5. Divergence

Detective Sciarpa adjusted her eyeglasses as she fired up her car. She tried to recall the day she’d helped enlist Henry Harper. Damn fool, if memory served. Amid a slew of other questions, she had rounded their interview off with a half-joking “Can you piss clean?”

He’d simply nodded.

“You’re working for us, then,” she’d said.

It wasn’t standard protocol to ask. Employees were never tested in this way. In fact, users made some of the best trainers and harvesters if they stayed lucid enough to be reliable; easy to pay, easy to please. Yet Sciarpa always loved seeing the reactions she garnered from this particular query, and always thought it made her sound tougher than she felt.

Hank had been hired years back when Sciarpa was still a fresh face in the government ranks. She’d since moved up the ladder and into law enforcement. A recent graduate to private consulting, Sciarpa emulated the old school---P.I.’s from the days before such independence became undesirable and obsolete. Her good standing and prized intuition allowed her to get away with it.

It was now close to 3 in the morning. Ryan Kesseler was on his coffee break when Sciarpa walked into his cubicle.

After his supervisor, Cohen, had dispatched the helicopter teams, he’d flashed a toothy grin at Ryan and said, “Get your lady friend on the line. We need her to go over and meet the squad at that yokel’s house to try and clean the place out. Have her come here first, though.”

Ryan had grimaced. Not because he feared a sharp retort from the detective upon waking her in the middle of the night; Sciarpa was an insomniac. No, it was a bit more touchy than that.

Sciarpa had a way of flirting that got under his skin more than it pleased him. She liked to give the impression that she and Ryan shared a lengthy and somewhat sordid history. They did not. But that never kept the other watchers and even his supervisor from chuckling and muttering at him whenever she came by.

Sciarpa had merely been Ryan’s trainer when he’d first taken the watcher position straight out of school. They’d shared a few lunch dates, but nothing serious. She’d been on her way to better things, he’d realized. Outstanding performance on some project or other had gotten her promoted to the police squad before they’d known each other a month. He never even got her first name, and hadn’t bothered to ask since.

Besides that, Sciarpa was pretty and fit and in her mid-fifties. Something about the fact that he was attracted to a woman nearly 20 years his senior bothered him, though he wasn’t sure why it should. He couldn’t say whether she’d ever been truly interested in him, either. But as it was, he presumed she just enjoyed being able to make him fidget and trip over his words whenever she saw him. This happened only a few times a year when she was called back in on special assignment. Like just now.

Ryan barely wasted time with pleasantries before motioning the detective over to one of his monitors.

“Like I said, it’s 217. Gonna have to go pay a visit to his cabin, see what’s up. Have yet to verify how many kids he had, or still has, running around out there. Surveillance we were supposed to have around the place has been disabled for some reason. But we’ve been to the other residence. Got the girl that shot him.”

Sciarpa pursed her lips. Her eyes widened with interest. “She the one he kept all these years?”

“Yeah, she failed out of his training pretty early on, but he still held on to her.” Ryan paused, then asked, “Is that even allowed?”

Sciarpa shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Hardly ever happens. Suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“The team we sent also picked up a boy.”

“Non-lethal force?” The detective raised a thin brow.

Ryan’s eyes were glued to his monitor. “I can hear the sarcasm just dripping out of that remark.”  They both knew the “non-lethal force” order was at best a suggestion and a formality. “Team blew the house clean away.”

He pulled up the recording for her. Sciarpa eyed it critically.

“This is the footage of him, then?  The natural?”  

“Yeah.”

“Well just because that kid---“

Ryan wasn’t in the mood for discussions. He reined his temper in. “Don’t start with me, Carmen San Diego. We have a job to do. And you sure took your sweet time coming out here, so we need to move.”

As Ryan understood, Carmen San Diego was a diabolical mastermind in a kid’s program years and years ago, when kids and broadcasting companies still went for that sort of thing. He didn’t really know much about her except that she was terribly clever and insisted on committing her diabolical deeds in a big red trench coat and heels. Ryan liked to think the nickname captured  his aggravation at the fact that Sciarpa always seemed to look much too dressed up for work.

She seemed not to notice. “What’s all this ‘we’ business? You can’t go leaving your post, solider. Stick to your guns, burn the midnight oil and all that.”

