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she mistakenly concluded.
    Both of my parents were instantly terrified. Something in the simple way Mary Katherine had said it made them realize that something was very wrong. And neither of them could ignore the look of utter fear upon her face.
    My father raced to check the other upstairs bedrooms. Not finding me, he ran down the stairs to the main floor. My mother followed. Mary Katherine stayed right next to her, unwilling to leave her side. They searched frantically, my father running through the rooms in the front of the house. Hoping to find me sleeping on the couch, my mother turned on the lights in the family room. Of course I was not there. She fought a building panic. Turning to her right, she moved into the kitchen. Mary Katherine ran along beside her, never more than a step away. Mom turned on the kitchen lights and looked around. The smell of burned potatoes still lingered in the air. But there was something more now. Other smells. Damp grass. Canyon winds. The smells of the outdoors. Her eyes went straight to the cut screen.
    Then she stopped, moving her hand to her mouth. Looking at it, she felt her heart freeze like a brick of ice inside her chest.
    She knew instantly what it meant.
    She let out a scream, yelling, “Call 911!” My dad came racing into the kitchen. My mom’s face showed nothing but fear and utter disbelief. Dad stopped in the middle of the kitchen and followed her eyes. He saw the open window. He saw the knife cut in the screen.
    Mary Katherine’s words seemed to hang in the air between them.
    Elizabeth is gone. You won’t find her. A man came and took her. He had a gun.

7.
Morning Light
    We climbed all night. It was a terrible struggle, going up the back side of the mountain without the benefit of any trail. It was climbing and crawling and moving through rough patches of weeds and thick trees. As the sky changed from black to gray to pink to light blue, the man became more and more agitated. More in a hurry. More anxious to get out of sight. As the sun broke, we were just crossing the highest ridge on the mountain. The sky was clear, with not a single cloud, and I suppose that you could see for miles. I was wearing a pair of red silk pajamas that I had been given by a friend of my mother’s. The man looked at my bright clothing in the growing light. “Someone is going to see you,” he said in anger.
    I looked down at my pajamas. They were very bright.
    He said something more about a runner seeing me, something I really didn’t understand—what kind of runner would be up here on top of the mountains?—then reached into his bag and pulled out a gray shirt. I don’t remember if I put it on or not, but I do remember that he made me hurry. By this time, the man had put away his knife. He figured I couldn’t get away from him now. Still, he always stood beside me, ready to grab me if I ever made a run for it.
    Over the top of the ridge we moved, dropping onto a steep canyon on the other side. There the trees were not as thick, seeming to grow in patches of scrub oaks and small pines, with a few quakies scattered in, most of them nearer to the bottom of the canyon. There was thick grass and weeds, and the mountain dropped steeply toward the south. Above the treeline, there was a large basin of barren terrain we had to cross. The man almost made me run, so worried was he that I might be seen. I was exhausted by then. I’d been climbing all night. I was terrified and thirsty and dreading whatever lay ahead. But I moved quickly with him, too terrified to resist.
    We hiked across a barren patch of grass, thistle, and weeds. Then he pulled me toward a grove of mountain oaks that was about a third of the way down the ridge. Approaching the trees, he stopped and called out. “Hephzibah!”
    A woman’s voice answered from the trees: “Immanuel.”
    He seemed relieved and moved faster toward the voice.
    The old woman was waiting for us near the trees. I studied her hopefully, but her hard