“We heartily accept your dubious welcome!” Jude beamed at him. “I admire a man with pent-up anger and a casual disregard for even the most basic social norms! You do you, I always say.”

The boy came to a stop. There was nothing overtly aggressive in his posture. But that didn’t stop the part of my brain that had been on high alert since this interaction began from sizing up my opponent’s weaknesses.

Worse came to worst, I could go for his throat.

“We’re here for the search,” Cady said.

“You don’t want to be here at all.” The boy rocked back on his heels. “Believe me, Ms. Bennett, that’s perfectly, crystalline clear.”

“Crystalline,” Jude repeated. “An excellent vocabularical choice! I’m Jude. This is Kira. We will be your same-age peers today.”

The boy flicked his gaze away from Cady, just briefly. But he didn’t look at Jude. He looked at me.

“Gabriel.”

The boy didn’t introduce himself. An older woman, who’d just appeared on the cabin’s front porch, did it for him. She wiped her hands on a faded blue apron as she strode toward us. She was tiny and bird-boned, but moved like she was used to people getting out of her way.

When she reached us, she gently lifted a wrinkled, sun-worn hand to cup Cady’s face. “It’s good to see you, Cady-girl.”

For the first time since we’d entered Hunter’s Point, Cady smiled. “Ness.”

The older woman pulled Cady into a long, tight hug, then reverted to business mode. “Cadence Bennett,” she said, pulling back, “meet Gabriel Cortez.” She turned her eagle eyes to the boy next to her. “Gabriel,” she said, her tone warning him to play nice, “has been helping your father run this place for the past year.”

“An altruist if I’ve ever seen one!” Jude sidestepped Cady to get a better look at Ness. “I’m Jude, and the lovely lady glowering in your general direction is Kira. Glowering is Kira’s way of showing love.”

The older woman arched an eyebrow at Jude. “I take it you don’t get your temperament from the Bennett side of your family tree.”

“I am, in many ways, an enigma,” Jude intoned. “At the moment, I happen to be an enigma who is wondering whether or not there are any cookies to be had in the near vicinity?”

Ness snorted. “That’s quite a nose, young man. I just finished baking a fresh batch. If you’re lucky, your friend won’t have devoured them all.”

There was a moment of silence and then Jude tilted his head to the side, like NATO the moment someone so much as mentioned the word t-r-e-a-t.

“What friend?” Cady asked.