“Anyone ever tell you not to mix your metaphors?” He hunched over his workstation. “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to show you over here. Go to Cohen’s office; he’ll brief you.”

“Already been, and what do you suppose he said? That you get the rest of the night off to come and have a ride with me in the cop car.”

“Now why the hell would he say that?” Ryan rubbed his forehead.

“Beats me, but I wouldn’t argue. If all your trainers keep dying out on you, there won’t be much else left for you to watch. C’mon, Cohen says he’s got someone to take over for you. Let’s go.”

As Ryan numbly gathered his things, he considered ditching Sciarpa and just going home to bed. Damn, he hated the night shift. But if his supervisor Cohen really had specially picked him for this gig, there might be a bonus involved. Ryan doubted it was a dangerous assignment, even if it was strange.  He’d also been watching Hank for a long time. The prospect of seeing the man’s house and the remnants of his training operation up close piqued Ryan’s curiosity. With a resigned sigh, he quietly followed the detective out of the office.

==================================================

Penny noticed that the little boy had been placed on the same aircraft as her. One of the officers was trying to separate him from an oversized flashlight---it wasn’t going well.

Penny recognized the device as the one the kid had been carrying when he and Hank had emerged onto the porch of the house. For whatever reason, the agent hadn’t tried to take it away from him while they were on the ground.

Up until now, the child had been quiet and reserved. He’d shown little reaction to the sight of his father’s shredded body and his destroyed house. Now he was howling and clutching the flashlight to his chest. The only intelligible word that escaped him between his shrieks was “no!”

Finally, the agent gave up the fight. The boy ceased screaming immediately. After catching his breath, the man directed the two children to a small cabin in the back of the ship. This vessel was much larger than a typical helicopter, Penny thought, though she’d never seen one up close.

The man said nothing to Penny and the boy except the repeated assertion “It’s going to be all right.” When Penny finally found her voice, she grasped at the officer’s armored elbow and asked, “Where are we going? Where are you taking us, huh?”

He answered her more loudly than before. “It’s going to be all right.” The man shook her off before exiting and sealing the door to the room.

Penny slumped to the ground under a small window. The cabin was comfortable--stocked with some cushions, sleeping pallets, and a little food. Exhausted, Penny sought sleep for a few minutes, but only found herself able to toss about on the floor.  

She eventually sat up and studied the little boy, who was not asleep either. His face was haggard and he didn’t blink. He just glanced out the window as open fields began to turn into highways beneath them.

Penny scooted closer to him and warily held out her palm, offering a handshake.  She made sure to speak in a soft tone. “I’m Penny.”

The child’s face scrunched up as he took her hand, squeezed tightly, and pumped it up and down a few times. “I am Kai,” he murmured vaguely. He didn’t look at her.

Penny shifted around awkwardly on the floor after he pulled his hand away. The boy did likewise, curling his legs up so his knees reached his chin, then hugging himself tightly around the ribs.

“I’m—I’m real sorry about your pa,” Penny whispered.

It took Kai a long while to answer. “I do not know why they did that.” His voice shook. “I miss him a lot now.”

Penny was good at shaking hands, but not at putting her arms around anyone or offering any other form of comfort. Instead, she stuttered as she tried to begin several responses, each seeming more foolish than the first.  “Y-you don’t talk like most kids hereabouts. Where d’you go to school?”

Kai seemed not to hear her. He gaped at her awhile in mournful surprise. “You killed that man,” he said.

Penny choked. “Yeah, yeah I did. I think he was going to hurt you.” She paused. “Is there---is there anything he said to you to make you go with him?”

“He was going to take my baby sister. I did not want him to take my baby sister. But now she is dead, too.”

Penny opened her mouth to answer, but fell silent. Kai turned his back, pulled his knees up again and rested his cheek on top of them.

Penny did the same. Although she couldn’t hear it, she guessed that Kai had begun weeping. She stared out the window as the sound of the blades beat into her head and her own tears made splotches on the rolled- up cuffs of Hank’s overalls. Penny never cried unless somebody else did first.

She peered into the dark space ahead of her, trying to spot the moon. Instead, she saw the other helicopter veering away and bearing west. Before she finally let her eyes drift closed, Penny’s instinct was that she and Kai were speeding toward the city while the other whirring black shape was headed in the direction of her house.

