her earlobe to her fingertips. “I’ll explain that later. But if Lexi finds out I haven’t got the cat, she’s liable to have another attack. I need to hunt it down.”
“Can I help?”
Several seconds passed. “Actually, you could. Do you know how to get to the hospital in Burlington?”
“I’ve got a GPS.”
“Can you meet me near the emergency room entrance in about twenty minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
Another silence. “Thank you.” Roughened by emotion, his tone sent a shiver down the opposite arm. She set down her phone and found herself focusing once again on the cross. Lord, protect that cat.
A smile stretched the out-of-practice muscles at the sides of her mouth. She was making great strides—she’d added two people and a cat to her prayer list.
“Kind of like a stakeout, isn’t it?” Adam bent low and leaned toward the dashboard, gazing at the darkening pewter of the afternoon sky.
Emily turned on the defroster. “We should have coffee and doughnuts like the cops do.”
“I’ve got peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers.” He lifted the flap on a huge camouflage-print pocket near his left calf and pulled out a clear cellophane package. “They’re a little squished, but it’s still nourishment.” A red tab zipped along the side, loosing six impossibly orange cheesy crackers.
Taking two, Emily questioned what nourishing ingredient caused the square to glow in the cloud-choked light. “Thank you. Makes me feel like a kid again.” She scanned the houses on the hill. They were parked across the road from Adam and Lexi’s house, facing west, with a river on their right. “Is this part of the same river that goes through Rochester?”
“Not here. This is the White River. It joins with the Fox and Honey Creek”—he pointed to the northeast—“on the other side of Echo Lake and then flows into Illinois.”
“Wow. You’re a walking Wikipedia.” She pressed her lips together then smacked them. “Sorry. I suppose you get tired of people picking on you because you’re smart.”
“Sometimes.” His head tilted to one side. “People used to call me Encyclopedia Brown.”
“That’s a compliment. Did you read The Case of the Secret UFO?”
“Yeah. Do you read those’ cause you’re a teacher?”
“Actually, I read that one while I was living at a rehabilitation hospital last year.”
“Jake said you were in an accident. What happened?”
“I was skiing in Colorado. I lost my balance and collided with another skier.” I shouldn’t have been there.
“That must have been awful. What happened to the other person?”
“She…lived.”
“Thank God.”
“Yes.” She looked over her shoulder. No cat in sight. “Don’t you think she’d come through the woods?” Adam had picked the spot to wait and watch—their stakeout. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait at your house?”
Adam shook his head, a bit more emphatically than seemed warranted. Dark eyebrows wrinkled in closer to his nose. “Pansy’s a weird cat.” He pointed at the sky over the water. “Cumulonimbus,” he muttered.
“Not sure the river can take any more rain. You’re safe up here on the hill, though.”
A short, hard exhale jerked Adam’s shoulders as he glanced at the white house with green shutters. “Yeah. Safe.”
So much said between lines, but Emily couldn’t decipher it without more clues. “So you and Emily live with your dad, I take it.”
He shrugged. “We live with my mom’s husband. Our real dad ditched us. He wasn’t mean, but he was lazy like Ben. Nobody knows where he is now.”
“I’m sorry.”
Adam shrugged.
“And Ben never legally adopted you?”
Shoulders up then down again. He wrenched his bag from the backseat. “I got some books on the Underground Railroad.” He held up what appeared to be a map. “BUR SPUR” was printed in red letters outlined in white. “This shows all the places around here where runaway slaves were hid or where abolitionists lived. The BuR SPUR stands for the Burlington, Rochester, and Spring Prairie Underground Railroad Trail. There are three places in Rochester—one of them is just a block from your—” He dropped the pamphlet. “There! There she is. I knew it!”
An enormous orange cat with an uncanny resemblance to Puss from the Shrek movies sauntered across the highway. Half a block away, a red pickup slowed. Pansy lifted her chin in acknowledgment. Emily’s relief tumbled out in laughter. “That’s one confident animal.”
Adam grinned. “Lexi says she’s got cattitude.” He threw his bag in the backseat and opened the van door as a low black convertible barreled past, horn blasting at the animal it missed by mere inches. An almost human screech came from the cat. Orange fur bristling, Pansy darted toward the