Slipping in, pausing in the darkness, sniffing child scent and the sharp aroma of peanut butter, she dropped to the cold concrete floor. The cement-walled room was so dark that even a cat had to squeeze her eyes closed for a moment before she could see anything at all. But she could hear the child's slow, even breathing.

It still dismayed her that, all these years, she hadn't a clue that this room was here. She had assumed that behind the vent was just crawl space, dirt and foundation and spiders. Apparently the library's drainage system was well constructed, because the little basement room had remained dry even during this winter's heavy rains. The floor beneath her paws was dry as dust, though icy cold. And there was no faintest scent of mildew. Moving by the thin light that seeped through the vent behind her, she approached the sleeping child.

Lori lay curled up on her old sun pad, which maybe Lori's mother had once used. She had pulled her thin blanket tight around her as if to shut out the tiniest finger of cold, and had spread her windbreaker over that. For a long while, Dulcie stood watching Lori nap, her little hand under her cheek, her brown hair tangled across the stained old pillow.

Lori had moved into the hidden room surprisingly well equipped: the thin little pad, the old blanket, the backpack on the floor beside her with its canned provisions-though the pack was thinner now. Dulcie thought the child had brought as much food as she had been able to carry, but it wouldn't last much longer. Whatever the reason for her running away, and wherever she had come from, this little girl wasn't playing games. The puzzle was, if no one had reported a child missing, and if no one was looking for her, did she not have a family? That hardly seemed possible. Where, then, had she come from?

Or was someone searching secretly for her, someone who did not want to go to the police, who wanted to remain unknown? And why? Because they had hurt her, or meant to harm her? The child woke suddenly and sat up, startled, knowing someone was in the room. But then, staring into the darkness, she saw Dulcie. Catching her breath with pleasure, she put out her arms. Her voice was a whisper.

"Dulcie? You mustn't let them see you come in here." She glanced warily toward the workroom. "You mustn't let them know. Maybe they're at lunch? Oh," she said, shivering, "I wish you could understand. No one must find me! I wish I could make you understand."

But I do understand, Dulcie thought. I wish I could speak, I wish we could talk. Who would find you? Where do you come from and what are you afraid of? Leaping onto the blanket, Dulcie curled up close to Lori, basking in Lori's warmth, breathing in her little-girl scent-and wishing not only that she dared speak, but that she could share this child with Joe Grey. She longed to tell Joe about Lori, to discuss the child with him. Longed for Joe to help her come up with some answers. But she didn't dare, not until she knew who or what Lori was hiding from.

Because what if Joe, thinking only to help, placed one of his anonymous phone calls to Captain Harper about a lost child, a runaway child? And Harper came and scooped Lori up? What if, in the eyes of the law, Lori must be returned to the person she had run from? Sometimes the police could do little but what the legal statutes told them to do.

The Molena Point police were Joe's friends, Joe believed those officers could do no harm. In relying on the men he admired, the tomcat could be as hardheaded as any street cop. If he decided that Captain Harper should find Lori, no matter what Dulcie said, the tomcat would take the matter to the chief.

When Joe Grey got stubborn, got his claws into a matter, no one could turn him aside-and once Lori had been returned to whoever was her legal guardian, the law might not be able to protect her.

Dulcie stayed with the child for a long time, curled up close to her on the thin mat with the blanket wrapped around the two of them. With her thick tabby fur, Dulcie was really too warm, but the child clung to her as if she were starved for warmth. When at last Lori dozed, Dulcie slept, too, for a little while, then woke and lay wondering.

She knew that Lori slept during part of the day and then prowled the library late at night feasting on the books, as Dulcie herself often did. She had to smile at the way the child lugged books through the hole in the wall. Lori reminded Dulcie of herself when, slipping through her cat door late at night into the closed library, she would paw a book down from the shelves onto a reading table, paw open the pages, and read into the small hours, lose herself to the world around her as she wandered through even more fascinating worlds.

When Lori ran away, she had brought with her, besides her bedding and food and her little flashlight, a battery-operated lamp of the kind sensible humans kept for power outages. Each time before turning it on, Lori would check the loose bricks in the wall, which she kept to block her makeshift door. Making sure she could see no light between them, she would carefully hang her jacket over the roughly closed opening, anchoring it on the rough bricks. And all the while she would listen for any sound from the other side. Even at night she did this, to make sure no one was out there working late, who could catch a glimpse of light in the wall where there should be none.

Now, sighing, Lori snuggled even closer. It must be hard for a child to hide in this cold place all alone. For a kid of maybe twelve, Lori was amazingly disciplined.

But Lori was a reader; her world and experience had expanded her thinking far beyond the here-and-now everyday world she occupied. There was no question that she was a bright child. Dulcie had seen adult nonfiction books on every subject from model trains and miniature dollhouses to a history of Molena Point and one on the various breeds of dogs. All were books that, if any patron asked for them, would be recorded by the librarians as missing, but then would be found a few days later. Dulcie liked best that three Narnia books were stacked neatly against the wall, that Lori loved C. S. Lewis and his magical world-that not everything in Lori's life centered around fear, but still could embrace wonder.

Lori woke, whispering into Dulcie's fur, "He was there when I went out this morning, Dulcie. It wasn't hardly light yet. I don't think he saw me; I slipped back through the window real quick and slid it closed."

Who was there? Who are you hiding from?

In the dark, the child looked intently at Dulcie. "Was he looking for me?" She shivered. "If he'd seen me, he'd of followed me.

"But he couldn't of seen me, he was looking straight ahead, driving." She squeezed Dulcie tight. "How long can I stay here, though? My food is nearly gone." She stared hard at Dulcie. "And then what? I try to ration it, but I sure get hungry."

Dulcie reached a soft paw to touch Lori's cheek. There were no marks on the child as if she'd been beaten, as if whoever she was talking about had hurt her. No scars or bruises. But certainly Lori was scared.

"Mama would say, 'Go to a grown-up,' someone I can trust. A grown-up to help me." In the darkness, she shivered. "Who? There aren't no grown-ups I trust. Not those child-welfare people." Dulcie found it interesting that, though Lori was a voracious reader, her English sometimes faltered. She had lived way out in the country, in the south, since she was six. Maybe in that rural area, such usage was natural. Dulcie nuzzled Lori's cheek, purring. But she looked up when she heard voices beyond the wall, heard the two librarians on the stairs, coming down, and she leaped away, toward the heat vent.

"Dulcie?" Lori whispered.

But Dulcie was into the air duct and through it and slipping out from behind the bookcase as the two women entered, taking off their coats. Yawning and stretching, she looked up at them blearily and wandered away under the tables, where she lay down to roll and wash her paw.