What? She still wouldn’t know where she was because she didn’t know where she’d been.

And they could find her when the sun came up.

She trudged on, head drooping with fatigue, feet shuffling as she just couldn’t lift them anymore.

Half dreaming, she walked. And smiled a little at a sound. Then shook herself awake, listened.

Was that the ocean? She thought, maybe . . . And something else.

She rubbed her tired eyes, stared ahead. A light. She saw a light. She kept her eyes on it, walked on.

The ocean, she thought again, getting louder, closer. What if she missed a step and fell over a cliff? But the light, it was closer, too.

The trees opened up. She saw a field in the moonlight. Wide and grassy. And . . . cows. The light, well beyond the edge of the woods, the edge of the field, came from a house.

She nearly walked into the barbed wire that kept the cows inside.

She cut herself a little getting through it, ripped her new sweater. She remembered from making the movie in Ireland that cows grew a lot bigger for real than they looked in books or from a distance.

She stepped in cow poop, and said “Gak,” with a ten-year-old girl’s disgust. From there, after swiping her sneaker on the grass, she tried to watch her step.

A house, she saw now, that faced the ocean, with decks up and down, with a light through the lower windows. Barns and stuff that meant ranch.

She navigated the barbed wire again—more successfully.

She saw a truck, a car, smelled manure and animals.

After stumbling again, she started to run toward the house. Someone to help, someone who’d take her home. Then stopped herself.

They could be bad people, too. How could she know? Maybe they were even friends with the people who locked her in the room. She needed to be careful.

It had to be late, so they’d be asleep. She only had to get inside, find a phone, and call nine-one-one. Then she could hide until the police came.

She crept toward the house, onto the wide porch in front. Though she expected to find it locked, she tried the front door, nearly dropped with relief when the knob turned.

She eased inside.

The lamp in the window burned low, but it burned. She could see a big room, furniture, a big fireplace, stairs leading up.

She didn’t see a phone, so she walked back toward a kitchen with green things growing in red pots on a wide windowsill, a table with four chairs, and a bowl of fruit.

She grabbed an apple, shining green, bit in. As it crunched between her teeth, as juice hit her tongue, her throat, she knew she’d never tasted anything so good. She saw the handset on the counter beside a toaster.

Then she heard footsteps.

Because the kitchen offered no place to hide, she rushed into the dining room open to it. Clutching the apple, more juice dribbling down her hand, she squeezed herself into a dark corner beside a bulky buffet.

When the kitchen lights flashed on, she tried to make herself smaller.

She caught a glimpse of him as he walked straight to the refrigerator. A boy, not a man, though he looked older than she, taller. He had a shaggy mop of dark blond hair, and wore only boxers.

If she hadn’t been so terrified, the sight of a mostly naked boy who wasn’t a cousin would have mortified and fascinated her.

He was pretty skinny, she noted, as he grabbed a drumstick out of the fridge, gnawed it while dragging out a jug—not like a store carton—of milk.

He chugged milk right from the jug, set it on the counter. He sang to himself, or hummed, or made ba-da-ba-dum! noises while he pulled a cloth off what looked like some kind of pie.

That’s when he turned, still ba-da-daing, pulled open a drawer. And saw her.

“Whoa!” When shock had him jolting back, she had an instant to run. But before she gathered herself, he tipped his head to the side. “Hey. You lost or something?”

He took a few steps toward her; she cringed back.

In what would seem like a thousand years later, she would think back and remember exactly what he said, how he said it, how he looked.

He smiled at her, spoke easily, like they’d met in some park or ice-cream shop. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Hey, are you hungry? My gram makes totally excellent fried chicken. We got leftovers.” He wagged the drumstick he still held to prove it.

“I’m Dillon. Dillon Cooper. This is our ranch. Me and Gram and Mom.”

He took another couple of steps as he spoke, then crouched down. When he did, his eyes changed. Green eyes, she could see now, but softer, quieter than Grandda’s.

“You’re bleeding. How’d you get hurt?”

She started to shake again, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe she trembled because she wasn’t afraid of him. “I fell down, and then there were sharp things where the cows are.”

“We can fix you up, okay? You should come sit down in the kitchen. We have stuff to fix you up. What’s your name? I’m Dillon, remember?”

“Caitlyn. Cate—with a C.”

“You should come sit in the kitchen, Cate, and we can fix you up. I need to get my mom. She’s cool,” he said quickly. “Seriously.”

“I need to call nine-one-one. I need the phone to call nine-one-one, so I came inside. The door wasn’t locked.”

“Okay, just let me get my mom first. Man, she’d freak if the cops came when she was asleep. It would scare her.”

Her jaw wobbled. “Can I call my daddy, too?”

“Sure, sure. How about you come sit down first? Maybe finish your apple, let me get Mom.”

“There were bad guys,” she whispered, and his eyes widened.

“No shit? Don’t tell Mom I said ‘shit.’ ” When he reached out a hand, she took it. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Man, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay now. You just sit down, let me get Mom. Don’t run off, okay? Because we’ll help you. I promise.”

Believing him, she lowered her head, nodded.

Dillon wanted his mom more than anything and anyone, and ran for the back stairs. Finding a kid hiding in the house during a fridge raid was cool—or would’ve been if she hadn’t had cuts and bruises. And looked scared enough to pee her pants.

Then it turned cool again because she wanted the cops, and the bad guys, more cool. Except she was just a kid, and somebody hurt her.

He dashed into his mother’s room without knocking, shook her shoulder. “Mom, Mom, wake up.”

“Oh God, Dillon, what?”

She might’ve brushed him off, rolled over, but he shook her again. “You gotta get up. There’s a kid downstairs, a girl kid, and she’s hurt. She said she wants to call the cops because of bad guys.”

Julia Cooper opened one bleary eye. “Dillon, you’re dreaming again.”

“Nuh-uh. Swear to God. I have to get back down to the kitchen because she’s scared, and she’ll maybe run. You have to come. She’s bleeding a little.”

Now fully awake, Julia shot up in bed, shoved her long blond hair back from her face. “Bleeding?”

“Hurry, okay? Jeez, I have to get some pants.”

He bolted into his room, grabbed the jeans and sweatshirt he’d tossed on the floor—even though he wasn’t supposed to. On the run, he stuck a leg inside of his jeans, hopped along, shot in the other. His bare feet slapped the wood stairs as he dragged on the shirt.