The silence hung heavy over the campfire. Kate let it. At last Johnny stirred and said in a painful rasp, “You think I ran away from Dad dying?”

His words struck at her like a sledgehammer. “I don’t think you ran away from your Dad’s death,” she said when she got her breath back. “I did. I ran away, as far away as I could get, to a place where hardly anybody knew me, and I hid out. All the while pretending I was fine, just fine, when I wasn’t. I could have stayed there the rest of my life, keeping my head down, drifting through life.”

“What happened?”

What the hell had happened? She still wasn’t sure. “Someone who knew me saw me. And there was a… thing. A case. I helped solve it. Sort of. Anyway, it reminded me.” She shrugged. “It’s what I do. Find things out.”

“Catch bad guys,” Johnny said.

“Yeah.”

“Like Dad.”

“Yeah. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to find that one thing they’re good at. But if you do, I think you should do it. Practice it. Make a living at it if you can. Make a difference, if you can.”

“I don’t have a thing.”

“You will,” she said. “Don’t let it be running away.”

Mutt had been resting her head on her paws, bright eyes traveling back and forth between her two humans. One of her ears twitched toward home. She raised her head and looked in that direction, both ears testing the air like elongated insect antennae.

“What is it, girl?” Kate said, and then she heard it, too, and got to her feet.

It was another four-wheeler. Vanessa Cox was driving it.

A smile spread across Johnny’s face.

Vanessa killed the engine and dismounted.

Johnny got to his feet. “Hey, Van.”

“Hey, Johnny. Hello, Kate.”

“Hi,” Kate said.

“Want some coffee?” Johnny said.

“Cocoa,” Vanessa said, and unstrapped a sleeping bag and a pack from the back of the four-wheeler.

Our girl Friday has arrived, Kate thought. “You bunking out here, too?” she said.

“Uh-huh.” Vanessa unrolled the bag, folded it in thirds, and sat down on it cross-legged. She pulled her pack into her lap and produced a Ziploc bag full of peanut butter cookies. “Have one?” she said to Kate. Her gaze was wide and clear and without a trace of embarrassment.

“Thanks,” Kate said, “I had one earlier.” She finished her coffee, mostly to give herself time to think. “Virgil and Telma know where you are?” she said finally.

“They’re not worried about me,” Vanessa said.

The light from the fire flickered over her face. She looked and sounded tranquil, so much so that Kate decided not to point out that Vanessa hadn’t answered her question.

So Johnny had told someone where he would be. That was good. That someone was a child. That was bad. But now Kate knew where they both were. That was good.

Chances were Vanessa had snuck out of her house without permission. That was bad. They were obviously close friends. That was good. Just how friendly were they?

That could be seriously bad. They had school tomorrow. Ah-hah. “You’ve got school tomorrow,” she said.

“We’ll go from here,” Johnny said.

Vanessa nodded. “I brought my books with me.”

Kate wondered what would happen if she ordered them to strike camp and follow her back to the homestead.

There was an old attorney proverb, something about never asking a witness a question to which you didn’t already know the answer.

She tested the air, trying to estimate the sexual tension between the two. She didn’t sense any, but that didn’t mean diddly. Adolescents were past masters at hiding things from adults, it came with the job description. She’d had the Talk with Johnny the previous winter, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know where babies came from.

She remembered something she’d heard Emaa tell the mother of a teenaged boy who was worrying over sending him to college Outside. “You bring them up good, you teach them all the right things, and you let them go. Nothing else to be done.”

It all came down to trust. She got to her feet and dusted off her jeans. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said to Johnny. “And the consultation.” She was rewarded by a look of surprise on Johnny’s face, and had to suppress a smile. What did he think she would do, yell and carry on? Tackle him and carry him home over her shoulder? Aside from the fact that she wasn’t sure she could, it would cause permanent damage to everyone’s dignity, and Kate didn’t think such an extreme sacrifice was, as yet, called for.

If and when she did, she’d come back with a rope.

She handed him the mug. “Will you think about what I said?”

“I am thinking about it.”

“Where’s the rifle?”

He looked as if he might protest, and then gave in and fetched it from where it was leaning inside the entrance to the mine. It was loaded. The safety was on.

“I told you,” he said, watching her. “Dad taught me.”

“I know he did,” Kate said, shouldering the rifle. “Mutt. Stay.”

Mutt ducked her head and sneezed.

“Oh no, Kate.” For the first time, Johnny showed dismay. “You don’t have to leave Mutt here.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Mutt gave a soft whine when she saw Kate climb on the four-wheeler. “Stay,” Kate repeated. To Johnny she said, “You can send her home in the morning when you leave for school.”

“Kate!”

She caught a glimpse of his expression as she turned the four-wheeler, and waited until she was facing away from him to let the grin spread across her face.

Kate was never without Mutt. Mutt was never without Kate. It was the only other given in the world besides death and taxes, and Johnny was well acquainted with it. Kate didn’t want to leave Mutt with him, but she was doing it because she’d taken back the rifle. Kate would be alone on the homestead. And Mutt, bless her melodramatic heart, was adding to the effect as she gazed yearningly after Kate as if her last hope of heaven was vanishing down the hill before her very eyes.

Kate felt smug as she put-putted her way home through the dusk. Not for nothing had she learned at the knee of that champion layer-on of guilt, Ekaterina Moonin Shugak.

Later, she would berate herself for being so self-involved that she hadn’t noticed the glow of the flames against the sky.

Later she would curse her failure to hear the crackle of the fire.

Later she would not be able to understand how she had not felt the sheer heat of it radiating outward, that she hadn’t even smelled smoke.

All this she would think and more, later and all too late, but when she rolled into the clearing and saw the interior of the cabin filled with a hungry, red-orange glow, heard the angry snarl of the flames, felt the vicious heat upon her face, felt the sharp sting of smoke in her nostrils, all she could think was “Johnny!” and all she could feel was a sharp spear of terror so abrupt, so visceral, and so overwhelming that her legs buckled beneath her when she tried to dismount.

She staggered and nearly fell before reason reasserted itself. No, she thought, in one of the few clear thoughts she was to hold dear that night, no, Johnny, wonderfully, marvelously prescient Johnny was safe and whole and unburned, tucked into his bedroll at the entrance to the Lost Wife Mine, kept company by an equally wonderful Vanessa and guarded by even more wonderful Mutt. She knew a moment of absolute relief as overwhelming as the moment of sheer terror that had preceded it, and her legs did give way this time, pitching her forward onto her hands and knees, utterly undone, vulnerable as she had never been in her life. She stared, dumbstruck, unable to move, struck motionless by disbelief.

There was an ominous creak and a small pop! of sound, and through the window she could see the flames lick higher, higher, tickling at the ladder to the loft and then the loft itself.

This was her father’s house. He had built it and brought her mother home to it, Kate had lived there all her life, and now it was going, eaten alive by a ravenous, red-maned beast.