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walked behind them, they were less likely to startle and kick her.

"Hi, Alexis," she said. The girl flinched as if Anna had flicked her with a quirt rather than used a familiar form of address. "We're so glad you and Beth are back. Everybody looked and looked. Hundreds of people. You can't imagine how much your folks love you." Anna hoped this was true. Having not participated in the search, she was flying blind, but the details didn't matter. What mattered was that children hear right away and repeatedly that they might have been lost but they'd never been forgot-ten, that their parents never quit hoping and looking. Even adults, lost for long periods of time, had trouble with feelings of abandonment. In chil-dren of twelve and thirteen-too young for adult rationale, too old for childish faith-these feelings could be cripplingly acute.

Half turning to include Beth in the conversation, Anna noticed the lit-tler girl had started sucking her thumb. "Ryan-he's one of the rangers who came to help us take you to your families-has gone to call them so they can meet us at the hospital. This here is Emily. She's a ranger too. If you'll let her, she'd like to check real quick and see if you're hurt, then we'll get you out of here. How does that sound?"

Anna thought she'd made the whole thing sound pretty doggone spiffy, but both girls hung their heads. Literally let them hang from the very top vertebrae till their noses pointed at their navels. The tears fell unimpeded onto the fronts of the borrowed running suits. The Jarrod woman held the one girl in her arms like a bundle of laundry. She must be a good deal stronger than she looked, Anna thought. The kid would weigh close to eighty pounds.

Dark thoughts crowded in. These kids didn't seem thrilled to be back, just relieved to be gone from where they'd been. They didn't cry for momma and daddy. The promise of home didn't bring on renewed energy or hope but an increase in anxiety.

Maybe they hadn't been lost. This kettle of worms had been thoroughly looked into long before Anna came to Rocky. The possibilities were runaways, stranger abduction, accidental death or abduction by a family member. The lack of enthusiasm Beth and Alexis showed when the words "parents" and "home" were bandied about suggested either runaways or possible abduction by a family member.

Anna let it go for the moment. The first order of business was to get them to a medical facility. Moving emotionally damaged children was not something she'd done much. Did one drag them shrieking to the ambu-lance and lock them in? Force them into the cage in the patrol car at gun-point? They needed psychiatric care. They needed nurses, mommies, the kind of succor she couldn't even begin to offer.

They needed to be moved the hell out of her park.

"Have they spoken at all?" she asked Dr. Littleton.

"One of them said something to Heath, I think. When she found them. Before I got there."

Anna turned to Heath Jarrod.

"The little limpet-Beth-said 'It's a dog.' She meant Wiley. Not me."

"Anything else?"

The woman's face lost its angry look as she sent her mind back twenty minutes and two thousand heartbeats. Anna was startled at the differ-ence it made. She'd put her age at about that of her own, but Jarrod was probably ten years younger. Very pretty in an Edith Piaf, Gigi, apache dancer sort of way: fine and exotic. And volatile. High maintenance, Anna thought.

"Beth said 'Humpty Dumpty.' Me. Not the dog. Because I'd taken a great fall I suppose. Ski-Alexis-said she thought I was a bear. I don't think they've spoken since." To the child in her lap she said, "You don't have to talk till you want to."

Serious bonding had obviously taken place. Anna wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not, but she was in favor of anything that she could use to get the kids moved.

"Mind if I ask Beth a question?" Anna asked, ceding authority to Ms. Jarrod. It might get results. Besides, she could always take it back if she had