4. Forced Veils

Resting his chin on his palm, Ryan Kesseler haphazardly scrolled down a list on his workstation. Names, locations, ages, success rates and other statistics flew past his eyes, a green circle next to each row. When he reached the bottom, he flicked the cursor to the top and began again. He was supposed to be rewriting his sorting algorithm (as the other watchers already had), but he had so few trainers to watch lately it wouldn’t help. After glancing around to confirm no supervisors were watching, he minimized the program and opened up a web browser. His preferred news site opened and headlines screamed at him in bold font: UCA RETRACTS NEGOTIATION OFFER, PM KETTERING WARN TERRORISTS OF “ANNIHILATION”, RIOTS KILL 30, HUNDREDS DETAINED. Ryan wondered if they were just rerunning the same stories with different headlines. Before he could click on a different page, his monitoring program threw an alert on the screen:

Trainer/Harvester 217: Deceased

Contacting supervisor

“Shit!” Ryan hissed at the screen. Seconds later a supervisor was at his station, leaning close enough for Ryan to smell the enormous man’s liberal use of cologne.

“Get sat-vis on him,” the man barked. He pressed a button on his headset, shouting “Two helicopter teams, harvester 217 residence and current location, dispatch channels 81, 82, 77. Nets authorized, use non-lethal force.” Other watchers leaned into the aisle to see the commotion. Ryan wished the supervisor would be more quiet. The satellite image opened on the screen: a house in blues and greens was visible, and 3 red outlines near it. One of them was very bright; the supervisor noticed it.

“That one there, the pink one. Get closer,” he said, stabbing the screen with a fat finger. Ryan zoomed on the figure, noting the steady, pulsing variation in the hue. The supervisor grinned, purring “We got a natural.”

===================================================

Penny stood motionless, one eye staring straight down the sight to where Hank had stood. His body lay on its side, a failing heart still pumping blood through a large chest wound. The boy slowly walked backwards up the stairs, hugging himself tightly. Second floor windows lit up, and Penny noticed her hand had begun to shake. She put the pistol back in her pocket, and motioned to the boy.

“Come on now, I ain’t gonna hurt you or nothin’. We gotta get out of here, now you come with me, alright?”

He continued backwards towards the porch, keeping his eyes fixed on her. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs from within the house. “Come on now boy, we have to go! Now!” she stammered, reaching for her pistol. The front door burst open, and a tall, bearded man crossed the porch in two steps, shotgun in hand. Penny grabbed her pistol, leaping sideways and cocking the hammer. Her foot caught on the ground, causing her to tumble onto her side. She brought the pistol up, aiming at the man’s chest when the air exploded with a fury of crosswinds and spotlights. She shielded her eyes and saw massive helicopters hovering some 30 feet of the ground in front of the house. The blinding light caught the gunman off guard, allowing her precious seconds to leap behind a bush next to the porch. The next second machine-gun fire tore across the porch and ground floor. Penny pressed her hands against her ears against the painful cacophony of helicopter blades and gunshots. When it stopped, she peered through the leaves at the house: then entire front wall had been destroyed by the bullets, and inside lay bloodied, tattered bodies dropped over the remains of furniture. The man with the shotgun was a pile of torn flesh and bone shards. Troops in thick black body armor jumped out of the helicopter, guns aimed at the house. A voice boomed from the airships:

“Come out with your hands raised! We will not shoot you! Come out with your hands raised, now!”

As Penny slowly rose from the bush, hands stretched above her head, she saw the boy walk out of the wrecked house, hands pointing to the sky. His face was expressionless, disinterested. A soldier lifted him up and turned back towards the awaiting airships, briefly motioning towards Penny. Two more soldiers walked towards her, guns lowered. She stood behind the bush, arms raised and terrified.

“Put your arms down, girl, it’s alright. You have to come with us,” said one of the men through a face mask. He reached over the shrub and picked her up. “Everything’s going to be alright, don’t worry. It’s going to be alright.” He put her over his shoulder, and they stepped into the open aircraft. She pulled her knees to her chest as the door closed and they lifted off into the night sky.

