Mittman, Stephanie Read Free Page A

she'd been
sweltering, and now she couldn't stop shivering.
    The
world had never seemed as quiet as it did while she walked toward nowhere in
the darkness. Only her steps, echoing against the rocks, kept her company. Each
time she stopped, there was only the wind. So far from civilization, she
couldn't even hear the sounds of a highway or the roar of a plane. And if the
silence was frightening, the darkness was terrifying. When night fell over the
canyon, it didn't do it gradually. One moment she had been overwhelmed by the
beauty of the mountains against the pinks and purples of the sunset sky, and
the next there was nothing in front of her, nothing behind her, a million stars
above her, and the creeping fear that at any moment there could be nothing
below her. The thought of falling off the earth twice in one day stopped her in
her tracks.
    Fine, she
thought, trying not to give in to her fears. Benjamin would still be there in
the morning and she could find him then. The best thing was simply to sit down and wait
it out until dawn. More with her hands than her eyes, she made out the shape of
a small boulder and leaned against it. As she sank slowly to the ground, her
stiffened jeans cut into her inner thighs and against her calves. Man, it was
cold. How cold is it? she joked with herself. It's so cold that...
    Whatever
it was, it scurried over her right leg and began burrowing under her left. She
held her breath and stayed perfectly still, reciting her prayers without even
moving her lips. She could barely detect a movement beneath her left thigh.
Would lifting it let the trespasser by, or invite him to taste her soft flesh
through her tough jeans?
    Patience
is a virtue, Mary Grace. Be virtuous, she told herself, aware that what might
be a scorpion was slowly working his way out from under her leg. A moment more,
two at most. Then she was up like a flash, stamping and jumping and shouting in
the dark as though the scorpion had actually hit his mark.
    Well,
some people could sit in the middle of the desert and wait for the sun to rise,
Mary Grace supposed, but she wasn't one of them. She groped in the darkness,
heading in what she prayed was the right direction.
    From
the blisters on her feet she guessed she'd been walking a couple of hours when
she finally saw the smoke. It was like a white cloud against the dark sky, and
it took her nose to tell her what her eyes were seeing. Civilization! She ran
toward the sooty haze, her feet burning as her blisters rubbed against her wet
socks and stiff boots, amazed by how much farther it was than it appeared.
Who'd have thought that you could smell smoke miles away?
    Still,
she kept going, her bones aching, her body cold but her feet on fire, until she
saw the cabin. Lights blazed in the window, a man's voice crooned a song that sounded like a lullaby,
and the smell of roasted chicken filled the air. But she couldn't go up to the
door. Not yet. Not until she could stop the tears and pull herself together. It
took a long time.
    Finally
a man came out onto the porch, followed by a second, much shorter man and a
mangy dog who appeared to have only one ear. Were these the men waiting for
Benjamin? Could her luck be that good? And they'd been singing a lullaby. Was
Benjamin already here? She cleared her throat and the two men fell to the porch
floor. The dog bared its fangs and growled. In the dim light that came through
the windows, she could see that the two men were holding guns, and that they
were pointing them in her direction.
    "Who's
out there?" one of the men yelled into the darkness.
    She
wasn't sure how to answer. Her name wouldn't mean anything to them, and
identifying herself as a member of Child Seek might only anger them and end any
hope she had of tricking them into giving themselves away.
    "I
am," she answered in a rather meek sounding voice. She cleared her throat
again. "I mean," she said more strongly, "I'm sorry to bother
you, but I've lost my way and I..."
    "Come
into