There was a door in front of me that opened easily in my hand. I slowly swung it wide and shined the flashlight around the room, expecting to see lots of spiders or bats. Instead, what I found was a little boy, huddled in the corner against the wall, shivering.

I went to him without a word, slid down next to him, and gathered him in my arms. He cried with his head buried against my shoulder as I whispered soothing noises in his ear and smoothed his hair away from his face. We stayed that way for a long time, his ragged breathing contrasting with the distant call of people shouting his name. Finally, I spoke, my voice echoing in the empty room.

“A lot of people have been looking for you, Carlos,” I said.

He grabbed my shirt collar into his hands and pressed it against his eyes.

“Am I going to be arrested?” he whimpered.

“Arrested?” I asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The police were here all afternoon, and then they were trying to find me. I didn’t know what to do, Callie. I was only trying to help.”

“Carlos,” I said gently, “the police were looking for you because we were worried about you.”

“But I ran away and I skipped school and I broke that guy’s plane…”

“Thank goodness you did break the plane,” I said. “You stopped Alan from getting away.”

“But Mr. Bennet got shot,” Carlos cried. “That was my fault. If I hadn’t messed up the plane, he wouldn’t have been standing there, and that guy wouldn’t have shot him.”

I felt a pang in my heart, knowing that he had witnessed a horrible act of violence, something no child should have to see.

“We’re all sorry Alan got shot, honey, but that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you’re a hero.”

Carlos pulled back, wiped his nose on his sleeve, then looked at me.

“I am?”

“Yes, you are,” I said. “I know Alan is a friend of your family, but he’s done some very bad things. By stopping that airplane, you kept him from leaving. You helped the police catch a criminal.”

He looked at me, wide-eyed.

“But you’ve scared your poor parents to death, honey. You’ve got to come down and let them know you’re okay.”

“Do we have to tell them about the water in the plane?”

“Yes,” I said. “But your daddy will pay the man to fix it, and the people on the news will talk about how smart you were to think of that.”

“They will? Are there news people out there now?”

“Lots.”

“They got cameras?”

“Yes.”

“Then we have to wait a minute before we go down,” he said. “I don’t want them to know I was crying.”

I smiled, watching him rub his face fiercely with his hands.