As he set the alarm system, he thought of the clockwork boy, alone in the dark.

Nothing, he decided, could take the place of reliable friends.

Fort Collins, Colorado

Monday, May 19, 1:08 A.M.

Kit pulled his jacket closed against the chill of the night air as he stepped out of the Suburban’s heated interior. A big thermometer near the gas station door said it was forty. He looked up at the sky just as thick clouds obscured the moon.

Not an omen, he told himself. A sign of rain on its way, nothing more.

He paid for the gas and bought two Cokes at the station’s convenience market. When he tried to hand the can of soda to Spooky, she refused to take it. He placed it in the cup holder, opened his own can, and took a long sip, wondering if he should have bought Jolt or Mountain Dew or something with more caffeine in it. Only about an hour or so to Denver, but he was tired.

He started the truck.

“I don’t want to go to California,” Spooky said. “I want to stay here.”

It was a refrain he had heard over the past few hours. “In Fort Collins?” he asked, as if hearing it for the first time.

“No, not Fort Collins. You know what I mean.”

He pulled out of the station and headed toward Highway 87. He had stayed away from the biggest highways until now, taking Highway 14 after Rabbit Ears Pass outside of Steamboat Springs, although U.S. 40 would have been the faster way into Denver. But he was sure that the attacker would have taken the faster road, and this was not the time to engage his enemies.

Besides, traveling with Spooky in his Suburban, they were two, and two into fourteen was seven, which was lucky. So Highway 14 was the better choice all the way around.

He hadn’t been able to do much with a number like eighty-seven. He tried not to let that bother him, but it did.

“I can’t take you back to the cabin,” he said now. “It’s not safe there.”

“Molly was old. Old dogs die. We should stay in Colorado.”

He pulled to the side of the road, stopped, and turned to face her.

“We’ve been over this. Molly did not die of old age.”

“You don’t know for sure!”

“Yes, I do!” He saw the alarm come into her face. He rarely raised his voice-he felt instant remorse when he saw that he had startled her. “I know for sure,” he said quietly.

Spooky stared back at him in defiance, but he knew she was scared. After three years with her, he was adept at gauging her moods. When he had first met her, she was ten years old. He had made the mistake most people made when first observing her-he thought she was a boy. She was small for her age and thin; her dark hair was cropped short, her brows thick over large brown eyes, her face grubby, her clothing male. And she happened to be near the sink in a men’s room.

That winter day, three years ago, he was on one of his frequent trips between his homes in L.A. and Denver. Just over the Colorado state line, he had stopped at a gas station that had a good-sized convenience market attached to it.

Kit walked into the washroom and saw a man drying his hands. The man was unaware that a skinny urchin was relieving him of his wallet. Kit prevented the theft by the simple expedient of leaning against the door so that the child, whom he now realized was female, couldn’t make her escape. Her eyes widened. He snatched the wallet from her grasp, then held it out to the other man.

The man, who had a beefy build and was a couple of inches taller than Kit, wanted both his wallet and retribution. Kit saw her look of abject terror, remembered all the times in his own childhood when he had longed for an adult who would protect him, and intervened. “I saw her take it, and now you’ve got it back. No real harm done, is there?”

“Stay out of this,” the man said.

Spooky, looking quickly between them, stood closer to Kit. “He’s my brother!” she told the other man.

He looked between them in disbelief.

“Think of me as her guardian,” Kit said. “Check your wallet. Is anything missing?”

The man looked, admitted nothing was missing, but his rage didn’t lessen. He started to reach for the girl.

“Leave her alone,” Kit said, stepping forward to block the move.

The man saw something in Kit’s eyes, perhaps, because he faltered and moved back. “I ought to call the police,” he said.

“You can, of course, but I’ll have to report that you had taken a female minor into a men’s room for God knows what purpose.”

Behind him, he heard the bathroom door open and close.

“She’s no more your sister than I am,” the man complained.

“I said I’ll protect her. Do you doubt that?”

Kit saw the man think this through, saw the moment he decided not to fight, then stepped outside and looked around, but the girl dressed as a boy was gone. When he went in to pay for the gas, he realized his wallet was gone, too.

Almost all of his cash was in an inner pocket of his jacket, so he was able to pay what he owed. He found his wallet-minus cash and credit cards-in a trash can just outside the store. He got into the Suburban, spent a few moments vividly remembering what it was like to want to run away, and thought like a ten-year-old. He drove slowly past a small park and a convenience store, watching for a shorthaired urchin wearing torn jeans, a white T-shirt, and a loose-fitting jacket that wouldn’t have provided much protection against the elements on a cold Colorado day. She wasn’t in either place, but he found her fairly soon. As he passed a fast food restaurant, he saw her standing in line to place an order, and he doubled back.

Before he had managed to get out of the Suburban, she was in trouble again. The man who had been standing in front of her in line had discovered that his own wallet was missing, and was chasing her. She ran toward Kit, and he saw her eyes widen the moment she recognized him. He thought she might hare off in another direction, but instead she ran to him. “Give me his wallet and get in the green Suburban,” he told her. “I won’t harm you.”

Later, it scared him that she believed him. He wouldn’t have harmed her, but she had no way of knowing that. He managed to convince yet another irate victim of her thievery not to call the police.

Kit got back into the Suburban. She reached into one of her jacket pockets and handed him his credit cards and cash without saying anything. Her fingers, as they briefly touched his hand, were ice cold.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked, turning the heater up a little.

She shook her head. He pulled the SUV into the line for drive-through ordering.

“Are you going to take me to the cops?” she asked.

“No. I’m going to take you home.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Look-”

“It’s true. My mom died last summer. Bonnie and me, we live in a car. We did, anyway.”

“Bonnie-is that who takes care of you?”

“Do I look like someone is taking care of me?” she asked angrily. “I take care of myself.”

When he simply looked at her, as if waiting for more information, she finally added, “Bonnie’s my older sister-she was supposed to take care of me. But she took the car and left me. Is that guy back at the gas station going to call the cops?”

“No. What about your dad? Where’s he?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know who he is. Never have.”

“Do you have some other family I can take you to?”

“No.”

“No? What about your grandparents?”

“Dead.”

“Aunts or uncles?”

“No.”

They reached the display board for the fast food, and he asked her what she wanted. She told him. As he finished giving an order large enough for three kids her size, she crossed her arms and glared defiantly at him, then said-in a voice loud enough to carry over the ordering microphone-“I won’t give you a blow job for it.”