3. Houseguest

Hank resisted the urge to drop the screaming bundle in his arms and bolt. Stumbling footsteps fell on the cedar planks of the hallway, and he began to weigh his options. Window? Too high. Closet door? No way out. Through the doorway and down the stairs? Foolhardy if not fatal. His clumsiness had cost him dearly; he’d have to give up the job—that much was clear. Hank shakily determined that gunfire would be the quickest way to alert Penny. He placed the squalling infant back into its crib and peered into the hallway.

Outside, Penny had been squatting near the porch stairs and fighting to keep a steady line of thought. She gazed at the front entrance. Hank had told her roughly what to expect when he came through the door. Still, she’d begun trembling almost as soon as he’d disappeared into the cellar. She was fearful not for him or for the child he intended to spirit away, but for herself. Bullets and blood were no phobias of Penny’s, but knowledge was something else entirely. Gear upon gear had been turning in her brain and she figured that she was closing in on a new revelation about Hank’s behavior. Until now, her evidence against him had been readily-available but shadowy. Until now, the original daughter in Hank’s household had not considered her own upbringing as part of the equation.

 

Penny had never met her mother, but Hank always said she lived in the city, miles away. And that she kept a room in a shiny apartment building near a lake. He’d heard rumors that she’d died a few years back—-a boating accident. But he claimed to be uncertain about the truth of such gossip, given that newspapers were hard to come by in this district anymore. And even those were dubious at best. So as it was, Hank could never make up his mind about whether to tell Penny about her mother in the present or the past tense. Just like Penny could never make up her mind about whether to call him just “dad” or just “Hank.” Her mother’s name, Hank had said, was Edith.

Penny’s teeth dug at her lower lip as she tried to focus on the house once more. When she heard a muffled smash and a scream ring out from the second story, she began to brace herself for disaster. Penny curled her fists tight and willed herself back to the moment before the awful thought had struck: Who’s to say that you didn’t draw your first breaths in a house just like this?

 

No, Penelope. No further. She tried hard, but couldn’t check her imagination. The next logical conclusion took root and bloomed of its own accord. Shivering outside the broken farmhouse, Penny could now think of no reason why she mightn’t just be one of Hank’s stolen children too.

Hank was readying his weapon for fire as he glanced around the edge of the doorframe. The baby continued to howl, agitating him. Before he could nudge the nose of his rifle across the threshold, he noticed that a small white form had wandered into the hall in front of him. It must have trailed out of the bedroom he’d struggled to see from the staircase earlier. The figure rubbed its eyes and blinked at Hank. It was nothing more than a tiny boy in an oversized nightshirt.

The kid gestured frantically at him to keep quiet, and then scurried toward what Hank judged to be the parents’ bedroom. Baffled, Hank prepared to make a run for it, but was a second too late.

“What in hellfire—-?” a small but stealthy-looking man cried out, emerging from the door at the hallway’s end.

The boy blocked his path. “Papa, I came to get you. I woke up baby Shelby again. I am really sorry, Papa!”

The man, disoriented, simply repeated the phrase about hellfire.

The boy shifted about awkwardly while he talked. “Well, you see, I was thirsty and I could not sleep. So I wanted to get some water but first I went into Shelby’s room to see if she was sleeping good like you wanted her to. It was really dark, so then I tried to turn on the lamp but I knocked it over and then she woke up. I am really sorry, but Papa, can you put your gun away? Pleeease? It is scary.”

“Kai, you pullin’ my leg? You know if someone’s in here, you oughta say so right now. Ain’t nothin’ good comes of your tricks, you know that. Now stand aside, bud. I’m gonna go look in on your sister.”

As soon as Hank had realized the little waif was bluffing, he’d stolen into the closet in the baby’s room, his movements partially muffled by Shelby’s persistent shrieks. But after the father entered, Hank could hear the man’s rough breathing and his every footstep as he inspected the fallen lamp. Hank wagered he still carried a weapon.

After a few minutes, the infant’s noise still continued to permeate through the house. Like to split the roof wide open, was Hank’s analysis. But as much as he loathed the pain that was developing at the base of his cranium, he deemed that fortune was on his side for once. The addle-brained father, still groggy with sleep, would be more concerned with silencing the infant than with hunting all over the darkened house for an intruder.

Sure enough, the man eventually scooped up Shelby and carried her back toward his own room. Hank heard him tell Kai, “I’ll have your sissy come sleep in with me tonight. Be safer, ‘n might settle ‘er down a piece.” The man sighed. “You look like you gave yourself a fright, Kai. Gotta stop your wanderin’ ‘round at night like this. Go on back to bed.”

