What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(33)

She slept.

Rae quieted.

Then Kellen was wide-awake, aware Rae was too quiet.

Something was very wrong.

Rae was gone.



15


Alarm slammed through Kellen. She groped all the way down in the narrow bag. Rae’s clothes and shoes were there, but Rae was simply gone.

“Calm,” Kellen muttered. Panic wouldn’t help. Although right now, panic seemed like the right thing to do. “Think.” No one had rustled through the bushes, so Rae had to be nearby. Kellen crawled out of the bag into the freezing mountain air and, still on her hands and knees, looked around.

The starlight was bright, bright enough to show the shrubs that surrounded and protected them and—that shivering rock hadn’t been there before. Rae had wrangled her way out of the bag, probably punching and kicking all the way and, still asleep, was curled into a frozen little ball.

“Oh, sweetie.” Kellen picked up her child and put her in the sleeping bag. She rubbed her cold toes and hands, hugged her close and cried terrified tears and tucked Rae’s beloved blankie close around the child’s head. What if she hadn’t woken when she did? Rae would have died of exposure and it would be Kellen’s fault.

One more big black mark on the bad mommy chart.

For the rest of the night, Kellen slept in short bursts, waking every few minutes to check on Rae and hoping against hope she hadn’t done Max’s child irreparable harm.

As the sun rose, Kellen finally fell into a deep sleep and woke awash in anxiety and guilt.

But Rae was right there, lying on her stomach, her blankie bunched under her arms, with her crayons, drawing in her ThunderFlash and LightningBug book.

Kellen watched her, noticing how much like her cousin Rae looked, how she frowned as she put all her energy into coloring, that she seemed healthy after her brush with freezing death... “How are you?” she whispered.

Rae turned to her, smiling as brightly as ever. “I’m fine, Mommy.” She kissed Kellen on the mouth. “How are you? I woke up before you and I put on my shoes and socks and got my crayons and my book. See?” She showed Kellen a new page of superhero drawings in purple, red and yellow. “I got my own breakfast. I picked huckleberries and ate them.”

That explained the smears of red and purple on her face.

“I came back to bed and colored until you woke up.” Rae beamed. “I saved you some berries.”

If the child wasn’t okay, she was faking it well. Kellen looked at the squished blackish purple berries piled in the dirt, waiting for her.

She ate them.

Rae chatted. “What are we going to do today? Will there be bad men after us some more? Are we almost there? Will the park rangers take us for a pizza? I want pesto, cheese and chicken.”

Absurd conversation. “No anchovies?”

Rae shrugged. “They aren’t my favorite.”

Another flash of maturity in a child obsessed with princesses and flashy sequins.

Kellen rolled to look at her backpack. The contents were strewn from one end of the hedge to another. “You put your shoes and socks on, and got out of the sleeping bag, and got back in.”

Rae nodded, uninterested.

That explained the pine needles poking Kellen in the legs and the—

“Were your shoes and socks dry?”

“Yes. Lookee!” Rae showed Kellen the newest drawing. There was a stick figure, tall and dressed in red and black. Rae said that was ThunderFlash. There was a shorter stick figure, dressed in a cape of pink and yellow stars. That was LightningBug. And a hideous white head-like thing with too many eyes floated beside them. Solemnly, Rae said, “We have a talisman.”

Where did this kid get her vocabulary? Kellen felt her shoes and socks. They were dry, thank heavens. “What talisman?”

“The head! The Triple Goddess will guard us. Look at how she took out that man when you hit him! And that guy from the van!”

“Actually—” Kellen couldn’t believe she was indignant about this “—I’m the one who aimed the head well enough to take him down.” She took a breath and tried to think how to explain this to a seven-year-old. “Faith in something unknown is a great thing, but you have to combine faith with action. So if you saw a bad guy sneaking up on us, would you pray to the Triple Goddess, or would you scream a warning?”

Rae screamed. Kellen jumped and grabbed her, ready to put her hand over Rae’s mouth. Stopping herself, she listened as birds took flight in the trees above. With a sound so high-pitched, anyone within earshot would be looking up for a hawk or a cougar.

She relaxed. “Nice. But let’s not scream again unless there’s trouble. Now—what if the bad guy grabs you first?”

“Kick them?”

“Where?”

“Some place that hurts.”

“Right. The best places to kick or hit are the head, the sternum and the groin.”

Rae giggled. “Groin!”

Kellen pretended like she didn’t hear. “It’s easy to remember. You punch right down the middle of the body. Face—” she pointed at Rae’s nose, mouth and throat “—sternum—” she pointed at Rae’s breastbone “—and groin.”

When she pointed at Rae’s groin, Rae stopped laughing and her eyes got big. “I hit a tree one time on my bike and fell off the seat and landed on the bar. It hurt so bad.”