Read Night Forbidden for Free Online Page A

large size and the fact that his entrance was the sudden appearance of a stranger, so he slowed to an efficient amble.
    “Hello,” he called as the man and woman spun to look at him. Hope died from their faces. “Can I help you?” He smiled and stepped across a cracked driveway, its asphalt puzzle pieces outlined by tall grass and a few wild orchids.
    “Who are you?” asked the man, but he seemed less nervous about Fence’s unexpected presence than concerned about Tanya.
    “My name is Fence, I’m from Envy. If you’re from Glenway, then I’m in the right place. I’m looking for a guy named George.”
    “Yeah, he’s here, back there,” said the man, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the town. “Have you seen a little girl? About so tall”—he showed a hip-high height—“dark hair?”
    Fence shook his head. “I heard you calling her and figured I’d come and help. I’m pretty good at tracking, following trails and stuff.” It wasn’t lost on him that despite the fact that a very large man, a stranger, had suddenly appeared in the woods where a young girl was missing, neither seemed to regard him with any suspicion or unease. He relaxed a bit. “If you can tell me where you last saw her, I’ll be happy to help.”
    “This way,” said the man, who introduced himself as Pete.
    “We’re her mom and dad,” said the woman, whose name was Yvonne. “You’re a friend of George?” she asked, her eyes wide and hopeful, her words falling on top of each other without logic. “Tanya!” she shouted, then turned back to him. “You’ll help us? The last we saw her was about two hours ago. At first, we didn’t worry . . . she knows to stay here in the play area. But . . .”
    “I haven’t met George yet,” Fence explained, following Pete. “But he knows a friend of mine, and—”
    “Here,” said Pete. “This is where she was the last we saw.”
    A playground of sorts, a clearing beneath about half a dozen tall pines, with their lowest branches well above Fence’s head. Their rust-colored needles made a soft, soundless cushion beneath tire swings and a few ropes strung between them for climbing and hand over hand swinging. Someone had taken more old tires and pieces of plastic and built an intricate play structure around three of the trees.
    Fence nodded and started to look. “What color hair? How much does she weigh? What was she wearing on her feet, and how was her hair done—in pigtails or long or what?”
    He needed to get a mental image of her so that he knew what to look for—how high she might brush against something, what color thread or fuzz she might leave behind, whether her hair was loose—to lose a strand more easily than if it were confined—how deep an imprint her feet would make and what the prints would look like. There were plenty of hours of daylight left. He didn’t allow himself the distraction of worrying about a little girl lost in the woods or, worse, climbing into and through rickety old buildings. Or coming upon a cougar—the only wild cat that hunted during the day.
    Not yet anyway.
    Absorbed, Fence looked around and found an obvious trail leading from the playground, wishing that Dantès, the big wolf dog that Wyatt, his buddy from the cave, had sort of adopted, was here. But Wyatt was over in Yellow Mountain with Theo and Lou, and Dantès’s owner, Remington Truth.
    A quick glance at the sky told Fence that it was past noon, and the sun would remain high for another eight or nine hours. This whole shifting of the Earth’s axes deal was a pain in the ass when it came to estimating sunrise and sunset, as well as location, but he was getting better at adjusting for the change.
    As he followed the trail, looking for shoe prints and the threads of a pink shirt, the voices calling for Tanya faded into the background. Pete and Yvonne had gone off on another trail, everyone spreading out in a wide radius around the village and playground.
    Reading the little