“What?” he exclaimed, sudden images of Jennie lying hurt or worse flashing into his mind. He practically leapt the desk to try and get a look at the screen himself.

He got a brief glimpse of Jennie—Alive, all right, oh thank god!—before the station went to a commercial. The woman who had made the exclamation spotted him crowding in, and said, “Aren’t you Jennie’s boyfriend?” Then, before he could answer, she reached for the channel changer. “Hang on, I’ll bet they’ll have this on another channel!”

This time they apparently came in right at the beginning of the newsbreak; a different reporter was on the scene of some kind of accident. …

He recognized the spot immediately; near the top of the bluff above the Verdigris River on Highway 20. The camera panned down the bluff to the smoking remains of some kind of vehicle far below, before turning to the road, and showing a bus and Jennie’s Brat, practically nose-to-nose.

A different reporter was interviewing Jennie, who looked remarkably composed. Unless you knew her, and knew that it was nothing but a mask.

The woman turned up the sound.

“—acted like they’d been drinking, and tried to pass me just in front of the blind curve,” Jennie was saying. “I slammed on the brakes just as the bus came around the other side. That poor bus driver didn’t have a prayer of missing them, and the only reason I didn’t end up in the wreck was because I had already stopped. The driver should get a medal for keeping that bus under control and on the road!”

The reporter thanked her, and went on to interview one of the passengers on the bus. The cameraman panned down on the wrecked car again.

Was it a Lincoln? It sure could have been.

David looked over at Mooncrow, who only nodded.

Nodded? Wait a minute—Mooncrow looked a lot more tired than he should be for the simple ceremony he’d just completed. Unless, of course, he had been doing Other Things at the same time!

David got the old man aside while the attention of the women was still on the television, and hissed, “You knew about this, didn’t you? You knew she was in trouble!”

Mooncrow shrugged. “What good would it have done to tell you? I did what I could, and you could have done nothing.”

David scowled and gritted his teeth. The old man might be right about that—but still!

When Jennie came in about an hour later, the entire volunteer staff had cycled through and no one knew of her involvement in the bus accident. David got to her first.

“I don’t know whether to hold you or hit you,” he said under his breath, as he caught her in a tight embrace.

“Hold me,” she advised. “I have enough people trying to hit me.”