I knew the answer to that question before Free sauntered out onto the porch, a cookie in each hand. I should have guessed, when she was helping me pack, that Free wouldn’t just roll belly-up and let us leave her behind.

“I brought the bloodhounds,” she informed Cady. “In case you need them. Or, you know, in case you need me.”

“Miscreants’ Creed, line nine,” Jude whispered in my ear. “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Do I want to know how you beat us here?” Cady gave Free what Jude liked to call The Look. “Or how you knew where exactly we were going?”

“I could invoke my constitutional right not to incriminate myself,” Free mused. Being Free, she didn’t stop there. “But for argument’s sake, let’s just say that Jude can’t keep a secret, and once I knew where you guys were going, I might, hypothetically, have talked my way into a ride.”

Cady’s Look intensified. “Did you know the person who drove you here?”

Free shrugged. As protective as she was of us, she’d never had any particular talent for taking care of herself.

I could practically see Cady counting back from a hundred. “You and I are going to be having words, Free.” Cady let that single sentence hang ominously in the air for a moment before she turned to Ness. “Where’s my father?”

Gabriel took it upon himself to answer the question. “Exactly where you should be,” he said. “At the rangers’ station, joining the search for that girl.”

Chapter 8

By the time we arrived, there were easily sixty people at the rangers’ station, awaiting instructions. Jude, Free, and I weren’t the only ones under the age of eighteen. With this much area to cover and a child’s life at stake, the authorities needed every warm body they could get.

Beside me, Saskia strained slightly on her lead. She didn’t like crowds. Neither did I, but search and rescue was a cooperative effort.

I forced my attention from the mass of people to my training. If I settled down, Saskia would follow suit. A first-response team would have been deployed as soon as the child’s family reported her missing, I thought, willing the muscles in my neck to relax. This will be the second wave, or the third—civilians, useful primarily for their numbers.

I didn’t need to get a good look at the local authorities to know that they would keep volunteers on a short leash. The last thing anyone needed was another missing person, and though I suspected most people in Hunter’s Point knew a little something about wilderness survival, that wasn’t a risk any reasonable leader would take.

Not even for a child.

“Thank you all for coming.”