“But I am thirsty still…”

“Then go get you some damn water from the sink ‘n be done with it. Bring your flashlight next time and don’t do nothin’ foolish again.”

The door to the father’s bedroom thudded shut. Hank held his breath, wondering just what the hell this little fellow was up to. The boy moved noiselessly into the room before rapping lightly on the closet door. Hank opened it, ready to run. Kai gave his brandished rifle another wide-eyed look, then abruptly grasped Hank’s free hand. The boy’s other hand clutched a lit flashlight three sizes too big for him.

Taken aback, Hank blustered at the small, almost ghostly figure. “What’re you playin’ at, boy? I ain’t here for nothin’. You heard what your daddy said. Nothin’ foolish, now. Just let me pass. You’d do best to stay quiet ‘n out of my way.”

He couldn’t bring himself to knock the kid out, but moved to cover his mouth in case Kai had second thoughts about ratting on him. Before Hank could extract himself from the child’s grip, however, Kai put a finger to his own lips and made an exaggerated shushing noise. Still clinging to Hank’s calloused palm, the boy silently led him downstairs.

Hank’s confusion was reaching its peak. Out of desperation at the strange circumstances and the threat of returning home empty-handed, he decided that he could claim this strange boy instead of the infant sister. The kid looked about six, seven at the oldest. This was old. Much too old. But Hank needed a captive and his mind had already seized upon the possibility.

To Hank’s surprise, Kai didn’t direct him toward the kitchen for a drink of water once they had reached the first floor. Instead, he pushed through the front door and onto the porch as Hank intended. He was still holding Hank’s hand.

Penny was there to see the pair slip through the doorway. One day years from now, she would sit in a clean cool room on an upper floor of a building somewhere in the city. There, people would ask her what had driven her to do what she did next. She would answer that she couldn’t rightly tell. Only that she had been expecting trouble to come through the door, expecting that she would have to use her pistol quick and wisely. She would say her reflexes had leapt ahead of her. What her answer would not include, however, were the thoughts that had directly preceded the incident: the lingering notion that Hank had snatched her from another family under the same design he was using that night. And the fact that when she’d seen Hank emerge onto the porch with the little boy in tow, her imagination had replaced the child’s face with her own.

Something was wrong, Penny could see. This was no infant. She hadn’t prepared for this at all.

All in one instant, she imagined scores of heinous threats or sugary lies Hank could’ve spun to coax the child away from his family, his safety, his warm bed. She could feel bile rising in her throat. No, it shouldn’t happen like this.

She couldn’t tell whether she’d thought it before or after her trigger finger had squeezed, and Hank had fallen in a heap at the foot of the porch stairs.

2. Error

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

Hank swore to himself quietly in the dark. The cellar door had been left carelessly unlocked, and he had taken every precaution in opening it slowly so that the heavily rusted hinges did not creak. He carefully placed every step on the right edge of each ancient, cracked wooden step so as to limit their groaning. All his meticulous care did not account for the errant pail placed at the bottom, which clattered deafeningly in the close, dank basement.

He had instructed Penny to walk around to the front door; he would try to leave that way when the time came. The first lights to go out would be the child’s room, and that window was situated right above the front porch. It was likely that the stairs led directly to this room. Walking up, grabbing the child and running back down the stairs and out the door would be one of the simpler jobs he had done. “If only they were all this easy”, he complained mentally to himself.

Despite his large frame, Hank moved with feline grace. The moonlight provided just enough light to see the outlines of objects littering the floor: old boxes of jars, buckets of sawdust, scattered pieces of machinery. He navigated the debris to the stairs, and after testing the first few for noise, quickly climbed up into the kitchen, tightly gripping his rifle.

Penny shifted her legs beneath her. While she understood having two people in the house would only complicate matters, she still hated squatting in a bush while Hank did the fun part. She nervously felt for the revolver holstered in her pocket. There were no sounds from inside the old house, but that could change any second. She’d no qualms about shooting someone, but that would hardly be the hardest part of her job. This was a big house, and possibly a big family. And there were only two of them.

