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to.

"Back off if she freaks?"

"Of course."

The woman nodded. Anna came around the table and sat directly in front of the wheelchair. Knee to knee. She wondered if the woman could feel the touch, sense the warmth or if, when Anna sat, it was as if she too only existed from the chair up.

She gathered one of the girl's hands into her own. The thumb was still damp and sticky from being recently sucked.

"Is your name Beth?"

A tiny nod.

"Did I say it right or is it pronounced Beeth?"

"Beth," the child said.

Anna was careful to show neither surprise nor triumph.

"You look like you've been in the woods for a while. Where have you been?"

Again a look passed between the children. Confusion? Complicity? Reassurance? Shared terror? Accusation? Surprise? Anna couldn't read it. Emotions were too high, the light too uncertain.

"I don't know," Beth whispered.

"How about you, Alexis? Do you know what happened to you?"

The blonde shook her head.

Anna turned back to Beth. "There were three of you. Candace Watson was with you. Do you know where Candace is?"

The silence was so long Anna thought the girl had clammed up again. Then Alexis said, "She stayed with Robert."

"Shit," she heard Emily whisper from the far side of the picnic table.

"Who's Robert?" Anna demanded.

"Robert Proffit," Emily replied. "He was the Christian youth group leader who got lost himself looking for them, then reported the girls miss-ing twenty-four hours after they'd disappeared. You wouldn't believe how torn up he was about the whole thing. Ran himself into pneumonia going out with search teams. He said God had given them into his care and he loved them like his own sisters."

Emily's voice was even, professional, but her sweet young face had hardened to the point it was neither sweet nor young. Emily hated. Robert? God? Herself? If she didn't watch it, Anna knew, one day that hatred could become a way of life.

"Okay," Anna said. "Dr. Littleton, Ms. Jarrod, help me get the kids out of here. It's going to rain."

five

When the heavens finally opened up and let loose a biblical downpour, Anna was glad.

Alexis Sheppard allowed herself to be loaded into the ambulance without a fuss, without anything: she said nothing, her face was emotion-less, her body moved sluggishly. The girl acted as Anna had witnessed scores of the undead-zombies, wraiths, pod people, even the occasional vampire-behave on screen. Life without life. Movement without soul. Animation without spirit.

Such was Alexis' apparent internal wasteland. Anna felt positively-guilty when she found herself wishing a like fate on Beth Dwayne. She had returned to a state of selective mutism. She remained on the disabled woman's lap. She'd returned to her thumb-sucking.

When Anna and Emily tried to remove her from the sanctuary she'd found between the spoked wheels, she'd closed her fists in the front of Jarrod's jacket, howled like a banshee and kicked out. With the poor little flayed feet, her defense probably inflicted more pain on herself and her hostess than on either ranger. Ms. Jarrod's face became an unnatural shade of gray, and sweat beaded at her hairline despite the chilly edge of the wind.

There'd never been cause for Anna to learn much about paraplegia, and she couldn't begin to guess in what kind of shape it left one's inter-nal organs, but clearly, having four score pounds of misery flopping and thrashing about on them was not beneficial. She had to give Jarrod credit for fortitude and stamina. She never complained and never lost patience with the little girl. The same courtesy was not shown Anna. She was snapped and snarled at more than once-and not by the silly-looking dog.

The solution was obvious, but Anna hated asking. Maybe because Heath Jarrod was disabled. There was the feeling of walking on eggs, as if plain old ordinary Americans, once confined to a wheelchair, immediately became foreigners with a separate culture, different rules of etiquette, customs and taboos that,