchen fire, goggled.

“They had masks like a mean clown and a werewolf, and said they’d break my fingers if I didn’t do what they said. And the clown one had a gun, and he said he’d shoot me. But I didn’t eat the soup or drink the milk because it tasted funny. They put drugs to make you sleep in things, bad guys do that, so I poured it down the toilet and pretended to sleep.”

“Holy crap!”

Julia merely shot Dillon a look to shut him up.

“That was smart. Honey, did they hurt you?”

“They knocked me down when they opened the door hard, and the bad clown pulled my hair really, really hard. But then they thought I was asleep, and one of them—it was the wolfman—came in and talked on the phone. I kept pretending and fooled him. I kept the spoon from the soup, and I used it to get the nails out of the window lock. One of them drove away. I could hear them talking outside, and he drove away, and that’s when I got the window open enough to get out, but it was too high to jump.”

The microwave went off, but Caitlyn kept looking right into Julia’s eyes. It seemed safe there in the gold and the green. In the kindness.

“I tied the sheets together. I couldn’t tear them, but I tied them, and then the one came back, and I was scared because if he came in, he’d see and he’d break my fingers.”

“No one’s going to hurt you now, baby girl.” Maggie set the hot chocolate on the table.

“I had to climb down, and my hands kept slipping, and there were lights on downstairs, and the sheets weren’t long enough so I had to jump. I hurt my ankle a little, but I ran. There were trees, a lot of trees, so I ran there and ran, and fell and hurt my knee, but I ran. I didn’t know where I was.”

Tears rolled now, tears Julia gently wiped away.

“Then I heard the ocean, a little, then more. And I saw the light. You had the light on, and I followed the light, and saw the cows, and the house, and the light. But I was afraid you were bad guys, too, so I snuck in. I wanted to call nine-one-one. I stole an apple because I was hungry, and Dillon came downstairs and found me.”

“That’s one hell of a story.” Maggie put an arm around Dillon. “You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met.”

“If the bad guys find me here, they’ll shoot me, and everybody.”

“They’re not going to come here.” Julia brushed Cate’s hair back from her face. “Do you know the house where you played hide-and-seek?”

“My great-grandda’s house. He named it Sullivan’s Rest.”

“Sweet girl.” Maggie sat down. “Are you Liam Sullivan’s great-granddaughter?”

“Yes, ma’am. He died, and we had a celebration of his life. Did you know him?”

“I didn’t, but I admired him, his work, and his life.”

“You drink your hot chocolate, Caitlyn.” Smiling, Julia brushed back Cate’s disordered hair. “I’m going to call nine-one-one for you.”

“Can you call my daddy, too? Can you tell him how to find me?”

“Absolutely. Do you know the number? If not, I can—”

“I know it.” Cate rattled it off.

“Good girl. Mom, I bet Caitlyn could use a snack.”

“I bet she could. Dil, you sit down with Caitlyn, keep her company while I scramble up some eggs. Nothing like scrambled eggs in the middle of the night.”

He did. He would have just because she was a guest, and that’s what you did. But he did it more because he found her seriously awesome.

“You made a sheet rope and climbed out of a window.”

“I had to.”

“Not everybody could. That is awesome. I mean, you were like kidnapped, and you outsmarted them.”

“They thought I was stupid. I could tell.”

Since she didn’t seem to want it, Dillon picked up the drumstick, took another bite. “You’re really not. Was it like a house?”

“I think. I was in the back, I think, and all I could really see were trees and the hills. They kept the room dark. I saw the kitchen when I climbed down. It wasn’t as nice as this one, but it was nice. It’s just . . . I couldn’t tell where I was, and I got all turned around in the trees, so I don’t know. And I don’t know how long I slept from what he had in the needle.”