Hank moved through the house towards the ground floor stairs. “No moonlight here,” he mused. “Bastards got some thick curtains.” Ascending to the top floor of the house, he noted the first sign of difficulty. The child’s room was at the top of the floor as he thought, but the door was closed. The adjacent room had two older children in it, and had no door. The next room down the hallway was also door-less, and he could barely make out at least one bed. At the end of the hallway, another closed door, which he assumed was the parents’ room.

He sidled along the wall across the landing to the closed door, and grasped the knob between his thumb and forefinger, very lightly turning it. The door opened soundlessly into a room. Besides the crib, there was no indication that this was a room for a baby: a dresser was placed by the door, and a nonfunctional clock hung on the wall. In spite of himself, Hank smiled at the thought of a baby needing a dresser. He leaned his rifle against the dresser and leaned over the crib, peering at the sleeping child. “Got ‘im all wrapped up and ready to go for me,” he thought. Slowly, gingerly, he pushed his hands under the baby and lifted it up. He cradled it in his arms, making sure it was fully supported.

As Hank turned to leave, the child’s blanket caught on a lamp. It smashed on the floor; the noise waking the baby. As its piercing cried grew in intensity, Hank heard a door opening, voices, and the metallic click of a weapon. He reached for his rifle, his hands shaking.

“Shit,” he thought.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

1. Snatch

“Penny, keep your fool head ducked down!”

Henry’s voice rattled across her ear in a whisper. He eased out of the battered station wagon, leaving the driver’s-side door cracked.

“Damn, Dad. No need to blow a gasket!” she half-murmured, half-spat back at him. “Can’t abide your temper.”

Despite her soft grumbling, Penelope Harper—Penny in her father’s vernacular—-did as he said. Once he was out of earshot, she jammed her hat down low over her eyes and crouched on the floor under the passenger window.

They’d parked in a poplar grove to the side of the road. And seeing as the moon had thought fit to slam its rays down in full force tonight, there were black leaf patterns sprinkled over the surface of the backseat. Penny thought it was all rather eerie and wondered why Hank didn’t just get on with it.

Henry Harper—-Hank, in his daughter’s vernacular—-glanced keenly over the top of the station wagon’s front hood, cocked rifle in hand. It was all he had left. He was saving the pistol to give to the girl.

They were going to make a run on the farmhouse tonight. It was the first time he’d brought Penny along on a job, a real job. And he had to make sure everything went smooth.

He edged the heel of his boot around in the dirt as each of the rambling house’s little lightbulbs and candles winked out. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the structure’s most vulnerable point. Just a few minutes more, and they’d be ready to move.

Penny knew her dad Hank thought he’d been sly trying to explain their business tonight in veiled terms. But she’d been aware of his practices for years. She’d been with him many times when he’d staked out houses along the back roads on summer evenings. Still, Penny did admit that she’d never before seen the man at work on an actual raid.

Feuding between families was common in those parts, and he’d always told her the places they’d passed in the car were dens full of enemies, those that meant their family harm. As he’d studied the buildings, he’d invented small stories for Penny about captured cousins in need of rescue from these old country houses and the evil clans dwelling inside.

“Come midnight,” he’d said each time before he’d dropped her back off at their cabin at the edge of the district, “I’ll have that cousin ‘a yours back here with us, safe and sound.”

For years, she’d quietly eaten her dinner and done her homework while Hank vanished into the night. His parting words were always something to the tune of, You better make him feel welcome. You better treat her like your own sister. You know your cousin’s been through a lot.

She’d lost track of how many “cousins” Hank had taken in. His design had become all too obvious, and there was no need for him to act like he was putting her wise now.

What Hank didn’t know was that the principle of the thing didn’t bother his only daughter in the least. She was ready to face the quick break-in, the stumbling, the darkness, the yelling, falling glass. It was being cooped up in the car that she couldn’t stomach.

Penny scampered up into the driver’s seat and gave the windshield a sharp rap with her knuckles. It got Hank’s attention and he motioned her outside. Keeping low to the ground, they moved swift through the tall grass, away from the road.

She felt him jab her in the ribs with a cold metal object. Penny gave a nod of understanding, and then swathed the weapon away in a pocket of her overalls. These too were borrowed from her father and the pant legs billowed over her skinny frame. She bit her lip and stopped to roll the denim up tight around her kneecaps. Her chest pounded. Poised just feet from the farmhouse’s cellar door, she waited for Hank’s signal to run.