Cole almost dropped the baby. A toddler, not more than three, obviously female from the foolishness of the lace-trimmed nightdress that tangled around pudgy legs, emerged from the shrubs and tottered across the leaf-and branch-strewn yard.
As if he was not reeling from enough shock, the shrubs parted again, and two small boys, maybe seven and eight, dark-haired, dirt-smeared and pajama-clad, also emerged into the clearing of his cabin.
Cole Standen had faced the types of terror that make a man tremble and reach inside himself to find his deepest reserves of courage.
He had jumped from airplanes, been shot at, dealt with the dread of an enemy concealed by night but so close you could almost feel his breath upon your cheek.
But as those cold, wet, mud-spattered children tumbled by him into his sanctuary, and the warm puddle of humanity that was the baby squirmed against his bare chest, Cole searched his memory bank to see if he had ever faced a terror quite like the one that hammered in his breast now.
He discovered he had not.
Chapter One
“My granny’s dead,” the girl, obviously the oldest of the five, announced. And then, her bravery all used up, her face crumpled as if the air was being let out of a balloon. She began to cry, quietly at first, big silent tears rolling down her face. The silence was but the still before the storm. She built quickly to a crescendo. She uttered a heartbreaking wail.
The four other waifs watched her anxiously, and her breakdown was a lesson in leadership. All four of them instantly followed her example. Even the baby. They screwed up their faces in expressions of identical distress and began to caterwaul. Awkwardly gripping the baby, which seemed unaccountably slippery, Cole escorted the four other howling children into his living room and planted them on the couch.
The older girl held out her arms, and he carefully placed the screaming baby back in her care. All the children huddled together in a messy pile of tangled limbs and wept until their skinny shoulders heaved and their sobs were interspersed with hiccups.
Cole did not know very much about children, but he hoped hiccup-crying did not induce vomiting.
Quickly, he checked the phone—which naturally was out—stoked the fire and lit his two coal-oil lamps.
He turned back and studied the children in the flickering yellow light. He realized he was in trouble. The crying continued unabated—in fact it seemed to be rising in tempo and intensity. He had no doubt the children were going to make themselves sick if they continued. There was also the possibility that grandma—wherever she was—might not be dead and might urgently require his assistance.
He held up a hand. “Hey,” he said, in his best commander voice, “that’s enough.”
There was momentary silence while they all gazed wide-eyed at his raised hand, and then one of them whimpered and the rest of them dissolved all over again.
He clapped his hands. He stamped his foot. He roared.
And nothing worked, until something divine whispered in his ear what was required to stop the noise and squeeze the story out of the little mites.
Surrender.
The soldier in him resisted. Surrender? It was not in his vocabulary. But he resisted only momentarily. The noise and emotion in the room were going to send him on a one-way trip into the lake if it didn’t stop.
So, summoning all his courage, he took the baby back, discovered why she seemed unaccountably slippery and did his best to ignore it. He wedged himself a spot on the couch between the children. Blessed and stunned silence followed while the little troop evaluated this latest development. And then, before Cole could really prepare himself properly, the two boys and the toddler in the ridiculous dress were all vying for a place on his lap—and found it. The older girl snuggled in so tight under his arm it felt as if she was crushing his heart.
The combined weight of the children and the baby was startlingly small. It was their warmth that surprised him, the seeming bonelessness of them as they melted into him, like kittens who had found a mother.
For an old soldier, a terrifying thing happened.
Soaked in tears and whatever horrible warm liquid that was seeping out of the baby’s diaper, he felt a terrible weakness, a softening around his heart.
“Okay,” he said, putting his voice into the blessed silence with extreme caution, “tell me what happened to Grandma.” Out of the sudden chorus of overlapping voices, he began to pick out a story.
“The lights went out.”
“She fell down the steps.”
“Blood everywhere.”
“Lots of blood. Maybe bwains, too.”
In bits and pieces, like putting together a verbal jigsaw puzzle, Cole figured out who the children were, where they were from and what needed to be done.
They were the movie star’s children. When the power had gone out, their grandma, who looked after them when their mother was away, had fallen down the steps in the darkness. The children had presumed, erroneously, Cole hoped, that she was dead.
“I knew I had to get help,” the oldest girl told him solemnly, “but they—” she stabbed an accusing finger at the two boys “—said they had to come, too. And we couldn’t leave Kolina—”
“That me,” the toddler in the dress told him, then relaxed into his chest, her cheek warm and soft and wet, and inserted her thumb in her mouth.
“—or the baby, so we all came. And here we are, Mr. Herman.”
Mr. Herman? They obviously had him confused with a different neighbor, possibly one who was friendly.
He considered telling them he was not Mr. Herman, but they had a shell-shocked look about them that told him to save his breath.
He saw immediately the order of things that needed to be done. He had to get to the grandma and fast. Possibly, she was not dead, but hovering on the brink, where seconds could count.
“Your name?” he demanded of the oldest one.
“Saffron,” she told him, and the rest of them piped up with the most bewildering and ridiculous assortment of names he’d ever heard. The older of the boys was Darrance, and the other one was Calypso. Calypso!
The smallest girl batted thick eyelashes and reiterated that her name was Kolina. And the baby, he was informed, was Lexandra.
The impossible names swam in his head, and were then pushed aside by more important tasks that needed to be dealt with.
“Okay,” he said, pointing at the oldest girl, “You are not Saffron anymore. You are Number One. And you are Number Two…”
He went on quickly, numbering them largest to smallest, and he could see that rather than being indignant about the name changes, it was exactly what they needed. Someone of authority to relinquish the responsibility to. Having established himself as boss, he confidently gave his first order.
