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The doll she was holding suddenly let out a fierce yell, as frightening as any battle cry Cole had ever heard. He took an alarmed step back and scrutinized the bundle the girl held.
It squirmed, and he realized it was not a doll. It was a baby! His blood went cold, and his mind tried to sort through the hodgepodge of illogical information that was being thrust on it.
The soldier, the commander, stepped in coolly and took charge. It told him job one was to get these kids out of the cold. No matter how startling their appearance on his doorstep, there would be time, later, to sort through the intrigues.
“Get in,” he ordered and was stunned when the child hesitated before the authority in his voice, a voice that men raced to obey.
He saw suddenly her arms were trembling from the effort of holding the baby, and firmly, a soldier doing the thing he least wanted to do, but recognizing his lack of choices, he plucked the baby from her arms.
It stared at him with huge blue eyes just like the girl’s and screwed up its face until the eyes disappeared into a nest of wrinkles. But then, mercifully, instead of crying the baby nestled into him, sighed, plopped a plump thumb into its mouth.
“Come in,” he said, again, trying to take the military snap out of his voice, trying for a note of kindness that might reassure the trembling waif before him.
She regarded him with huge eyes that stripped him to his soul, and then gave a small satisfied nod. But still, she did not step over the threshold to warmth and safety.
She turned on the step and motioned with her arm. A motion any soldier would recognize.
Come forward. The shrubs that formed a border around the small square of yard that surrounded the house, parted.
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.
“Now, Number One, I have to go see to your grand-mother, and I am placing you in charge here. That makes you second in command.”
Adding another number had been a mistake, because the child’s brow furrowed. He hurried on. “Number One, you are to make sure each of these children sits quietly on this couch while I go to your house and check on your grandmother. Nobody moves a muscle, right?”
He was already calculating. What were the chances his road was open? Slim. If he had to hike cross-country, he could probably be at the big house on the point in ten minutes, going flat out.
It pierced his awareness that Number One was not the least impressed with military protocol or her new title of second in command. In fact, she was frowning, her expression vaguely mutinous.
“No,” she said with flat finality.
“No?” Cole said, dumbfounded. Apparently the child had no idea that he outranked her and was not to be challenged. In fact, her cute little face screwed up, and she let loose a new wail that threatened to peel the paint off his ceiling. Fresh tears squirted out of her eyes at an alarming rate.
He felt himself tensing as four other faces screwed up in unison, but they held off making noise as their sister spoke.
“Mr. Herman, we’re not staying here by ourselves,” she told him. “This house is spooky. I’m scared. I don’t want to be in charge anymore. I want to go with you.”
He only briefly wrestled with his astonishment that this snippet of a child was refusing an order. Obviously the other kids were going to follow her cue, and he did not have the time—nor the patience—to cajole them into seeing things his way.
As much as it went against his nature, he surrendered again. Twice in the space of a few minutes. He could only hope it wasn’t an omen.
He hurriedly packed a knapsack with emergency supplies, and then he turned his attention back to the children.
For a man who could move a regiment in minutes, getting those five children back through the door, arranged in his SUV and safely belted into position was a humbling experience.
Precious moments lost, he finally fired up the engine. Just as he had feared, at the first switchback in his own driveway a huge ponderosa pine was lying lengthwise across it, the branches spanning it ditch to ditch. He’d reversed, plotting furiously the whole way.
The children spilled out of the vehicle and back into the house. He took the baby and lined the rest of them up, shortest to tallest, and inspected them. They were all dressed inadequately for even a short trek along the roughly wooded shores of the lake.
Biting back his impatience, Cole pulled sweaters and jackets off the hooks in his coat closet. “Put them on.”
Giggling slightly, the children did as they were ordered. Cole stuffed Kolina inside a large sweater. It fit her like a sleeping bag. He intended to carry her, anyway.
He used pieces of binder twine to adjust the clothing on the older children so they wouldn’t be tripping as they walked. Lastly, he looked for head coverings. Well versed in the dangers of hypothermia, he knew the greatest heat loss was from the head area. In a moment of pure inspiration, he raided his sock drawer and fitted each child with a makeshift woolen cap—one of his large socks pulled down tight over their ears.
He inspected them again. They looked like a ragtag group of very adorable elves, but he had no time to appreciate his handiwork. Once more, the children were herded out the door.
He put the smaller of the boys on his shoulders, and then had Number One hand him Number Four, the toddler, Kolina, and Number Five, the baby.
