Нора Робертс - Hideaway

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.

She still sat at the table, which had him letting out a whoosh of relief. “Mom’s coming. I’m going to get the first-aid kit out of the pantry. Then she’ll know what to do. You can eat that drumstick if you want.” He gestured to the one he’d dropped on the table. “I only had one bite.”

But she hunched her shoulders together as someone came down the stairs.

“It’s just Mom.”

“Dillon James Cooper, I swear if you…” She stopped when she saw the girl, and the sleepy irritation dropped away from her face. Like her son, Julia knew how to approach the hurt and frightened.

“I’m Julia, honey, Dillon’s mom. I need to take a look at you. Dillon, get the first aid kit.”

“I am already,” he muttered, and took it from a shelf in the big pantry.

“Now a clean cloth and a bowl of warm water. And a blanket. Light the fire in the kitchen hearth.”

He rolled his eyes behind her back, but obeyed.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Caitlyn.”

“Caitlyn, that’s pretty. I’m going to clean this cut on your arm first. I don’t think it needs stitches.” She smiled as she spoke.

Her eyes had a lot of gold in them, but there was green, too, like the boy’s. Like Dillon’s, Cate remembered.

“While I’m fixing you up, why don’t you tell me what happened. Dillon, pour Caitlyn a glass of that milk before you put it away.”

“I don’t want milk. They tried to give me milk but it was wrong. I don’t want milk.”

“All right. How about—”

She broke off as Cate jolted. And Maggie Hudson came down the stairs. Maggie took one look at Cate, tipped her head. “I wondered what all this noise was. Looks like we’ve got company.”

She had blond hair, too, but lighter than Dillon’s and his mom’s. Blue streaked through it on its way to her shoulders.

She wore a T-shirt with a picture of a woman with lots and lots of curly hair that said JANIS under it and a pair of flowered pajama pants.

“This is my mom,” Julia told her as she cleaned the slices on Cate’s arm. “Put the blanket over Caitlyn’s shoulders, Dillon. She’s cold.”

“Let’s get a fire going in here, too.”

“I’m working on it, Gram.” The aggrieved boy came through, but she only gave his hair a stroke as she stepped toward the table. “I’m Maggie Hudson, but you can call me Gram. You look like a girl in need of hot chocolate. I’ve got my own secret recipe.”

She reached in a cupboard, took out a package of Swiss Miss, then sent Cate a wink.

“This is Caitlyn, Mom. She was about to tell us what happened. Can you do that, Caitlyn?”

“We were playing hide-and-seek after the life celebration for my great-grandda, and I went to the tree beside the garage to climb it and hide, and there was a man and he stuck me with something and I woke up somewhere else.”

The words tumbled out as Maggie put a big mug in the microwave, as Julia dabbed ointment on the cuts, as Dillon, crouched down to light the kitchen fire, goggled.

“They had masks like a mean clown and a werewolf, and said they’d break my fingers if I didn’t do what they said. And the clown one had a gun, and he said he’d shoot me. But I didn’t eat the soup or drink the milk because it tasted funny. They put drugs to make you sleep in things, bad guys do that, so I poured it down the toilet and pretended to sleep.”

“Holy crap!”

Julia merely shot Dillon a look to shut him up.

“That was smart. Honey, did they hurt you?”

“They knocked me down when they opened the door hard, and the bad clown pulled my hair really, really hard. But then they thought I was asleep, and one of them—it was the wolfman—came in and talked on the phone. I kept pretending and fooled him. I kept the spoon from the soup, and I used it to get the nails out of the window lock. One of them drove away. I could hear them talking outside, and he drove away, and that’s when I got the window open enough to get out, but it was too high to jump.”