Not sociable enough. My fingers found their way to a patch of loose fabric on my bed. Does not play well with others. I stroked the threadbare cloth. Once upon a time, it had been a blanket. When Cady had first brought me home, the blanket had lived in Silver’s crate. It had been years since Cady had stopped crate-training the dogs, years since I’d stopped spending my days holed up in Silver’s crate while the German shepherd stood guard outside. The blanket wasn’t just ratty now—it was shredded.

And it was mine.

I bunched the fabric in my hands. Soft. Familiar. I wanted to be happy that we were going. It was a good thing that Cady had agreed to join this search—and a better thing that she was taking us with her. This was what I’d been training for. It was my chance to show her that Saskia and I were ready.

I could do this, and Cady wouldn’t have to face down her father alone.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

I glanced up, not the least surprised to see Free sitting in my second-story window. The day Jude and I had met her, we were nine years old. Free had hopped the fence, walked right up to the two of us, and suggested that we join her in rigging up some handmade hang gliders. I’d been on guard. Jude had been ecstatic.

Cady had vetoed the hang gliders.

And Free had taken it all in stride. She’d never said a thing—not a single, throwaway comment—about the fact that I didn’t speak in her presence for a year. She accepted Jude talking for me like it was normal.

The three of us had hang-glided off the roof the next year.

“You’re not interrupting, Free.” I let the fabric fall from my hands and back down onto the bed. Silver was asleep at my feet. Without even thinking about it, I burrowed my toes underneath her body. “I was just packing.”

“Packing traditionally involves putting one or more items inside the bag,” Free pointed out.

“Second-story windows,” I countered, “are not traditionally considered doors.”

That got me a smile. “Su casa es mi casa,” Free said lazily. “And that bag is still empty.”

I had a go-bag for search and rescue—we all did—crammed with the supplies we might need to meet whatever challenge Cady decided to lay out on any given day. But packing my personal suitcase was harder.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go.” To anyone who didn’t know me, my voice might have sounded flat. “I’m glad we’re going. Cady will find this missing kid. Saskia and I will help.”

It was easier, sometimes, to communicate things that I had already thought.