He set as hard a pace as he was able, changing Number Three, on his shoulders, with Number Two, the bigger of the boys, every five or six minutes so that none of them would tire. The girl, Saffron, showed remarkable endurance. The beam of the flashlight picked out the well-worn trails that wove around the lake and to the point of land where the movie star’s house was. To his intense relief the ax stayed in his pack. There were no obstacles so large that they could not get around them, though the path was littered with tree branches, cones and needles. Debris continued to rain around them as the wind shrieked through the trees.
It would have been a two minute drive to the house from his cabin. Overland, they made it in just over thirty minutes, which Cole thought was probably something of a miracle.
The children did not whine, or cry or complain. Soldiers could be trained to be brave. That the bravery of the children came to them so naturally put his heart at risk in ways it had never been risked before.
He heard the weak voice calling into the night before he saw her.
“Children? Where are you? Saffron? Darrance? Calypso? Kolina? Lexandra? Dear God, where are you?”
They cried back and began to run, and moments later were reunited with their grandmother. Their unbridled exuberance at finding her returned to life was nearly as exhausting as their sorrow had been.
Cole managed to herd the whole gang, including Granny, whom he secretly labeled Number Six, into the dark interior of the house.
The head injury had bled profusely. Granny’s gray hair was matted with blood and it streaked her kindly wrinkled face and neck.
“This is Mr. Herman,” Saffron told her. “We went to get him because we thought you were dead.”
“My poor babies,” Granny said, and then extended a frail hand. “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue, Mr. Herman.”
He didn’t really care if she called him Mr. Herman or Santa Claus. He wanted to assess her injury as soon as possible. The house, apparently electrically heated, was cold, and he herded his charges into what he knew must be called the great room. Located off the main hallway, it was a huge room with picture windows that faced the lake. In the dim light, he could see the floor was marble-tiled with thick Persian rugs tossed on it. Big mahogany-colored leather couches were grouped facing the window. Thankfully, on the north wall, was an enormous floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace.
He equipped the children with flashlights to help them find their way around the dark house, and then gave them each a job they could handle. The baby was set on the floor beside him while the rest of them went in search of clean cloth for bandages, ice and sturdy straight sticks suitable for splinting, should they be needed.
While they were gone, Cole opened his first-aid kit and began to swab away the worst of the blood. He grilled the old girl to see if she was confused, but, aside from being woozy, she seemed articulate and aware. She knew her age, the date, and even the impossible names of all those children.
She was not weak or numb on either side of her body, no blood or fluids were coming from her ears or her nose. She had not vomited or had convulsions that she was aware of.
Still, Cole knew the very fact she had lost consciousness made the injury serious. The roads were impassable and the phones were out.
But for him, handling emergencies on his own, without counting on backup, came as naturally as breathing.
The children brought him sheets, and, even the rough soldier that he was, he recognized them as very expensive. Percale. Unhesitatingly, he tore them into bandages and encouraged the children to do the same.
Children two, three and four were soon hauling wood. He settled Granny on the couch, built a fire, and, with Saffron at his side, began to haul mattresses down from upstairs.
“This is the boys’ room,” Saffron told him. The room was done in a jungle theme, complete with fake palm trees with stuffed gorillas swinging from them.
Saffron’s own room paid homage to a vapid-looking girl who was too skinny and had too big a mouth. Brittany or Tiffany or something. The room was divided by an invisible line, and the other half—Kolina’s, Saffron informed him—was aggressively Dalmatian. There were black-and-white spots everywhere. They marched relentlessly up the walls and across the ceiling, they dotted the rugs, the bed comforter, the pillows, the dresser and drawers.
Cole tried to decide which half of the room was more nauseating, but reached no conclusion. After salvaging both mattresses from the room, he closed the door firmly, hoping never to have to enter again.
The baby’s room was a dream of ruffled white lace. It was everywhere—skirting the crib, forming a drape over it, hanging in big wads from the windows.
And those kids had thought his house was spooky!
Shaking his head, he began to haul mattresses down the curved marble staircase. It was easy to see why it had caused such a terrible injury. The marble was slippery and exceedingly hard. He shook his head at the impracticality of it.
In the great room, he laid out the mattresses and got his now-willing little soldiers to haul bedding. One last emergency before he tucked them in.
The baby needed fresh pants and badly.
“There’s only a few diapers,” Granny told him weakly. “The housekeeper will bring new ones with the grocery order tomorrow.”
Cole didn’t want to be the one to break it to her that the housekeeper probably wasn’t coming tomorrow. He made a mental note to check around and see what was available that would pass as a diaper.
The diaper was absolutely rank. He had to tie the triangular bandage from his first-aid kit around his nose to even begin to deal with it.
